This^.
I've been here a very long time...but for many years I didn't have my own user profile, Bigshipper did all the posting and I didn't interact directly with the community until 2011. In my experience, 98% of the interaction has been positive and I've formed some nice friendships with people. I think I've been very fortunate compared to gals new to the scene. It seems like they have to run through some sort of gauntlet to prove that they are indeed female, and then they get the deluge of messages, requests, and subsequent harassment, - which all at once would definitely freak out a lot of people.

For the most part, everyone knows I'm married to Bigshipper and I think that's offered a certain degree of protection.

Even so, I get my share of weirdos but not necessarily stuff that I would define as harassment. Mostly people who have poor social skills or who don't take the time to read my profile or who don't get the hint when I ignore them. And back when I did customs, oh, the time wasters...

It's hard to say where being a fan stops and harassment starts. I like to say that some fans are friendly and some are not. Defining harassment in the first place, is kind of tricky - it's not always obvious.

Sometimes a fan is just overzealous and messages you too many times, and they don't get the 'hint' when you ignore them. Sometimes they get 'territorial' and jealous if you respond to someone else's comment in a post or on a photo but don't respond to theirs...or that the work you're shooting is somehow meant only for them. Sometimes they are trying to find you in your real life - and that's super creepy and not sure what MM can do about that.

A block user feature similar to Facebook would be wonderful, and/or I really like the idea of a ghost ban. Because in the end, the problem is not easily solvable. Some people will behave like asshats no matter what you do, and having the tools to deal with them would make the experience less annoying/stressful/scary.

I can really relate to the person I'm quoting who talked about the constant drip of demands. They do add up to a torrent. It was an even bigger problem when I had a blog on Tumblr - there were no mods there and it was like a free for all...I'm no longer on Tumblr or Facebook because of people pestering me all the time, trying to find me in real life, and or being super negative on some level - either body shaming, age shaming, or whatever. The thing is, even with the positive experiences, the negative ones are the ones that can hurt you or scare you, even if they only account for less than 2% of your interactions. I miss interacting with my fans/friends, but after awhile, esp on Tumblr, it just felt like work and was overwhelming. What people could never get away with saying to me here on the umd, they felt very free to say on Tumblr. Funny, I used to try to respond to every single message I received whether here or on Tumblr, even the nasty ones, ha. I somehow thought that if I was just nice to everyone they would be nice in return. What a nitwit! But after a while, I nearly wore out the delete button.

You have to have a thick skin to be here as a woman. Especially if you plan on sticking around. Even the fun stuff can be overwhelming. But as I said, overall - the experience has been a positive one or we never would have stuck around as long as we have and we are very grateful for the positive aspects of this community, the people who do know how to act like decent, respectful human beings, AND for the mods. I've only reported or flagged things a few times but the mods always dealt with it - don't be afraid to do the same.

Just sayin'.

Cheers.
Mrs. Bee

I think we need to be respectful of others, regardless of gender, sexuality etc etc. We are here because we have this, unusual, kink and, it can be a fun thing! throwing pies at an attractive, smartly dresses girl is probably not everyones idea of a turn on, but it sure is mine!

Anyhow, we all have our likes and dislikes, I mean TVs/CDs aren't my thing, but everyone to their own, and lets not spoil it by being inappropriate

I can't believe there are so many people who weren't informed that only *I* get to harass Mrs. Bee!

Er...me? I'm much more into pies than slime.

And for all we know, Fi is posting on UMD as "moreslime".

I know one solution, but people won't like it. Make the site require your personal information to register. I mean something that is government issued. It wouldn't be shown publicly, but it would be on file. If you harass someone, it gets sent to the cops, end of story. Models have to do this, why not consumers too?

There is a real need especially for the models in our community to protect themselves and their identities. They put themselves out here and stalkers can find them, it's NOT THAT HARD. I became decent friends with one person on here on Facebook and guess what, that led to other people they were friends with showing up as "people I may know".

Meanwhile most of us consumers sit behind the veil of anonymity, safe to be assholes if we choose with little to no repercussions.

I've actually done this UNINTENTIONALLY to another model on here that I was friends with and upset her greatly. I didn't mean to, but I betrayed her trust. I may make a public comment, but I will never message or bother her again. Not everyone is that decent.

So, I go out of my way to put up pictures of me, I use my name, and I put where I live. I do this because I don't want anyone to feel harassed or intimidated by me.

