Obsolete: Guides to Internet Safety, Ignoring a Post, and Reporting a Post

[Paperhorse]

Index of Guides

• Internet Safety Guide by Paperhorse
• How to use the Ignore Feature by Pikochu
• Reporting a Post Guide by colours

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Internet Safety Guide by Paperhorse

The staff at Bulbagarden would like to take the opportunity to present a guide on Internet Safety. Here at Bulbagarden, we are concerned about our members' safety. Please use this guide to help you evaluate other members behavior or to learn what is acceptable/unacceptable when talking to people over the internet.


Guide to Internet Safety

Meeting and getting to know people online is usually a great way of socializing and developing friendships; in fact, several members initially met on Bulbagarden and are now good friends.

While Bulbagarden is a strong community, it's important to keep your privacy and safety in mind when you are communicating with other users. Is the person you are conversing with acting strangely? How are they treating you? Do you feel comfortable around them? This guide will help you make good decisions about friendships with the members of our communities.

Make Good Friendships

How do you know if you have a healthy friendship?

We all found Bulbagarden and enjoy posting here because of our love of Pokémon. This means that you will probably have a lot in common with several other users on the boards. Many members join the forums to get away with real life stress, and enjoy having people to talk to.

The following are examples of what to look for in quality online relationships:

-Both members are benefitting from one another: Do you enjoy talking to this person? Does this person make you happy? Is this person helpful and kind?

-Respecting each other’s boundaries: Asking for or sharing personal information can sometimes make a person feel uncomfortable. Respect the other person’s decision to withhold personal information. If you are asked about something that you do not wish to discuss, it is in your right to refuse to share information.

Warning Signs

If you witness the following behaviors, they may be signs that the friendship is going sour.

-Unwanted Attention: Does this user give you unwanted attention? The following are examples of types of attention you may not want:

-User constantly puts you down.

-They say offensive things; use inflammatory/derogatory language..

-They do/say things purposely that make you uncomfortable such as, ask for requests or favors.

-They act jealous when you talk to other members.

-Legitimate Name Calling: Does this person judge you, or make crude comments about your race/gender/ sexual orientation?

-Threatening./Harassing/stalking: This type of behavior includes constant unwanted visitor messaging, and private messaging, or trying to contact you outside of Bulbagarden through any other social media such as Facebook, Twitter, AIM, Skype,, IRC, etc, when it is unwanted.

-Also, this includes attacking you directly in threads or in any of our sections on the forums.

-Threatening to stop being friends for meaningless reasons.

-Threatening to self-harm: If this person threatens to hurt themselves in any way (including suicide). This behavior could be a response to trying to guilt you into forming a relationship with this specific person, or a response to rejection.

What to Do

Report Strange Behavior

If you feel another user has been acting oddly, or in an offensive manner, please report them to staff immediately. In your report, make sure you explain why you are reporting this user, and give evidence if possible. Make sure to save PMs and chat logs exchanged with the suspected user.

Even if you are not involved, report something that looks suspicious. If you witness off-putting or suspicious behavior from members of the community, and you are not involved, please report it to a staff member.

There will be no repercussions for reporting. You won’t get in trouble.
The staff will put any harassment to an end. Depending on the situation, the perpetrator will be taken care of in some way.

Other Tips

-Remember that ANYTHING you post/create can always be traced back to you, or your computer. Even if it is deleted, it is still out there in cyberspace.

-Make sure you think before you post: Could what you are posting be taking as offensive? Inappropriate?

-Many users of Bulbagarden are under the age of 18. It would be advisable that you don't discuss sexual content with users under 18.

-Be cautious when giving out any personal information. This includes your full name, address or school, phone number, facebook page, or twitter account. Remember, if you give out your e-mail address that you registered with facebook people can use it to search for you.

 

[Alpha_sapphire_champ]

Never had probs, ever.

 

[Archaic]

N.B. My day job is in academia, researching consumer behaviour with a focus on online privacy and related issues. This is an issue that's very important to me, and it should be important to you as well. So please, pay attention.

We've had a few users contact us because they've had a little trouble with the password reset system, so before we put through the general password reset we'd promised to do, I just wanted to make sure everyone is on the same page about what makes a strong password.

And for that, I think this XKCD comic explains it best.

The password system we use here on the Bulbagarden Forums makes use of Dan Wheelers password strength estimator zxcvbn. It does not weight password strength by their combination of upper/lower letters, special characters and numbers, but on how easy they are to crack in reality. So if you're entering something more like the first example in that comic above (like the people who've asked us why their 10 letter passwords were rejected), that's why it's not letting you through.

If you're having trouble remembering longer passwords, I strongly recommend making use of a Password Manager of some kind. An incomplete list of password managers can be found on Wikipedia. Pick whichever one works for you, though I personally feel that the safest Password Managers are those which do not rely on cloud storage and actually store passwords securely on your own device.

 

[Pikochu]

How to use the Ignore Feature by Pikochu

While the goal of the Bulbagarden forums is to interact with other members of the community, there may be times that you may not want to see a user's post anymore anywhere on the forums. This is where the "ignore" feature will come in handy. This feature blocks their posts from your view, blocks your posts from them or send you PMs.

