Talk:Cyberbullying

This article was nominated for deletion on 6 October 2005. The result of the discussion was Keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Archives
April 2007

Preventing and Addressing Cyber-bullying

Is this the place for advice? I think not. If there's no objection, I think I'll delete the above comment in a bit. Max Elstein 21:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Leave it, it is just a potential article modfication posted in 2005...I'll archive it...--Zeraeph 21:55, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

Ok, there was a NPOV tag added to this page... Can you please give your reasoning? I was bold and removed it... but I'll put it back given reasoning. (Signed: J.Smith)

I wasn't the one who added the tag but I have a problem with this line: Another problem is the increasingly common presence of computers in the private environments of adolescent bedrooms. This wrongly states that adolescents having computers and Internet access in their bedrooms is a bad thing and is not NPOV. I'd like to be bold and remove it but I'll wait a little while to see what others think. --WikiSlasher 13:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

There have been no objections and so I have removed the sentence. --WikiSlasher 05:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Summary Section?

First of all the summary section spells through as thru, so I'm fixing it. But second, do we need a summary for this? lwelyk 03:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Origins of cyberbullying

Cyberbullying wasn't invented until 1998??? It's been around since at least 1987. That was when I first saw it happening on a BBS.

I've deleted the entire section, there was no source and I couldn't find anything related to it using Google. --WikiSlasher 11:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Move

I propose we move this article back to "Cyberbullying" which is used by vast majority of current academic researchers and is also the most commonly used spelling. --Aybaba 13:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

"hisself ain't a word"

Sure is - south of the mason-dixon line! *chuckles* Whoever you are User:72.147.155.21, at the scrag end of a tense and trying day your apt edit summary had me almost falling off my seat laughing...oh yes, and "mea culpa"...I will never get caught doing THAT one again! --Zeraeph 19:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

i have no idea what you are saying

A saying

Theres an old saying "Sticks and stones will break my bones..." I forget the rest. You people are lame, get a life, "Oh my god, someone said something mean, lets get them in trouble!" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.173.15.10 (talk) 14:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC).

"... but words can only drive me to take my own life" Mbthegreat 17:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Teresa Nielsen Hayden (not a friend of mine, I might add) wrote wrote:

You know the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Not true. It does real damage. Has a PTSD feel to it. Joy is the engine of our spirits, and it takes it all away. You get depressed, and hurt all over. Your own words fail you. The damage can last for years.

That’s the intended effect. It's meant to hurt -- to be so nauseating and dispiriting that the person who's the target shuts down and stops communicating. It's not just a matter of triumphing (albeit by grossly unfair means) in the argument of the moment. The underlying message is: We don't care about what's right, or fair, or accurate. We care about winning. If you stand against us, you will lose, and we will hurt you as much as we can for having fought us. We will wreck your career, and hurt the people around you and the things you care for. If you cry out, we will hurt you for that, too.

-- Davidkevin 00:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like someone has a vendetta. This article sounds the exact same way. Unfortunately, almost everything in this article is combatible by other pre-existing legislation, as well as perfectly legal measures a computer user can take to mask his electronic identification(IP's, DNS, etc.). This entire war comes down to personal constitution, because the internet gives us all freedom of speech and action. The more you readily make yourself available on the internet, the more you're exposing to be attacked, and it's the same way in real life. The more famous you are, the more people are going to hate you. No one is just going to IM you the first day you install AIM and photoshop pictures of you sucking off a dog, things don't work like that. This isn't a matter of cyber-bullying, it's a matter of the internet imitating certain aspects of real life through different means. Essentially, grow a backbone if you want to get around so much on the internet. People are bad, and the more encounter, the higher the chance of meeting a bad person is. This is just common sense, and combatting it at all is laughable. --ZombieG

Can Chat Rooms Really Be Used for Bullying?

How can chat rooms be used to bully people? You can quite simply leave the chat room or change your ID. The idea that you can bully someone makes very little sense.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.131.199 (talk • contribs)

I suppose you could say the same about anything. EG "If you are bullied at school you can bleach your hair or change school" - but real life doesn't work that way.

You leave the chat room, the bully can follow you, you can change your ID but you can't change your personality, it still shows enough to recognise, and BESIDES, the very fact that you are forced to try leaving the chat room, or changing your ID is already an invasion of your rights and freedoms.

--Zeraeph 12:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. You cannot change schools easily etc: I accept that, but in a chat room, all you are is a name on the page, which 99% of the time is fake. There is no information there that a bully can use to trace you (except perhaps email adresses on some, but not always, and you can always put up fake adresses-whenever I have to register for anything, I have a special account just for that so they can't spam me/send me hate mail). If you don't make any more posts etc, then what else can they do? While having to do so may be an "inavsion" of your rights, it all boils down to little more than an annoyance. Think about it: the bully is just a name on a screen, which can only cause you problems if you let it. All it really means is that some random guy on some random page does not like you. it's not as if they can bash you up or do anything like that. I guess what I'm saying is while it may be an annoyance, it's never going to be as damaging and traumatic as normal bulliyng can be.

P.S. The heading of this should have been "used", not "sued". That's my typing for you.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.131.199 (talk • contribs)

It just isn't that simple. For one thing it depends on why you are posting in the chat-room in the first place. If it's just for entertainment and fun then yes, it is easy to walk away. But supposing it is important to your business or education? Then leaving could cause you a LOT of problems. A lot of Cyber-bullying takes place in the world on online support, where people have terrible problems, of various kinds, like bereavement, terminal cancer, domestic violence, and nowhere else to turn.

