I'm beginning to suspect Zoidberg is a long-game "men's rights" troll trying to make harassing women OK by convincing us it's equivalent to eating meat or voting for the logical choice.

Thanks for bringing this up, Bosunbob. It's very much time we got on the same page with how we are protecting ourselves from the threats coming from today's climate. Thanks everybody who's responded, and sorry I'm just able to give this thread the time it deserves. I've renamed the thread so it reflects better what it's about. Sorry it's so long, and for my delay in responding.

I don't know how accurate it is, but according to Google Analytics, females make up 45% of all our visitors. What I do know is that girls run this site. They are most of the content, and most of the personality. They are mostly the ones choosing to smile and put their face up for all to see and criticize. My face and most of our faces aren't posted up everywhere. We have to try to never take for granted the inherently vulnerability position that puts anyone in, and it's up to me to make sure the policy is clear on what lines we draw, what a user should do about a problem, and what is expected of me (and the moderators, but they are under no obligation). I have revised our Terms of Use and Privacy page to clarify these points, but as always it'll be changed as the times need.

To what Bosunbob said in the OP, I honestly cannot say that I have seen these reports of females getting barraged with inappropriate messages as soon as they join. Not since a couple of years ago when I set it so that all new female user accounts default to friend-inbox and chat. For those who turn off or don't use those preferences, every inbox message can be flagged, and I get all the flags. I regularly encourage people to speak up if they even so much as feel creepy about a person for whatever reason. It could be the sign of something bigger. I may need to check the user's inbox, log files, site history, chat logs, and a number of other things. If female harrassment is an unaddressed issue to the point that people are leaving, then I must be naive or people are not speaking up. But anything and everything can be researched, even now. It's never too late. Please contact me and let me know if you've ever been bothered by another user at ANY time.

This is a unique site because the models are actually here. They have profiles, they post regularly, and they are friendly; You can actually communicate with them! They listen to you, and they turn around the next day and post incredible stuff that was probably just what you asked for. It's a low-friction setup that is only made possible because of the incredible rapport we've already built up among ourselves over the decades. But paradoxically, it does end up creating a potentially perilous situation: Those who produce content are put more or less in direct contact with people who might misunderstand or take advantage of this setup. I believe that most of us misinterpret this dynamic as symptomatic of the wam culture itself, which I think is wrong. Either way, it's my job to be the one remaining layer of protection.

Let me talk about user blocking. The chat has it, but the inboxes do not. I have deliberatly never added it for very specific reasons, but always kept an open mind on implementing it if it would actually do what it's supposed to do. The main reason it's not here yet is because users can flag problem messages, and when I get the flag and I can do much more extensive action from my end. If the user did something inappropriate at all, I will gag the user, but I'll do it at the site level. This prevents the user from doing the same thing to others because let's face it, if you needed to block them, then they should probably just be blocked from everyone else. Or maybe they should have their account notated or deleted completely, or their IP address cross-referenced to find other UMD accounts they may have had, or maybe their inbox should be checked (including deleted messages) to see what else they're up to. These are all things you couldn't do by blocking them, but I can, so that's why I want to do it myself. An even larger issue is that when *I* do the blocking and messaging to the offender, it's coming from me the site owner, not the offended user. This most definitely helps to prevents blowback on people like [name removed at request of user] This is a lesson I learned long ago, but it's incredibly hard to explain all this to someone who just wants to block the creep who just asked to pie her. I think the solution would be have both things: Let you block the user, and when you do, I'll still get the flag so I can research it later. I'll also make UMD automatically gag someone if they get too many flags, similar to what the forums do. Anybody think this wouldn't be a good solution?

I've had a talk with Messmistress, and she's made me realize something beyond the code, and the reporting system, and the due dilligence. There's another side to the story and it's encouragement. It needs to be made crystal clear everywhere that females, and everyone, can and should SPEAK UP. There is no consequence here of pissing someone off who you think has power or clout, because that's not how this site works. I need to make that clearer... Through code, I guess.

That brings me to another point. I've been accused of not having rules or not taking action because it would be too harsh on the offender. What really happens is that I will research the issue myself and contact the other person, or just go ahead and gag them if need be. When someone has a complaint against you, unless it's an obvious case where I should just gag you, I'll likely communicate with you and try to figure out what the deal is. I've found that treating humans like humans is remarkably more effective than all the moderation tools I could ever build.