But I'm also me, and I don't have much to lose if I'm identified. That's not true for everyone, we all have our different levels of comfort. However, I don't think we can let abusers hide behind privacy like that.

I appreciate this post. I completely agree that we should not be the Harvey Weinstein of the fetish community. It is not hard to treat women with respect, honestly it is just bad social skills and pure duchery. Given the climate of things here and how brazen men got after the elections last year, there was an attitude that this was acceptable. The women that have come out with accusations have made me proud of them. We have created a culture where women have a hard time speaking out. We victim blame and shame women for coming out. I think that a zero tolerance policy would be awesome. No matter how long you have been a member on the boards or the chatroom. If you cannot be respectful you are gone. If you think about it, it make no sense. Women create the content a lot of people come here for. Yes I know this is a LGBTQ friendly environment, but still. If you want the content you have to be respectful. I think as a community we also need to stick up for the women when we see the harassment. The women that come here are people NOT objects no matter what your penis says.

^ 100% agree with Mrs. Bee. I just reactivated my account after being gone several weeks because I felt uncomfortable here due to this exact problem. I came back though, because I shouldn't have to disappear and seek refuge. This is a fetish site and I want to be here. It's my fetish too and I should feel safe here. I do think there should be a block user feature. It's unfortunate that although 98% of my experience has been positive the other 2% made me want to run and hide.

I have a question for anyone who has experienced harassment or any other behaviour by another user here that has annoyed / upset them. This isn't criticism I'm just trying to understand how we can go about making the site better:

Did you contact the moderation team about it and if not why not?

At present I am getting none of the stuff mentioned on this thread reported to me. To me that means that either people don't know about the moderation team or for some other reason they are put off doing it. I'd really like to know so we can get whatever it is fixed.

I don't entirely agree that "banning" doesn't work. If someone has received an unpleasant message from another site member, they tell me and I remove the offending users ability to send any further messages that means they can't message anyone else on the site. If that happens to the vast majority of the idiots then surely we're a step in the right direction. If a user tries to sign up again we have various tools in place to stop them. If they get past that and send another offending message and it's reported then they will only have the same happen to that account. I and the rest of the moderation team can make this happen but it needs you guys to say something and at the minute it isn't happening.

To answer Rich's comments about Runnin Rebel. I can only moderate the UMD based on what the users do here. I assure you if he'd done something inappropriate here and it had been flagged to me I would have done something about it.

Just to echo what a few other posters have mentioned, a way to block certain members from being able to see any of your profile, much like Fetlife, would be a great addition to the site, even when someone is stopped from messaging you, they still have access to all your content, not sure how easy that kind of feature would be to add though.

A few times i have also almost hit the delete account button, but as has been said before, this is my fetish and i don't see why someone who doesn't know how to behave online, and probably in real life too, should scare me away from having an account here.

Just to add, the creeps are only a minority, have always found most of the guys here are great to talk to.

Ha! But a good case in point about having a thick skin...and understanding context. I've taken all kinds of snark from Regis over the years but I know he's coming from a place of...love? Or something close to it? *snorts with laughter*
He's still respectful with his snark, I think?

But I don't think he ever bought one dang thing from me - since I'm more of a pie girl and he is all about the mud. He was going to bring me a latte once, but that never happened, either. Still waiting...

Mrs. Bee

I think some people just don't know they can do this or are fearful of conflict - maybe they think the other person will retaliate in some way? Just thinking out loud.

Only speaking for myself here now, I have reported things a few times and it was swiftly dealt with. On other occasions, I just found that ignoring the offender eventually caused him to go away. (except for Regis).
But sometimes there is a gray area where you are not sure whether or not it's something you should report or deal with on your own. Even defining "unpleasant" is a challenge. That will mean different things to different people. The people who know me well know I'm a pretty tough cookie and just don't tolerate disrespectful talk or illiterate messages, and I'm completely comfortable with calling someone on it in a private message. I will tell them "I don't permit anyone to speak to me in that fashion. Please don't message me again." If they message me again, I delete it without even opening it. Perhaps I should have just reported it? I don't know, I always felt like I didn't need to report something unless it was particularly egregious. Theoretically, if someone sends me a message telling me that I should lose/gain weight, retire, use dildos, shave my bush, whatever, it's annoying but is that really reportable? I rather enjoy kicking people to the curb myself.

