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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 8984085" data-attributes="member: 11760">At the height (depths?) of their problems, I thought it very likely that they were going to split Blizzard up into separate development houses or maybe even wholesale cancel a bunch of products. (Putting the underperforming Heroes of the Storm on life support was just a straight business decision.)The fact that every article about Diablo IV doesn't begin with "remember these scumbags?" shows how well they've turned the corner in just a few years, even if there are definitely plenty of people still watching them like a hawk.You are correct. It typically starts with educating the students about why what they're doing is a problem. It sounds pollyanna-ish, but it's proven to dramatically curtail bullying, for instance.After that, it escalates to finding out why this kid is acting out -- is there a problem at home, does the kid have some deeper issues that this is a manifestation of, etc. -- rather than just treating them as a Chaotic Evil creep.Booting a kid out of school, even temporarily, is seen as the last resort to be avoided at all costs, because it weakens the social bonds that connect them to the school community, meaning that it's actually harder to sway them in future, not to mention it's just setting this kid up to be a dropout.All of this freaked parents and educators out when it was first introduced, largely as a result of how badly the previous disciplinary model had failed, but when educators are trained in it, it works, as more than a decade of data across multiple countries show in the new UCLA study.So, to return this to what we're talking about here, a lot of this works in online fandom, too. Star Wars fans were almost universally horrified when they heard that Ahmed Best strongly considered taking his own life after the unrelenting toxic response to his portrayal of Jar-Jar Binks. That's almost exactly how experts now want bullying to be initially addressed: "Hey, this thing you're doing isn't no big deal or just kids being kids -- it has consequences."The number of people who truly want Ginny D or Jen Kirtchmer harmed is probably (hopefully) extremely small. Educating people that "hey, you just 'popping off' on the internet is going to genuinely ruin someone's life" is the first step, when said by someone with authority whom the offenders care about, whether it's the brand holders (like Star Wars actors and Lucasfilm, in the case of bullying against sequel trilogy actors and streamers) or other members of the community.As [USER=18]@Ruin Explorer[/USER] said, when these folks are called out by name -- the dreaded quote tweet is a powerful spotlight to put on someone -- the offenders often hustle to pull down their offending posts and regularly apologize and, this is important, don't just immediately create a new account and keep it going. Some do, of course, but the overall amount of harassment diminishes and there's some evidence that the type of harassment generally becomes less severe as well.</blockquote>

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