I have to clarify where UMD stands on gender. I'm not an authority but can I say that there can be a difference between our actual gender, and our biological, or assigned gender. Anyone who is a different gender on the inside than they appear to be on the outside wants and needs to be respected. But this is sometimes at odds on an intensely media-focused website where almost all the visitorship is browsing and searching content based on physical traits. If ever a conflict, I have to make the decision of whether to present results and moderate posts based on what users expect to see, or based on who the person is inside. This is how I handle that: UMD by default categorizes content based on the apparent biological appearance of the model. This is what most users expect when browsing, as evidenced by fewer gender complaints when operating this way. But, if the model or person in question has selected a gender preference in their profile, then we must respect that around the site, forever, even if the user is obviously the opposite biologically gender. Unless I hear something better, this is our governing rule on how we treat gender, and it's already on our Terms of Use. Let me just respond briefly to some points I read. We could go into further discission on any of them. Hopefully on separate threads.

> ghost ban
This would immediately result in complaints of the site not working. And then I'd have to honestly explain that they were banned by that person, which defeats the purpose I think.

> Make the site require your personal information to register.
Hell no. I don't want that liability and you don't want that info here anyway. Right?

> Has anyone considered the necessity of identifying as any particular gender on the site?
This is a content-based site, and it's a priority to give users the content they are searching for. People have proven to be very sensitive of biological gender in the results they see. That's why we categorize content, and humans, by what unfortunately seems like a cold pigeon-hole process. It's not meant to be dehumanizing. It's an attempt to consistently present users with what they expect to see, as constrained by reasonable technological limits. Letting you choose gender allows you to state who you are, if you want to. It's not mandatory.

> I've just realized that there is no longer a list of mods/admins on the main page like their used to be
Hmmm, we've always had that list on the People page, but not anywhere else. But it probably would be put on the homepage, huh?

> From Bosunbob: 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.
Again, this is what perplexed me at first. But I need everyone to know that I keep all records of flags and complaints, plus logs and other tools that can go into the past. If it happened on UMD, I likely can get to it and use the info to do whatever's necessary--set up IP blocking, user presence flagging, whatever.

> I do agree with the comments that as UMD has moved over to the more sexual side of wam,
I've actually heard this since 1999. Back when the old iWam site had sexual content on it, and even before that when one of our first affiliates was an adult site. I'd argue that sexual and "non-sexual" wam have existed here in pretty much the same proportion over the years.

> 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... I always felt like I didn't need to report something unless it was particularly egregious. ...I didn't go running to the mods or Admin because I figured they have enough to deal with on their own
I think we can all agree now: No more gray area Here there is no risk of losing your job or being publicly shamed. If anyone so much as makes you feel creepy, just flag the message. I personally review every flag and it is anonymous except to me and the admins. Blocking is done by admin. The flag and your complaint gets added to the user's permanent UMD record, and other people flagging the person builds a picture for posterity that will always be available to us admins, even well after the user and all his posts have been deleted. Every user always has an internal UMD score, and it goes into the negative with just a few flags. There is already an automated system to gag a user after so many flags causes them to dip into a negative score (not currently implemented). I just need everyone's help in flagging stuff they feel is suspicious.

> 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 don't think it's really fair to say we don't take action because we don't want too many rules. Conversation is the first thing we try, and once we understand both sides of a situation, we may not end up banning a person per se, but rather coming to an understanding. Or we may be watching the account or we may have indeed put an inbox or other type of gag in place. If that actually resolves the situation without hitting the ban button, then wasn't that the point? If not, and the person isn't the type who gets the point, they're out of here. What I can do better is communicate better to you about what is going on with the offender.

> Very heavy rate-limit on personal messages
I have flood filters there and in most places. If flooding becomes more of a problem, that's a knob I can turn.

> ABGamma Honestly, what we really need is a spam filter for messages.
First, thanks for your offer over inbox. I'll get to that soon as I can. But similar to ghost messages, if this causes a user to send a message that never gets received on the other end, they will end up blowing up my inbox wondering what's going on, only for me to have to tell them they're being filtered. I don't see how that ends well. I think they need to be told straight up if they can't send a message for whatever reason. UMD does have an automatic flagging system with a list of trigger words: I am alerted whenever someone submits something anywhere containing one of those words.

> A name and shame system
With the blowback from that, we'd be lucky to see UMD still here after a month.