I'm not suggesting my methods as options for other people - I'm only sharing what I have said/done in the past. I realize it's probably best not to engage the other person in a dialogue but what do I know? I'm established here and I think my experience here is very, very different than those of ladies who have just recently joined the community. I'm sitting here at my desk reflecting on what it might be like if I were young and new to the umd...I might be writing something entirely different on this topic.

I should also mention that I rarely even get messages here anymore since I cut my forum posting back so dramatically and reduced the number of photos in my gallery. Don't know if it means anything or not but I wanted to point out that I no longer get the deluge of messages since I have become less active on the site.

Bee

It's OK. He's never bought a thing from me either, and I only get the abusive end of his "love."
Love ya Regis!!

FATMUP said: " Fact remains that the further down you go into the weird side of the web, and yes that includes this site, the more socially unaware and creepy fucks you're going to get. "

I appreciate your comment but, one, your 'fact' is unsubstantiated as such...there is nothing intrinsically causal about having a 'niche' fetish and and being 'socially unaware' and 'creepy'...none of us really had control over what fetishes or turn-ons or kinks we would eventually acquire (much less the self-awareness of our psycho-sexual growth). Lots of 'normal" folks end up with odd/strange kinks (due to chance merging of the sex drive with a random stimulation or image).

With perhaps a few exceptions, most of the creeps (fetish stalkers and harassers) are probably younger guys who are just discovering their sexuality (turn-ons) and/or embarking on real social contact...they are new to this whole thing and they need to be socialized properly (what this forum thread is trying to do).

Ok, plus a few assholes (they're everywhere).

Hey, I just thought of another idea. A locked forum just for women to go talk about whatever where we can't bother them. They could use this for instance to discuss offenders, etc. Furthermore, some older wammers could help mentor newer ones on a wide variety of things. Granted, this can be done with private messages too, but it would be open to all women members.

I don't know if it would work, just brainstorming.

See, if I actually show up with that latte, THEN it'll be harassment. NICE TRY, MRS. BEE! You'll never get me.

Well Bob, once again you're bang on the money. There is a special type of trogolodyte that lurks here.

It seems, like a shark with blood, the mere hint of boob sends these folk into feverent frothing thinking that a grunt will impress the fair maidens of wam.

Speaking as someone who as a producer and fan, I've met, worked and gunged plenty of the female form. Not blowing my own brass section, but in my wam career I've gunged big names, models and partners - over 100 gunged! Over too much just to do it to humour or take pity on me....

My tip.

Speak to them as a human! They go for a poo like you. Apart from Jessie and Lisa, who like the Queen, has someone else to do that!

In all sex/fetish sites it seems that socially that grunting, asking the base questions, and thinking that every woman will jump in a pool of beans for you whilst you knock one out.

Would you go into a pub and whop ya cock out? At least the old ASL seems to have gone into retirement

So yes a blocker would be an excellent tool to weedle out the chancers will bring the status on here to a much more relaxing place to be for all....

Here's some old GM pics!

This is a fabulous thread, thank you for creating it, bosunbob.

I avoid the deluge of DMs (a.k.a. chat requests) by setting my chat status to 'Invisible' or 'Offline' when I want to read a forum or post a blog without consistent (and, oh yes, I do mean consistent) chat requests. I don't mind the consistency of the DMs, as long as I can mark myself as appearing offline so I can have some alone-time with the UMD.

I haven't bothered the admins, yet, because I was able to handle the bad actor by myself, by a combo of blocking and ignoring incoming email. But if it gets bad, say, someone gets a strike-3, I will be sure to alert the proper authorities.

TBH the worst and most frequent annoyance so far has been when someone chats me with "Hi what are you into?". Whaaat, my verbose profile isn't fg enough information for you to figure that out?! Nice work, Don Juan. And if that's the worst it gets 98% of the time, that's just fine.

The other 2% vary from persistent noise (blocked), sudden RP without any discussion or consent (blocked), and begging/demands for entertainment ("Dance for me, monkey pie slut!"). I've made up the actual text of that last one, but that's pretty much the request distilled into six word accuracy.

Lastly, I'm 99.762% convinced that my ridiculous cartoon-based profile helps filter out a lot of harassment. It's not "real" enough to attract the truly asshatted, and it's fun enough to attract fellow reason-minded kinksters. That and it's a good screen for anonymity, obviously.

I don't comment a lot, but bob nailed it.

And it's not just on the umd. I see comments on YouTube as well that are abhorrent. It blows my mind when people post asking if women genuinely like wam. Of course there are women that like it but when they join a community like this and are immediately bombarded by horn dogs blowing up their inbox it drives them away and a lot if times discourages them from being apart of the community.

