Harassment Policy

Harassment

If anyone feels the victim of harassment because of another player in the guild, please screenshot any offense. Upload the screenshot somewhere and link it in a message to Talarashne here on the website, in conjunction with a formal complaint of harassment. Complaints based on word of mouth, without screenshotted evidence (possibly multiple screenshots) will not be given weight, and will be told to screenshot future infractions.

I will review the claim of harassment or unecessary drama. If necessary i will speak with the parties involved about the situation, and confer with the Loremasters.

If we feel the harassment was intentional and beligerent we will issue ONE warning to the harassing party to cease said behavior.

Should the same party have a second formal complaint of harassment against them that is also found to be intentional and beligerent after a review, they will be removed from the guild.

In all cases we ask that if someone harasses you, that you talk to them directly. Perhaps they didn't know you didn't like the language, or that it upsets you. Ask them to stop. Tell them you don't appreciate whatever it was they were saying. Disagreements can occur. If you feel the behavior is a continuing problem, and/or it's severe enough that it does bother you and you do feel harassed screenshot the conversations, and link them to me in a message on this website with a formal written complaint.

There are various types of harassment. It consists of one player doing or saying things intended to upset another person. It CAN refer to threatening or disturbing behaviors, but doesn't necessarily have to be threatening....

Psychological. Humiliating or verbally abusing another person to lower their self-esteem or cause them torment. Calling out another player whether in a public chat channel, guild, or whispers, as being terrible, and then deriding them or their worth as a player or person would qualify as psychological harassment. This is the hardest to quantify, but if a player sends you repeated whispers with insults about your ability, it is harassment. Note though that if you say something like "Hey I noticed your dps is pretty low, do you need some pointers." is not harassment, whereas "man you suck, you can't even get above 1.5k dps at level 80? You're such a fail. Remind me never to invite you to other raids." is harassment.

Racial. Harassing an individual because of their race or ethnicity, intending to degrade that person due to said race. This shoudl be obvious.

Religious. Harassing an individual because of their religion. Discussing religion maturely is not harassment, but calling someone stupid for being a Mormon would qualify as religious harassment. "I just don't get Catholicism" is not harassment. "Anyone who is a Mormon is obviously totally brainwashed." is harassment.

Sexual. Harassing an indivdiual with unwanted and unwelcome messages of a sexual nature that make the target feel uncomfortable. Gender and sexual orientation harasment fall into this category. Coming onto another player repeatedly after they have asked you to stop, and continuing to make sexually suggestive comments to them would fit into this category. Also calling someone a 'fag' or 'homo' would be in this as well.

I'm stating this as guild policy as a going forward thing. We've had a few different things in the past that would be considered harassment and I'm not interested in putting up with it for long. This isn't for me to myself harass those doing any harassing, but to stop any harassment from occuring in the first place, by putting this out there as a process.

Should someone harass another person though, and I get evidence of such, I will follow through with 1 warning, and then a guild removal. I don't care if they've been in the guild a day, a year, or forever. I don't want to hear about ANYONE in the guild harassing ANYONE else in the guild. There is ZERO excuse for this behavior and we won't tolerate it beyond 1 warning from here to the future.

Is it harassment if you sign up for a raid, but the raid leader does not invite you to the raid?

No. That is not harassment. It is the raid leader's determination who they raid with. If you sign up repeatedly and are constantly sitting and not invited to raid, then speak with the raid leader about your desire to raid, and how you feel you've been sat alot. They may not have realized it, and will ask someone else to sub out and sit for you. Often we have 11 or 12 who want to raid on a given night and we ask peopel who is willing to sit out. Often people are willing to sit, they might be meh about raiding that night, or tired, or whatever, but they'd be willing to give up their seat for someone else.

However sometimes the raid leader simply won't invite you at all, because they dont' like the person, or they dont' think the person is geared or good enough to raid. If this is the case and you contact the raid leader to raid, they shoudl politely tell you why they are not inviting you.

"I don't think you're geared enough, you need some more work in heroics and build up some gear. blues and greens won't cut it in Icecrown. See about starting up a heroic group while we're in here."

or

"There's alot of movement on the fights we're going to do, and based on previous raids I think you might have a hard time with it and we're trying to get some progession done. Remind me to have us do some test stuff later with a training dummy, and we'll work on your staying out of the fire."

simply ignoring the person and not responding to their tells is not a mature way to handle the situation, but it's not harassment per se. If you want to run raids, you need to be able to stand up in public for your decisions you make, but at the same time you need to do it honeslty and maturely. It's not harassment to tell someone "Hey look I just don't think you can cut the mustard in here tonight, but we'll work on it ok?" is a far cry from "Dude you suck, no way you can survive the fights in here. Go do something else and quit bothering me i'm not inviting you."

Remember in this regard that just signing up for raids doesn't guarantee you a spot, and no raid leader is going to be forced to bring someone if they don't think the person can't cut it. Constructive criticsm can hurt, but it's not harassment.