> Rename "flag" to "report"
I think I will take this advice. Thanks!

> More generally, what's the point of being friends with someone on UMD? As far as I can tell, it's not like Facebook where you can share extra photos
There's really not much to the friends on UMD, except to use as your personal bookmarks, and as a gesture to the friend and other visitors as to who you're cool with. Other than that, the friends system lets you use the option to only receive messages from friends or chat with friends. I can attach other abilities to friends later, if people have suggestions.

> The problem I've found is that someone can send you a friend request and immediately follow it with an inbox message or chat request, and then the website lets that through.... Similarly, if you decline the friend request, the website asks "Are you sure you want to remove this friend?" In other words, UMD will automatically accept friend requests on your behalf, rather than waiting for you to make a decision.
A person can send you a request along with a message. That's not really an inbox message, and if you decline it, it just removes the request. The request removal confirmation does say "remove this friend?" because in our system, a friend request is technically the same thing as a friend that is not approved. When you delete the request, it's just using the same confirmation box as if you had deleted a friend. Sorry for the alarm, but UMD won't make them a real friend unless you say so. I'll update that verbiage soon! As far as things to fix, I also will make sure our exif scrubbing is hitting all images on UMD.

> CandyCustard if you are serious about this then you'd better not have that absolute DICKWAD macho bullshit system of mods each having a 'mark' and only dealing with their own 'mark'.... I was told by Bob, Yam etc 'sorry, that guy is Middy's 'mark' and it's his decision to let him stay
That was never how it was supposed to be run. I personally am responsible for anything that happens here, not Midniter and not Bosunbob and not any other admin. I take 100% responsibility. In fact, this is why I don't have many moderators now. After Midniter left, I basically concluded that I needed to take more responsibility myself to do the actual moderation, which meant leaning more on community flagging, the internal notes and ratings system, and in the future, automated content removal based on negative ratings. But it was never a pass-the-buck system where a moderator was assigned a user. We've always worked from shared notes that are kept on file for each user.

> One is that the mods have explicitly said they don't want to get involved in regulating the community unless they know they're acting in a way that the community can get behind. That's understandable, but the laissez-faire style has some obvious limits.
I think that's a misunderstanding. I do receive, review, and take action on flags every day. It's part of my daily routine, though I do get behind because of a lot with other things I also have to do. I don't post to the forums a lot. I don't make stickies about the latest rule I'm mad about being broken. I don't shove UMD's terms up your ass on every page load. I run the site behind the scenes, trying to build understanding and communication. Because you know what? That actually works! I have no personal interest in announcing moderation moves to everyone unless there would be some benefit for the community to hearing it--some clarification of why something happened to a thread, for example. Otherwise, the unnecessary barrage of warnings and chastising will turn the morale into that of a police state, and that's what brings even more trolls and cynics. That's why I keep moderation more private here, instead of wearing it on my sleeve. It's not really about whether the community could get behind it or not.

> Have you ever bought anything here? If you have, guess what, you've already handed over your personal information. your name, your address, your phone number, credit card number, etc. It's on file now,
Not with us. Epoch handles the credit card info (thought I personally can access it from there). But I'm actively working to keep your phone numbers, addresses, and other info OFF of our servers. (I even have some filters for that.) And I won't touch credit cards.

> Personally, I'd also like to see something along the lines of the "karma" system that Reddit uses, allowing BOTH up and down scoring for threads, individual posts/DMs, and the poster themselves, with habitual low scores limiting certain types of access of trolls, idiots, and general scumbags.
Every UMD user including me has an internal score. Anyone who dips into the negative automatically pops into my administration area in big red letters, along with all their content that's been flagged. I don't normally show negative score activity to the public. That is public shaming, and no matter how much the person might deserve it, it stinks up the site, plus it's a moderation nightmare dealing with a humiliated person. It would be easy for me to automatically ban a user from all activities, once their score is below a certain point. People actively flagging stuff helps with that a lot.

> what if there were some way for us as users to signal to all the other users what we are, and are not, interested in doing here
That's an idea I've had on my To Do list for a while. A set of common checkboxes where everybody can say if they are interested in meeting people or not, etc. Your prefs could be optionally shown right on the message form so they can't claim ignorance. And then you could search our users based on these prefs. I'll move that up the list

> The messages I would get from complete strangers that can't even say hello, or ask how I'm doing demanding I do certain types of videos, or telling me what they want to do to me in great detail completely put me off. That's not fun. That's not sexy...
I have to remind everyone that we have a friend-only inbox and chat option. They can't bother you then if they're not your friend (unless I've got a bug to fix). This is turned on by default for new female members. Adding those preference checkboxes should also help with that.