This.

The only way to handle these kinds of comments, for videos, writing, music, art - anything - is to ignore 'em and move on. It's great to read or hear the "Great work!" messages, but depending on those for affirmation is a great way to become miserably depressed!

To paraphrase the writer Neil Gaiman: "When someone tells you they like your work, they are absolutely right. When someone tells you they don't like your work, they are absolutely right. When someone tells you your work needs more saxophone or trumpets or blue or slime or white socks or guitar solos, they are absolutely wrong"

So many commenters are miserable, or hyper-critical, or imagine they could do it better.. ugh. It's a cesspool. If anyone thinks they can do better, then by all means: GO DO BETTER! But no, they'll criticize from the cheap seats! Whatever, man!

It seems unlikely we'd ever actually resort to it, but forcing users to submit some kind of ID is fraught with problems beyond simply putting people off joining. In the EU at least you need to demonstrate all sorts of data protection measures to hold copies of such documents, and these are even more strict if the data controller is outside the EU. Since this is a site that anybody from any country in the world (OK, so not North Korea, probably not China and probably not several Islamic countries as blocked in these places) can sign up to, we would also have no way of verifying whether IDs were genuine or not. Anybody here know how to spot a fake Swaziland driving license, or a Turmenistan work permit?

I would support the removal of gender information from profiles, not just on behalf of the female users but of trans and other gender identities too. I find it hard to believe that any users who have those identities are immune to harassment and possibly outright hate speech either. In fact I've also had some dodgy and inappropriate comments from randomers on pictures and during chats from time to time, often relating to my hair.

Ah, gotcha, I read more into it than you'd written. Oops!

Yeah, I know what you mean. Related to that, I'm a bit uncomfortable when people say things like "This woman got absolutely destroyed with 20 pies! We annihilated her!"

I'm not saying that there's any connection between that and harassment, but I like WAM when everyone's having fun, and those words are a bit too violent for my tastes.

I guess it depends how you define the terms. For me personally, I'd say that "covered" is an accurate term, if you can't find any area that's still clean at the end. I believe that some people do videos that involve clothes ripping, and it would be fair to say that a dress has been "destroyed" if it's now in several pieces on the floor and it can never be worn again. (I assume that you wouldn't go down that route, given how elaborate/expensive your costumes are!)

I think that "destroyed" bothers me for two reasons:
* In everyday life, people normally use it in the context of inanimate objects, e.g. buildings or cars rather than people.
* It sounds irreversible, so the closest human equivalent would be "killed".

However, you don't need my permission to carry on with whatever words you prefer I only mentioned it here because it was vaguely related to what RobbyWLP said.

As the saying goes treat others how you want to be treated. Everyone deserves to have dignity and respect.

Yes, on an earlier account I suggested to mods in-thread that there ought to be a code of conduct, after witnessing some creepage. The result was an amicable back-and-forth with mods which ultimately didn't result in anything having changed because mods didn't want too many rules.

I also suggested that a particular feature ought to be implemented by the site to compensate for a serious privacy concern which was brought up by a female user. My comment was removed by an administrator who told me that they didn't want to start a panic among users about the privacy concern. I was assured that the feature was going to be implemented, so I didn't mind. However, to the best of my knowledge, this feature was not implemented (and I am checking fairly routinely).

That's pretty much it. Having defined standards along with reasonable accountability would be a good first step.

Another might be a short probation period on private messages. Give someone a chance to come here, set up a profile, and browse, rather than getting deluged with messages right away.

Sadly, I agree that there will always be people who don't respect personal boundaries - they lack the social skills and/or the desire to change their behaviour. We can't completely stop them joining UMD without also making it difficult for normal, respectful new users to join too. Therefore I think quickly identifying and banning/blocking creeps is the best way forward.

As Bob said, there are already tools available to the Mods, so perhaps what we need is more awareness among users that these can, and will, be used. A few additions to this system could also make it more effective. Unfortunately it'll only weed out the really bad apples, not protect females from a constant barrage of "hi, want to chat?" messages. I can't think of a good way to reduce that - each message on its own is innocent enough, and no reason to ban/block the user, but the sheer number is overwhelming.

To tackle truly inappropriate behaviour:

• How about a permanent sticky-post at the top of the forum, reminding people that harassment WILL NOT be tolerated and that users can report anyone who crosses the line? New/infrequent users who haven't read this thread still need to be aware of the issue.