Note: You cannot "ignore" any staff member. If you have an issue with a staff member, refer to the staff chart to contact the staff member one level up (Example: If there's an issue with a moderator, contact the super moderator of that section).

Ignoring a user via post

To block a user using their post, follow these instructions:

Note: The screenshots may not look exactly like yours depending on your style preferences. However, the steps are the same for all the Bulbagarden styles.

Step 1: Click or Hover to their username (boxed in red) in the post. A box should appear above or below their user name like in the screenshot below:

Spoiler: Step 1 Blocking by Post

Step 2: Click on the "ignore" box/button (boxed in red).

Spoiler: Step 2 Blocking by Post

Step 3: The "ignore" button should go from "ignore" to "unignore." You have successfully blocked that user! A screenshot is shown below to show you have successfully blocked that user! Changes are boxes in red.

Spoiler: What it should look like when you successfully blocked a user by post

Changed your mind?

To unblock a user, follow Steps 1 and 2 above, but instead of clicking "ignore," just click "unignore." The button should change from "unignore" to "ignore." You have successfully unblocked that user!

Ignoring a user via profile

To ignore a user using their profile, follow these steps.

Step 1: Go to the user's profile that you want to block.

Step 2: Click on the "ignore" box/button (boxed in red).

Spoiler: Step 2: Blocking by Profile

Step 3: The "ignore" button should go from "ignore" to "unignore." You have successfully blocked that user! A screenshot is shown below to show you have successfully blocked that user! Changes are boxes in red.

Spoiler: Step 3: Blocking by Profile

Changed your mind?

To unblock a user, follow Steps 1 and 2 above, but instead of clicking "ignore," just click "unignore." The button should change from "unignore" to "ignore." You have successfully unblocked that user!

Unignoring a user

To unignore a user, do the following:

Step 1: On the upper right-hand corner, click on your profile name (boxed in red below).

Spoiler: Step 1: Unblocking a user

Step 2: After you click, a menu should pop-up. In the menu, click on "Ignoring" which should redirect you to a list of users that you ignored.

Spoiler: Step 2: Unblocking a User

Step 3: From this list of users, just click "Unblock" on the users that you want to unblock. You have unsuccessfully unblocked that user when that user is no longer on the list. That's it!

Spoiler: Step 3: Unblocking a User

Questions?

Hopefully, this guide helps you use the ignore feature! If you have further questions or unsure about something about the ignore feature or just need help figuring it out? Feel free to contact staff member and we will do our best to answer your questions!

See you around the forums!

 

[colours]

Reporting a Post Guide by colours

Hey everyone! o/ colours here, and we the Bulbagarden forum staff feel it's necessary to create this guide for you guys because there may be some of you that feel confused on exactly either how to report a post (which is really simple, actually!), when it's appropriate to report a post, and what happens in the backend. Without further ado, let's get started. I'll get the easy part out of the way, first:

How do I report a post?​

If you feel a post is problematic or breaking the rules, you can click on this little button here:



which will take you to the following screen that pops up:

Spoiler

It is absolutely critical that you go into detail about why the post (or profile, if you're reporting that) is rulebreaking in particular. Not extensive detail mind, but being specific helps when it comes to staff being able to come to a decision on resolving the report.

When do I report a post?
​

The easy answer is "whenever you see anything rulebreaking", but we realise that might not be clear to everyone. We encourage everyone to have a glance at the forum rules though, and generally anything that goes within violation of those is fine to report. But this isn't exclusive to that, either. Report something if you feel like it might lead to an escalation, or if you feel something might be worth looking into. If you want us to keep an eye on a situation that can potentially escalate, then that's okay to report, as well.

What happens when I report a post?
​

When users report a post, it gets sent to a private subforum only viewable by Bulbagarden staff members. It is in this subforum where staff members (primarily the section staff) discuss the report and whether or not to take action. This is where we should stress that not every report will have direct action taken on it. Keep in mind the following:

• Each report does get looked at and investigated by the proper section staff members.​
• Things may take time to resolve. Some of the time reports are cut-and-dry and are dealt with pretty quickly, but other times not so much.​
• Please don't fret if you don't see any direct action. User disciplinary actions (infractions) aren't something the regular user has access to and is mostly handled behind the scenes between that user and the forum staff.​

If you're concerned about the status of your report, you're more than welcome to send a pm to the appropriate section staff member and they'll be more than happy to give you an update on how things are going! Be mindful though, that they can't reveal any specific measures, just whether or not the report is still in discussion or whether it's been handled.

More broadly, please always reach out to the staff if you have any questions about the forum or moderation policy. We can't guarantee particular outcomes on policy questions, but we'll always do our best to respond to polite and genuine queries and concerns you may have.

Note: Please be patient whenever reporting a post and do not tell staff what to do. You can suggest for an action to be done, but the final decision will rest within that section's staff.

Why Reporting Matters
​

I'll be honest here: section staff can't see every thread or every profile post to ensure it's all following guidelines. While they do keep a broad eye on our sections, it's important that members help out in this too by reporting anything that might not catch the immediate attention of section staff. You as users do help out by reporting anything that seems amiss. Even if it's not something that we act on, it's still helpful if you report it since the situation may become something worth acting on. It's better to report a post and have it turn out to not be a big deal, than to leave something alone that could be a bigger deal that's worth reporting.

Thanks for reading, everyone!