> To answer Bobs question about did I contact a moderator, the answer is no. The reason I didn't is a much bigger and deep seeded issue involving trust and me having very first hand knowledge of "rape culture," and feeling that going through those steps is pointless and will stress me out when it leads to no results. I'm conditioned to this....
The lack of flags and complaints and emails about this is what made my jaw drop when I first started reading this thread. Where are the complaints?! I do get them, and I handle them (plus auto-flags based on keywords and such), but it does bother me that someone would go so far as to leave in despair without so much as flagging what caused it. If somebody is messing with you, they're likely messing with somebody else too, and I need to do a better job at making it clear nobody should be intimidated to report things.

I want to get into a discussion about female moderators, but this post is way to long now--maybe that's a topic that deserves its own thread because there is a lot to it. But I'll respond again to any replies!

Thanks everybody
Messmaster

I noticed this myself and already sent the user a message. The user already has a history (not necessarily here), I've spoken with Bosunbob about him, and he's on the verge of being gagged or banned.

I have not received any flags from you though. We are trying, but everybody, please help by flagging messages like these so that a history can be recorded, and so I can be sure to take action.

After reading this, here is my biggest concern. You are ONE MAN M. I know this is your baby, and maybe 10 years ago you could handle all this on your own. But as it is now, I occasionally hear or read about "Messmaster hasn't gotten back to me", "I submitted a ticket" or whatever. Can YOU by yourself honestly keep up with all this!? UMD has gotten huge, bigger than you ever thought it would. That's what I heard from your mouth when I met you a couple back at the beer garden. Your ear to ear smile beaming like a proud parent, interacting with your people and even buying us drinks.

The sad reality is that as something becomes bigger it becomes more complex. As it becomes more complex it requires more time. There are only 24 hours in a day and none of us are getting any younger. I love what you've done here and I want to see it continue to thrive. I don't know what your day looks like, but I'd hate to find out you were burning yourself out here.

Peace, love, and pie,
Jason

Thank goodness!


...and also have it spelled out that such "reports" are taken VERY seriously. I'll bet that "flag" label led to much of the apparent "non-reporting".

If I'm reading this right, you want users to flag (or "report") bad behavior so that you can be alerted to it. But couldn't "blocks" work the same way, setting off admin alerts when a user gets too many (or even one)? Different philosophy, I know.

Thanks, MM!!!

With so many corners of the internet serving like watering holes for dismissive misogynistic jagoffs, I just want to say how pleased I am that this community is taking this topic seriously. It's well worth it!

So who IS the bigger scumbag, HappyCamper or me?

I'm sorta hoping the winner gets free downloads or something. I like a reward once in awhile.

Same goes there. If they want to name and shame fine. But since their causes have nothing to do with this one I don't see the point in discussing it.

Thanks for the note, MM. Just a quick reply:


Your judicial process sounds great, in theory. What I wonder is whether we're in much of a better place when it comes to prevention. I don't think we are. For example: you eliminated the word "Etiquette" from the thread title, indicating to me that maybe you still don't think there's a place for rules in the conversation. But I think that's a mistake; there should be some kind of rules. Not for the sake of punishing the bad, but as advice to dudes on how to be good.

Mind you, you don't have to think of providing that kind of guidance as your job, exactly. Maybe it's the job of the mods, or maybe it's the community's job to come to a consensus in threads like these. But I think the conversation should have a central place in the life of the forum, and I'm happy so long as that's been started.

MM Thank you for that response!!! It is a lot to read but has a lot of good ideas in there. I really LOVE this idea, but think there could be an issue " I think the solution would be have both things: Let you block the user, and when you do, I'll still get the flag so I can research it later. I'll also make UMD automatically gag someone if they get too many flags, similar to what the forums do. Anybody think this wouldn't be a good solution? "

If the flags that get someone gagged are from separate users and not individual users, that would be awesome! While we are all adults here, I would hate to see someone get gagged over any drama with producers and models. However I am ALL IN FAVOR of the block system where you can decide not to see comments from someone you may find offensive or off putting that do not violate the rules so to say.

