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The Burnaby Food First forum provides a safe space for community members to connect and talk about food security, gardening, food politics, and other issues. From time to time, however, certain forum participants may engage in harassing, bullying, or other behaviours that violate our Terms of Use, which is meant to ensure that our forum remains an engaging, fun, and welcoming community.
What is online abuse?
Abuse relates to any violations of our Terms of Use, which includes behaviour like harassment, cyberbullying, posting inappropriate content, etc. This ranges from posting images or other content not appropriate to our forum (including but not exclusive to obscene, violent, defamatory, and pornographic content) to interacting negatively with another forum member in threads and/or private message.
Perpetrators may be more likely to engage in online abuse because they cannot see or hear the effects of their actions and and because it is possible to be anonymous online.
What can I do about it? How do I report abuse?
We encourage forum users to report abuse and harassment that is occurring to others or themselves. However, we cannot enforce reporting of abuse and rely on our forum community to help us keep the Burnaby Food First forum a welcoming place for all members.
Where you report abuse depends on where the abuse is occurring and the type of abuse you are reporting. On the forum, our Moderator regularly reviews existing threads and new posts to ensure that forum participants are following our Terms of Use. Any threads that violate these Terms will be closed and/or deleted, at the discretion of the Moderator. Offenders will be banned from the forum and their accounts will be deleted.
If you are experiencing harassment or bullying through Private Message, please notify the Moderator immediately. Send a private message to the user "Administrator" with a description of the harassment and a copy of the message(s) that violate our Terms of Use.
Why is it important to address online abuse?
For many people, not just youth, the Internet provides a place to socialize and connect with others. While a majority of these interactions may be positive and friendly, some people may also use technology to intimidate, harass, or target others.
Online harassment and posting inappropriate content to a forum can create a negative or even hostile environment and community for the targets of online abuse and other forum participants.
Bullying is a specific relationship characterized by recurrent abuse of power by a person (or group) over another person and is expressed differently depending on the age of the abuser. Cyberbullying is bullying behaviour that occurs using technology and can affect anyone. To learn more about cyberbullying, visit the MediaSmarts page here.
