As of 18:30 PST December 14th, 2014, StarWarsMaster has been suspended from the Choice of Games forums for sexual harassment.
Specifically, he sent unsolicited private messages to more than a dozen new users of the forum, with variations of this message: "Welcome sweety! You man or woman? Welcome to the forums! I’m first_name 21 years old all male you?”
This attempted flirtation is sexual harassment; we take sexual harassment very seriously at Choice of Games. Do not flirt with new users on our forums. Unsolicited flirtation is creepy. It makes people feel unsafe here.
As we’ve written in our forum guidelines, this forum is a civilized place for discussion. This isn’t a place where people go to flirt; it’s a place for talking about games. If you receive an inappropriate private message from anyone on our forums, we ask you to Flag it by clicking the flag icon on the message, so that the moderators can investigate.
While we reserve the right to read direct messages on this forum, we value your privacy, so we don’t normally read all of them. That means we have to rely on you to flag inappropriate private behavior. Who knows how many people StarWarsMaster scared away from our forums, giving them the impression that they were on their own, instead of in a safer space?
P.S. As a reminder, another one of our guidelines is not to argue about civility on public channels. Please don’t pile on to condemn StarWarsMaster or post publicly to defend him. If you have questions about this post or our forum policies, you can contact me directly via private message, or email us at support@choiceofgames.com.
That being said though, kudos to the admins and mods for your continued commitment to making these forums a safe space. In my personal experience on various online communities, you guys literally are the best.
I’m just guessing really, but I’d say from my own observations of his behavior on these forums, and despite his own claims, that he’s actually a kid, probably early teens, and not 21. As such he probably has a parent that checks his browser history or something.
Hey just to remind people, we were asked to neither condemn or defend him. So I don’t think speculating about why he posted as he did is any sort of help. At best it’s just guessing.
I’m so glad that Choice of Games picked up on this and is treating it seriously.
I’m really appreciative of how well this was handled. It’s difficult to find a safe space online and, despite the unpleasantness of this situation, this sort of consolidates my trust and faith in this forum and its users.
As a user, I want to thank the admins and moderators for their professionalism. Its nice to see a community that protects its members from things like this, and its even nicer to see one that actively discourages condemning those it has to ban.
I truly think that @Cataphrak speaks for us all. We all thank the admin. and moderators for every action to protect the people on this site who just want to talk about games and things in our daily lives that intrest us without being harassed. I have never seen such an open and outstanding example of a gaming community that works so well together.
P.S- I actually thought he was suspended before. I guess that was just when he was kicked off a topic. I actually think @FairyGodfeather did that one
I applaud the swift response and hope we never have to deal with this any more, as much as I enjoy all of you some new faces wouldn’t hurt. People like this just scare them away.