• I can't remember what the sign-up process was like - do we have to read/accept any T&Cs? If not, there should definitely be a similar statement in BIG LETTERS when joining. It won't stop all creeps, but it'll let new users (esp. females) know that there are ways to deal with them.


• As several people have said, giving users the ability to block other users themselves would very useful


• How about a probation period on sending messages (slightly different to Wamlanta's idea)? E.g. you can only send 5 messages per day during your first week. That way a new user can't harass loads of people immediately - and if any of those messages are inappropriate, then they can be flagged and banned anyway.

A few things I'm not so keen on:

• Submitting an ID when creating an account. As kipperflew2 said, proving that these are genuine and making sure they are stored securely is just too difficult. And there are plenty of users who want/need to keep their ID a secret. No disrespect to the UMD team, but I wouldn't be willing to risk an accidental data breach. When I first joined, I was quite insecure about my kinks and nervous that someone would figure out my identity. No way would I have joined if I had to submit a real-world ID. Remember, the whole point of this discussion is to make people feel welcome, not drive them away.


• Removing gender information from profiles. As soon as a user shares pictures of themselves, it's usually obvious what gender they are. Unless we want everyone to stop sharing personal photos, we can't keep each other in the dark about who we are.


• A 'safe network' of approved users. I think the barrier to new users would be too high. If you can't send a PM until approved by a panel, and you don't want to post regularly on the forums (like me and many others), how can the panel decide if you're safe or not? Loads of new users would either not join, or give up and leave if they couldn't interact with anyone.

Sadly there won't be a magic bullet solution, but I think we can be more proactive in kicking out users who don't act responsibly. Thanks to Bob for brining this up - raising awareness is the first step!

The underlying problem is social, so any technical fixes are really just treating the symptoms, though that doesn't mean we shouldn't do them, as they will help.

The ability to block users completely is an absolute must. Possibly those with stores should be able to specify whether the block prevents the user seeing their stores as well as their general content or not (this may well be needed with stalker-types), but general users should be able to just block people completely if they want to, and do so easily.

I don't think requiring ID would work, most likely it would just kill the site dead. Bear in mind that those of us who post in the forums are a minute fraction of the total actual membership. I think we effectively have three distinct classes of users who very seldom overlap:

• Active forum users. Producers and the regulars.
• People who register an account to be able to purchase downloads, but otherwise don't become active users.
• People who just look at or collect the free promo photos, some of whom register and some don't.

People sending explicit messages to anyone with a female avatar is I think fairly common - some years ago user itsagaz wrote an utterly hilarious comedy piece contrasting the UMD experiences of male and female users, and while most of it was about the female user getting buried in requests for white socks and melon insertion, it also mentioned the male user, having set their avatar to a favourite female wam model, being sent a long and detailed explicit wam fantasy by someone "who clearly had a good imagination but also wasn't very good at reading user profiles". I know from the experiences female friends have had on dating sites that this isn't a problem confined to the UMD - guys bombarding random women (or indeed anyone they think is female) with explicit fantasy is a general problem. And writing a detailed profile doesn't generally help as the guys who do this don't read profiles, or if they do they ignore everything written in them.

My suggestions:

• Easy to use site-wide block function. With a "show blocked users" page so the user can un-block someone if they change their mind.
• Very heavy rate-limit on personal messages for at least first month of membership. Why would anyone need to send more than one or two PMs when they've only just joined? Restrict it to max 5 a day total, and also that once a message is sent to someone, no more can be sent to that user until the first one is replied to. That would avoid the "bombarded with PMs" problem. Restrictions can be relaxed once the member has sent and received a set number of messages without anyone reporting them as harassment.
• Option for any user to be able to make the "no more messages untill current one is replied to" setting permanent for messages to themselves.
• Rename "flag" to "report"? Not sure how clear "flag" is to people as the way to report something inappropriate.
• A page of information for new users warning them about the way some guys will basically try and get them to do the wam equivalent of text sex, often under the guise of arranging a custom but with no intention of actually paying anything.

I didn't know Regis lived in Europe.

Sure - GIVEN NO OTHER INFORMATION about a person & their political beliefs - one person should not keep stalking them or harrassing them.

It's basic fairness. Basic Golden Rule.
Same reason I don't copy producers' videos, their work, and give it away for free.
Not because of a "copy right law".

Keeping interactions as low-info, know as little about the other person as possible,
I easily keep to simple rules such as this, regardless whether there's an outside law compelling me to.