A Threat to a Welcoming and Inclusive Environment for Potential Female Members

[unibot]

For some time, it has been argued that Govindia should not be removed from the North Pacific for the numerous cases of sexual harassment he has committed across NationStates, mostly because he hasn't done it here ... yet.

The question I'd like to pose the Regional Assembly is simply: is Govindia more responsible in the North Pacific, or is the presence of Govindia scaring away many potential Regional Assembly members who would otherwise be fodder for sexual harassment from Govindia?

I recently got a heartfelt message from a female who wishes to be unnamed for obvious reasons; she wanted to join the North Pacific, but the presence of Govindia has turned her off joining the region. She would not feel safe, welcome or secure while a notable sexual harasser was also a member of her region.

I'm honestly not sure Gov ever got around to coming after me. He did add me on Facebook, but I don't recall if he asked me for my address or anything like that. I've heard enough stories about his typical actions that he could have tried them with me, or could not have.

But I've heard what he's done to my friends, and it frightens me. I've been harrassed, and I've been stalked, and it's horrible. Knowing about his presence has kept me away from TNP, and I truly cannot fathom how someone who makes many women feel unsafe, intimidated and silenced is welcomed with open arms, simply because he has confined his harrassment of them to a different location.

Govindia has been banned from Osiris (a regional ally), The South Pacific (also a regional ally), Taijitu (also a regional ally), The East Pacific, Equilism, Imperial Britain and The United Defenders League at least.. I'm certain there are other places he's been banned for harassment. But in the North Pacific? He's not only a regular member, he's a candidate for Executive Councillor.

I believe we have to face the fact that allowing Govindia in our region is a Woman's Right issue and has not only degraded the North Pacific's reputation but threatened the personal security of potential female members and reduced the inclusiveness of our Assembly and our region. I would invite any people with personal experience with Govindia to contact me or post here -- I do not mind giving you full anonymity for your comments.

I want to know how the Regional Assembly feels about this issue and discuss what options we have to resolve this issue.

Yours,
Unibot.

 

[Flemingovia]

Threatening behaviour is prohibited under Zetaboard's TOS and TOU, and would certainly not be tollerated by the moderation team here no matter who it came from.

AFAIK, Govindia has not committed any misdemenour in or around TNP. I personally do not think we could ban him just because others feel uneasy at his presence.

 

[unibot]

So.. some woman is going to have to be brave enough to set the opportunity up for Gov to harass her, so The North Pacific can ban him? What sick region are we running here. -_-

 

[Georgiana]

''It is better to prevent than to cure.'' In this case, we cannot just ban him like that and can we neither wait until he commits the offense here in The North Pacific. Because he has been reported and banned in other regions due to the threats, for now all we can do is to warn him and if he does commit the offense there is no other sentence that could be passed but a Ban!

 

[Flemingovia]

Govindia has been on this forum since August 30th 2007, without any hint of accusation against him of this kind. This is, by the way, despite the presence here of many women.

I know of your animosity towards Govindia from elsewhere. But do not bring that into this region. If an accusation is brought against Govindia or anyone else concerning their conduct here, it will be dealt with here.

 

[Eluvatar]

So.. some woman is going to have to be brave enough to set the opportunity up for Gov to harass her, so The North Pacific can ban him? What sick region are we running here. -_-

I think it's unfair to imply TNP is some kind of boys club. There are a number of female members who have been here contemporaneously with Govindia. Govindia has been a member since at least 2008 and during those several years he has not occasioned to get banned from TNP. As there have been many female members contemporaneously active with him during that time, and no PMs or posts have been reported on those grounds, it's very difficult to argue that he presents a threat as a forum member.

Why this would be so, when I am given to understand that he harrassed or at least upset several young women outside TNP during that time, I do not know.

