Talk:Harassment consultation 2015/Ideas/Communication and collaboration

I agree with the concept of intentional and unintentional offense. It is often fairly easy to distinguish between the two, even when they are not obvious at first inspection, as a polite explanation will often defuse the unintentional variety. It is more difficult to distinguish when the first response is hostile, as then it is tricky to determine whether the escalation is due to malice, or a defensive overreaction. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:53, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree on terminology[edit]

While I agree with User:Pbsouthwood that there is intentional and unintentional offense, I disagree with User:Christian Ferrer's idea that there is unintentional (he calls it "involuntary") harassment. Harassment by definition involves intent to harass. Instead, I think there is unintentional offense which is perceived as harassment.

The solutions he recommends are worth considering, but the framework should be that of "intentional harassment and unintentional offense" rather than "intentional harassment and unintentional harassment" as I (and probably most other editors who have lived in the United States for the past few decades) see the term "harassment" as requiring intent to harass. Davidwr/talk 20:11, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Davidwr, my chose of word was motivate by the fact that a victim of harassment simply is feeling harassed and do not have the necessary distance to understand that the offence was unintentional. That's lead to frustration and /or a defensive position and to a conflict. And at this point the problem can even be reversed and the victim becomes the executioner, all because of a lack of understanding, that can not be fight through communication, the only preventive weapon that we have. User:Christian Ferrer