Are you really being "harassed"? To understand what Journalfen considers harassment or invasion of privacy, you need to look at both what those terms do and do not mean in the scope of this journaling system.

What harassment is NOT:

*Someone posting their opinion of you, or something you've done or said, (with or without links) in their journal or a third party community journal, no matter how negative or rude you may find it, is not harassment.

*Someone posting supposition about you, or something you've done or said, (with or without links) in their journal or a third party community journal, no matter how negative or rude you may find it, is not harassment.

*Someone commenting to a post in your journal or in a post you've made to a third party community journal in a manner that you don't like (calling you names, disagreeing with you, telling you to grow up, get a life, etc) is not harassment.

What MIGHT BE considered harassment:

*A post that supplies information on how to contact you and encourages others to contact you for the purpose of bothering you could be considered harassment.

There are some communities created for the sole purpose of finding humor in others' fannish posts both here and other places. In the spirit of freedom of expression, Journalfen believes these communities have the right to exist. You'll find that even the most confrontational of communities have strict rules about "trolling", meaning that they do not allow members to follow links posted in the community and then comment on the original poster's journal. PLEASE DO NOT MISTAKE POSTING A LINK TO YOUR ORIGINAL POST AS HARASSMENT. THE LINK, IN ITSELF, IS NOT.

*If someone whom you have banned from your journal uses another account to REPEATEDLY post unwanted or negative comments to your journal entries, you might have a legitimate claim of harassment. Follow ALL the steps in the FAQ "How do I stop unwanted comments?".

PLEASE NOTE: Journalfen reserves the sole right to decide what is and is not harassment for the purposes of taking action against a Journalfen user.

Has your privacy really been invaded? To understand what Journalfen considers invasion of privacy, you need to look at what the term does and does not means in the scope of this journaling system.


What is Invasion of Privacy?

*Someone posting personal information about you (your full name, address, phone number, place of employment, etc) that you have not made available yourself, or that is not available by a normal search engine query based on information you, yourself, have provided, might be considered an invasion of privacy.

What do we mean by "that you have not made available yourself" or
"available by a normal search engine query"?

Example:
Because you are upset about something that has been written about you in a community, you comment to said entry in the community. In your comment, you inadvertently include information about an off-journal site, perhaps your own website or another forum you administer, or perhaps you sign the comment with your full name. If a community member takes the information and uses a search engine to find additional information about you and then posts it in comments or an ETA in that post, they have only provided information that you, yourself, led them to. You opened that door, they simply stepped through it. This is not invasion of privacy, it's research.

If you feel your privacy has truly been invaded, you may submit a support request to one of the links below. YOU MUST INCLUDE: your name, an email address and all proof you have including user names involved, dates posted and links to the violation(s).

Paid Users:
http://www.journalfen.net/users/prioritysupport

Unpaid users:
http://www.journalfen.net/support/submit.bml

Step one: Grow up. We're not your mommy. If someone's being mean to you, we aren't going to step in and referee.

Step two: Take a good look at why they're being mean to you. Are you especially annoying? Especially immature?

Step three: Ask yourself if you're genuinely old enough to be here. If you're under 18, get your ass to another journaling service.

Step four: Learn the difference between genuinely being harassed and simply being thin-skinned. If you're genuinely being harassed, see that FAQ in this category.

Step five: Listen up. We don't particularly like mean-spiritedness, but we're also not going to champion a big, internet Kumbaya. It's not up to us to dictate people's behavior. People are allowed to have opinions on JournalFen and they're allowed to express them. If others' opinions offend you or make you feel as though others are being mean to you, then you have our sympathies, but you have nothing more. Sorry. Have a nice day.

Step six: Delete your account.

This FAQ is under construction, however a quick list:

If someone is commenting anonymously, you can disallow anonymous comments on your Edit > Personal Info & Settings page.

You can ban someone from your journal by (when signed in) going to

http://www.journalfen.net/admin/console/

Type in (replacing "username" with the name of the person you want to ban.)

ban_set username

To ban someone from a community add the word "from" and the community name as so:

ban_set username from communityname

You can disable comments on a per-entry basis by choosing "disabled" under comment settings. If you choose to disable comments after you have posted and comments have been added, all comments will disappear.

You can retain all comments but disallow further comments on a particular thread (this means replying to an already posted comment) by clicking on the little blue ice cube to the right of the commentor's user name.