I do know that when Govindia has gotten on my nerves the most has always been on IRC, and has always been about particular issues where Govindia disagreed with actions I was taking or declining to take. It is probably for that reason that the community of #tnp was nigh unanimous in asking that his ban from that channel not be reconsidered. If we are to make such conversations, or more creepy Instant Message conversations, to be cause for ban from TNP's forum we should think long and hard about it.

We have an established system of moderation which is designed to be fair. While there are aspects of it which may need review, throwing it out entirely is probably not something I could be comfortable with.

This forum has only ever banned a very small group of people*:

1. Darkesia's work IP (at her request) [Jan 27 2006]
2. Tweedy ("Nightnurse"), for flaming and I believe ban evasion (on forum). [Apr 26 2006]
3. Insane Power, for flaming (on forum). [Jun 1 2006]
4. Cathyy, for severe flaming (on forum). [Aug 9 2006]
5. Limitless Events, for posting private information (IP Addresses & Emails) on an intelligence board in The Lexicon. (Involving private information originally obtained from this forum, albeit not by Limi himself.) Unbanned recently, with certain caveats. [Oct 24 2006]
6. A Curious NS USer, for being a pseudonym of another player and refusing to identify onself during wartime (on forum). Unbanned after he, on advice from friends, identified himself as Reziel. [Oct 22 2007]
7. Cibefluinee, for pornspam (on forum). [Feb 25 2008]
8. Trimenerb, for pornspam (on forum). [Dec 6 2008]
9. AC195 (Kurdazistan), for flaming and harassment (on forum). [Apr 4 2012]

As I am not currently an admin my list may be incomplete. In particular, I'm aware that Jun 25 2010 flemingovia as forum admin requested clearance from the court to ban non-members in general and Rougiers (forum destroyer) specifically, for actions taken outside this forum, but I do not know if said ban was in fact implemented.

*I am not counting spambots as people for obvious reasons.

By and large, these bans have been for ToS violations here on this forum. The two involuntary bans which were not for ToS violations on this forum were rescinded, soon or eventually. (And Limi was asserted to have violated ToS, albeit elsewhere).

It may be worth examining the reasons for which Govindia has been banned elsewhere. It is my understanding that he was banned from Taijitu's forum mainly for attempting to avoid moderation imposed restrictions through proxies.

I am comfortable with IP banning from our forum persons who are known to have practiced forum destruction, even if they have made no ToS violations here because such bans A) help protect our forum from forum destruction (however slightly) and B) help deter forum destruction in general, in a deal with the rest of NS which also helps protect our forum from forum destruction (however slightly). I am not aware of an equally salient reason for banning Govindia from this forum at this time.

 

[Eluvatar]

As a post script, I am inclined to believe that the Regional Assembly is an inappropriate place for this discussion, for two reasons.

1. Forum bans are the business of forum moderation, not the government.
2. Even were forum banning something the government could do, the bill of rights provides "No governmental authority shall have power to adopt or impose an ex post facto law or a bill of attainder as to any act for purposes of criminal proceedings." In other words, no legislative ban. The RA's a legislative body.

 

[unibot]

So this isn't a boy's club, but yet I bring testimonies from a woman who feels uncomfortable joining our region because of Gov's presence and her testimony is ignored or belittled and the idea of banning him is shot down aggressively by three males who want to see women harassed in The North Pacific before they ban him here too -- as if more evidence of his harassing nature is necessary.

Do you want most female members scared away, Eluvatar? Or do you want them here? You can only have one or the other when it comes to an issue like Govindia, a known predator who has ranked in several RL restraining orders from female NS players. I see you've made your stance clear, but is it wrong? Absolutely. The North Pacific shouldn't be a place that many women -- for good reason -- feel unwelcome to join.

 

[Hileville]

Do you want most female members scared away, Eluvatar? Or do you want them here? You can only have one or the other when it comes to an issue like Govindia, a known predator who has ranked in several RL restraining orders from female NS players. I see you've made your stance clear, but is it wrong? Absolutely. The North Pacific shouldn't be a place that many women -- for good reason -- feel unwelcome to join.

