HARASSMENT
Harassment is the act of trying to have unwanted contact with another player.
To get the obvious question out of the way: PK is NOT considered harassment.
The harassment/ignore rules cannot be abused as a shield against being PKed.
If someone is PKing you in an illegal fashion (multikilling, not observing
their clan ethos, etc.), then they are breaking PK related rules and can be
punished for that. If their PK activities are legal, then it does not matter
if you have them ignored - they may still PK you.
With that out of the way, on to what we mean by 'harassment':
If Bob is ignoring Tim, that generally means that Bob does not want ANY kind
of contact with Tim, whether Tim is trying to be friendly or not.
This principle is even more powerful if Bob has IGNORE VISIBLE active. See
the HELP IGNORE file for more information.
If IGNORE VISIBLE is active, harassment rules become much easier to enforce.
There is no question that Bob is ignoring Tim while this flag is on. If Bob
wants to get the imms involved, he needs to provide logs to the Immortals.
If logs of Tim's harassing behavior are provided, there is a much better
chance that action will be taken.
Tim will receive a penalty if he attempts to make any contact with Bob or
talks about Bob on any public channels - this applies to both IC and OOC.
Here are some examples of what Tim may and may not do:
- Tim may not speak to or about Bob on public channels, except to
negotiate corpse return/ransom. These negotiations MUST take place
on a public channel.
- Tim may not send notes to Bob, or talk about Bob in public notes.
- Tim may not follow Bob around for any reason other than to PK him.
- Tim may not lurk around in the same room as Bob for no reason.
- Tim may not speak to Bob using 'say' or any other channel.
- Tim may not ask 'Why is Bob ignoring me?' Bob doesn't have to explain
himself - people may ignore each other for any reason.
- Tim may talk to Alice while in the same room as Bob.
- Tim may not talk to Alice ABOUT Bob while in the same room as Bob.
- Tim may be in the same room as Bob as long as Tim intends to use
a service in that room and does not interact with Bob. Waiting for a quest
next to Bob and a questmaster is fine. Trying to talk to Bob while
waiting is not fine.
VERY IMPORTANT: BOB must ALSO observe all of the above rules. You may not
ignore someone but then turn around and start harassing them or talking trash
about them.
We are aware that these rules may seem incredibly pedantic, but we have dealt
with 'stalker behavior' before. People who behave this way tend to hide
behind the rules, claiming that they weren't technically breaking any of the
rules about language, cheating, etc.
With this clarification in place, harassment/stalking now has clear rules
associated with it, and we take these rules very seriously.
If someone is ignoring you - or you are ignoring them - LEAVE THEM ALONE!