I will say that your style of dealing with people and talking to them like humans is incredible!! I remember a situation where you had to talk with me about the sensitivity of a posting I made based on some complaints you received. It was very professional and I appreciated the way you handled it. I know that there are some cases where a hammer approach works and some where it doesn't.

Messmaster, thank you for your considered response and for all the housekeeping and troll slaying you do behind the scenes without fanfare. We can and should always try to improve and be better as a community, but you are doing an incredible job and I for one am so grateful for you.

What she said.

thanks for the thorough response MM

Messmaster, why not set up a "honey trap" female profile (or several) to see who sends inappropriate messages to that user, as well as the nature and quantity of inappropriate messages? Assuming, of course, that you haven't already done so.

This is a pretty smart idea.

Honeytrap: "Regis, you have sent 165 messages to this inbox in less than 24 hours. Your UMD account is suspended."

Regis: "ok honey but why wont u show ur b00bs???"

This is where you're fighting general societal expectations though. Women mostly live in a social environment where they tend not to be believed when it's their word against a man's, even if there is evidence, so in a huge number of cases rather than report harassment they'll just try and remove themselves from the situation. Some won't even want to block in case that causes the offended guy to try and retaliate with violence, but many will simply want to block the offender from their experience on the site. Reporting stuff requires emotional labour and the likelihood of ongoing discussion, blocking and making the offender go away is just much easier. Your idea of a block that also silently flags the issue for your attention later is a good one though.

So we all gotta step up our game then and report crap that's not right. Let's help take some of the pressure off of them. Also, with regards to Nein's last post, I think etiquette is still important; probably now more than ever. Do they even teach manners in school anymore? I mean here in America it's all about these damn standardized tests nowadays so I don't think we do. Parents sure a hell don't seem to either. Maybe that's the problem. We no longer even live in a "please" and "thank you" society.

Don't blame the parents. It is not their fault LOL. Didn't you know that school, society and religious preference are responsible for raising children. Parents have too much to do. They can't be bothered with things like manners, the ethics of hard work or making sure their idiot kid isin't turning into a terrorist.

Rules on conversation????

Here's the problem with keep adding rules:

1. The assumption we are all dickheads that need can't hold a conversation with someone without harassing them.

2. Rules begat rules. If you make a rule, then at some point someone will get pissed about something a little smaller in scope and demand rules... and the precedent has been set. Then everyone argues about the rules and tries to ignore the spirit for the exact definition.

You're not the boss of me.

(1) "The assumption that we can't hold a conversation without being a dickhead" is the exact opposite of what I explicitly stated in the reply to MM above. Every community has its norms on how to get along. It's for convenience in helping people who want to be decent to know how to be decent. Also, etiquette is literally the point of the thread (or it was, until the title change).

I think (2) is a legitimate worry. That's reason to keep any potential guidance minimal and non-histrionic, and to let the advice evolve within the community's conversation. It really doesn't have to be legalistic. Just emphasize the core point of being here: to have fun, but also to value consent, take no for an answer, to set up some common ground before RP, that sort of thing. The point is to offer guidance on how to get carrots, and let MM decide who gets the stick.

Nooooo, I want Mrs. Bee to give me the stick!

This. Just watch right now as legions of butthurt, entitled sad sacks whinge about how #metoo is tantamount to fascism because now somebody is daring to criticise them exercising 'their right' to treat women how the damn they please! This whole problem we're discussing will not go away until societal attitudes in general are shaken up.

I agree. I just hope that the assholes don't switch to something like tor.

I guess that's possible.

If you ask me, though, the smarter harassers will realize that any new female profile has the potential to be a honeytrap... so while they won't stop harassing existing users (sorry, ladies), they might think twice about doing it to new users.

Meanwhile, the users who ignore any thread that contains more text than free photos, who typically assume that anyone whose avatar photo contains a woman *is* a woman, will inundate the honeytrap account with messages and will be culled in a satisfyingly Darwinian fashion.

1. If you are about to say something to someone; imagine you're in prison and a big bloke says it to you...

2. If you are creeped out/scared; Don't say it to the original person.

Actually blocking TOR is easier. There are only about a thousand exit nodes in the world. The full IPV4 space is 4 billion addresses. Less that 5% of internet users have static IP addresses, so blocking of an address a user was on for 20 minutes last Tuesday has no value. Most people have a new address every few days, sometimes every few hours depending on the ISP's refresh policies.