Again we are going down this road? Every single time someone wants Gov banned from somewhere they bring up the restraining orders argument. I have asked several times for people to provide proof of such a claim and nobody has. That is a very serious claim and should be backed up with proof when discussing it.

This is not a matter of the RA to discuss and should be left to the Boards Admin/Moderation team to handle.

 

[Eluvatar]

So this isn't a boy's club, but yet I bring testimonies from a woman who feels uncomfortable joining our region because of Gov's presence and her testimony is ignored or belittled and the idea of banning him is shot down aggressively by three males who want to see women harassed in The North Pacific before they ban him here too -- as if more evidence of his harassing nature is necessary.

Do you want most female members scared away, Eluvatar? Or do you want them here? You can only have one or the other when it comes to an issue like Govindia, a known predator who has ranked in several RL restraining orders from female NS players. I see you've made your stance clear, but is it wrong? Absolutely. The North Pacific shouldn't be a place that many women -- for good reason -- feel unwelcome to join.

I will not be responding to this post.

 

[unibot]

Every single time someone wants Gov banned from somewhere they bring up the restraining orders argument. I have asked several times for people to provide proof of such a claim and nobody has.

I would assume because people don't like to have their personal lives splattered across NationStates even to satisfy your Vatican-esque standard of proof.

 

[Flemingovia]

I would suggest closing this topic and opening a petition to the administration team, who are the ones who could actually make a forum ban happen.

 

[Kiwi]

I mirror the opinions of Eluvator and Flemingovia on this issue. The RA should not be dealing with this and is a matter for forum administration. I would note that any unsubstantiated claims should be backed up by proof.

 

[Gulliver]

My first impression of this is that this is really an issue for administration. It has nothing to do with the government of the North Pacific or the Regional Assembly. As has been pointed out forum bans are reserved entirely for moderation and administration. I'm going to close this for now, and finish reading through it. I may reopen it, but most likely I'm going to ask Unibot to appeal directly to the administrators or move this thread to a more appropriate venue.

EDIT: I've decided to open this back up and move it along to the Forum Operations board.

 

[mcmasterdonia]

I agree with Eluvatar and Flemingovia. I certainly do not think we should ban him for something that he has not done here, that is not to say a woman should allow herself to be harassed or anything like that so we can ban him.
It sounds like a bit of a witch hunt to me. But I will naturally defer to the admin team

 

[Grosseschnauzer]

I am not interested in these forums being a sheep in a herd, following what other forums did or did not do on grounds that may or may not be true, and which, more importantly, have not happened here.

We do enforce the ToS and ToU here for violations that have happened here. If there is evidence of a ToS/ToU violation on these forums, then it is appropriate for forum administration and global mod in particular to review the matter.

As best as I can recall, the only two notable forum bans that were influenced by banning here from other off-site NS forums were Tweedy and the recent AC195 ban. And in both instances, it was due to the exact same behavior taking place; in fact, AC 195 set a forum record in being banned permanently less than a month after joining these forums after abusive behavior in the threads, by PMs, and by forum based e-mail, all of which were similar to behavior that the admin were alerted to by third parties after he/she had just joined here.

I do not recall a single instance of a sexual harassment allegation against Govindia being reported at any time since he joined the forums here. I think it is inappropriate to have such a discussion when there is no evidence of a ToS/ToU violation here, especially one alleging sexual harassment. And if there is no proof of such a violation at these forums, it is not relevant at this time.

I'm going to close a report on posts in this thread without any action, but I want to be clear that unless there is actual evidence of an actual violation and not allegations of behavior that may or may not have happened elsewhere, there is nothing for us to be considering.

I can't stop any purported victims of such allegations that took place at other forums, especially if hosted by Zetaboards or Invisionfree, from contacting their support team directly with such allegations from other forums. But leave us out of it; that's not our responsibility, and if there were ToS/ToU issues elsewhere, then elsewhere is where the matter should be taken.

And given that, I am locking this thread. There's nothing for us to review further.