To be driven away from a vital support lifeline or business connection is MUCH worse than an "annoyance". A lot of Cyber-bullies are very clever. They try to get close to you, and find out your location and identity before they start bullying. Then they can cause a lot of distress and fear.--Zeraeph 01:10, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Guess you're right there. Depends on what you're doing on the site. I guess the only trick is not to something stupid like reveal your real ID or location until you're certain of who the person is. How many times have we all been told the first rule: never trust anyone you meet in a chat room. That's partly why people make aliases for this in the first place.

Oh, by the way, I've never heard of a chat room related to business connection. Not that I'm saying that to pay you out, just I've never thought of that before. But if it was something serious like that, surely there'd be other more secure ways to communicate with people other than a chat room, wouldn't there? (Example- use a secure private network between the person you're talinkg to, or find an alternate means of contacting them). Or if it was serious enough, then there'd probably be administrators to stop any bullies etc by removing them. Education? Same thing, and there's still the possibiltiy of moving to an alternate forum on the same topic.

As for online support, I guess you can hope for mediators/administrators etc to expel people who behave in such a way. (probably something you might find in that sort of thing), or you could perhaps go to a different forum on the same thing (although I won't deny that being forced to do so in that situation would be less than beneficial, at least).

Still, there are some things normal bullying can do that cyber-bulliyng can't. One other tactic (obviously depending on the format of the chat room in question) is simply don't click on messages by the bully. In some chat rooms, that works (you might have to click on the message before you read it). Remember, even though it may be a problem to be forced to leave, once you have done so, then the bully cannot do anything else (provided you haven't given them your address), whereas in traditional bullying, that can be a lot harder. Remember, for traditional bullying to work, you have to be near the bully (such as at the same school or workplace), which can cause a lot of fear and distress, especially if the bully spreads ruours etc. In a chat-room setting, the bully can be on the other side of the planet and know nothing about you except what you tell them. You can in fact ascertain their origin quite easily by tracking their IP address in some forums. And they can't exactly do things like spread insulting or false rumours, physically bully you, blackmail you, or anything like that. And even if they do get yor real ID, they would need a LOT of information on you to do anything else (even if they lived close to yourself, which is exceptionally unlikely). Unless you give them your address and/or telephone number, or an image of you, it will be very difficult for them to do anything else to you. The chances of them being close enough are very small: they would have to live, at the very least, in the same state as you (even then that probably wouldn't be enough- they would probably have to live in the same city, or part of the city as you). Even if you gave them all that, then the bully may still not do anything with it. Although it could be rather traumatic at first, the fear would probably subside as you eventually realised the "threat" wasn't real. The only way they could be a probelm if they weren't clsoe to you would be if you gave them some really important information like your credit card number or something like that, which is just downright stupid. The same thing goes with stuff like your phone number. Unless you do that, they're just words on a page.

Essentially, cyber bulliyng in this scenario has the limitation that you have to actually give the bully the information first. But yes, I will admit, it can still be a problem.

Can MMORPG be used for bullying?

If you have a durable character in an MMORPG that you don't want to abandon, can bullying occur?

• It most certainly can. Any method of communication can potentially be used for bullying. Interestingly, at a school one of my relatives teaches at (please excuse the anecdotal info; just rying to answer your question), there was a big issue with runescape- there were actually fights over it outside the game-people were hackign into each other's accounts.

However, I'd say that MMORPG-based bullying is probably relatively rare-I'd reckon most people wouldn't be all that attached to a character, probably not enough for it to be particularly traumatic.

Plagiarism

This entire article can be found at the following website: [[1]] I read through the first couple sections and it matches word for word --67.172.225.189 09:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

That's because Reference.com is a Wikipedia mirror site and clearly states the article comes from here. --Zeraeph 12:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

made up term?

is it called flaming or cyber bullying?! because is it just me or is this a term made up by PTA mothers?

Flaming is insulting people over the net in an argument etc. Cyberbullying is differnet; it involves using the net etc to threaten people, amongst other things. It also involves publishing defamatory material online, using hpones ot bully, etc. It is usually more traumatic than flaming too.

The Comic Book Universe Battles

There were several claims in this paragraph that were clearly the POV of whoever wrote it. While I, too, find this forum to be disgusting, Wikipedia exists to present facts - NOT opinions. I have removed or reworded these sentences to fit the NPOV guidelines. 72.185.43.62 04:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, after reviewing the paragraph as a whole, I don't feel it really belongs in this article. Users of The Comic Book Universe Battles know what they are getting into when going there, and in fact visit that site for that specific reason; it differs from real cyber-bullying in that they are arguing about comic book characters, and it occasionally gets personal - again, the users know what they are in for before they visit. The whole basis of this paragraph seemed to be that "the poor innocent children" who stumble on the site might see "vulgar" language, and that the use of copyrighted characters is immoral. Children seeing profanity is not cyber-bullying. And while I suppose that using copyrighted material COULD, in certain circumstances, be considered cyber-bullying, it is not in this case. I have removed the entire paragraph and believe it should remain gone until someone can justify why it belongs in this article at all. 72.185.43.62 05:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

hi

This is a very good website and very educatonal —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.39.49.180 (talk) 17:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

absolutly nothing

this is a good website. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.39.49.180 (talk) 17:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)