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Harrassment and/or Verbal Attacks

What You Can Do:

The following information has been posted on this web site as a preventative measure but also to let mailing list subscribers know what steps they can take if such situations ever happen to them.

~ If verbal harrassment or attacks are taking place on a mailing list to which you subscribe:

a) The list administrator should be dealing with such postings.

b) If you feel that the list admin is not dealing with these postings, contact him/her privately about the issue. If you do not know his/her name or e-mail address, you can send a message to him/her by addressing it to: LISTNAME-admin@rootsweb.com, substituting the real name of the list where LISTNAME is in the address. For example, the admin address for the H-W-E list is: Huguenots-Walloons-Europe-admin@rootsweb.com.

c) If the situation is still not dealt with to your satisfaction, contact Rootsweb about it. Send them copies of the abusive messages to support your comments or, if you have deleted the messages, give them exact dates and subject lines so they can view the messages in the archives.

Try contacting any or all of the following --

i) Rootsweb Help Desk at http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/help.cgi. Scroll down until you see the section headed Help Desk Message Board. You can type in your concerns there. (This will be treated as confidential.)

ii) Rootsweb Listmaster at e-mail address: listmaster@rootsweb.com. If you don't get a response, keep trying. Many Rootsweb features are staffed by overworked volunteers so give them time to answer your message. If the response you do get from Rootsweb does not stop the abuse, keep contacting them about it.

iii) If the offending posts contain spam (eg. advertising or pornography), report it to Rootsweb at: abuse@rootsweb.com. It might be appropriate to report threatening on-list e-mail here as well.

~ If harrassment takes place off the mailing list, ie. in messages sent to you privately:

a) Do not delete the abusive messages. Save them for evidence.

b) Warn the person harrassing you that, should the harrassment happen again, that you will inform their ISP (Internet Service Provider), see item g) below.

c) Inform your list administrator about the harrassment. He/she may choose not to take any action because it is happening off-list but he/she should at least know that one of the list subscribers is harrassing another.

d) Sometimes simply ignoring the offending messages, and sending no replies, will work. Eventually, the harrasser gets tired of the "game" and, getting no satisfaction from it because you haven't replied, they go away. If you feel comfortable with this approach, try it.

e) Most e-mail programs allow you to set "rules" that will block incoming messages or move messages to designated folders based on content or address. If offensive incoming messages are moved directly to their folders, for example, you don't have to read them or even look at them but they will be saved for you, either to be used as evidence or deleted.

f) You can contact your ISP with the information that you are being harrassed. Provide them with copies of the messages as evidence. The ISP can then take steps to block incoming messages from the abuser so that they are stopped before they get to you.

g) You can contact the offender's ISP and report them. Most ISPs have rules about harrassment. Send supporting evidence which documents the abuse. The ISP will then usually send a warning to the abuser. This will, hopefully, be enough to stop the offending messages. However, if it does not, and in extreme cases, the offender's account can be terminated and they can actually be removed from that ISP.

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