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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6876561" data-attributes="member: 6667193">And that is precisely why I despise the idea that people don't have to explain themselves. You are basically asking a complete stranger to insert themselves with no details into a situation that is at best unfriendly and at worst hostile and potentially dangerous, but if they react like any normal human being does and hesitate and ask questions, they are being insensitive to the needs of the person being harassed. It's a lose/lose situation for the person being expected to resolve the problem. I fail to see how that accomplishes anything. At the very least, the person making the complaint needs to be able to describe enough of the triggering event for the person in charge to start an investigation. If the person is incapable of distinguishing between criticism and inquiry, they need to find someone they trust to be able to answer at least the basic questions; if they are incapable of doing even that, there is nothing I can do to help unless I was standing right there and saw enough of the key events to move ahead to the later stages of the investigation.As for the vicious cycle, I already covered that. There needs to be respect on both sides. The person making the accusation needs to be respectful enough of the person they are trying to get help from to give them room to ask questions without having to deal with a lot of bystanders standing around, and the person hearing the complaint needs to do everything they can to keep bystanders away and give the accuser the room and time they need to be able to properly articulate the full problem. An accuser that tries to make the accusastion in the middle of the crowd in which the incident happened is setting themselves up for disappointment because the person in charge is basically forced into a lose/lose situation regardless of the decision they make. Giving the person in charge enough wiggle room and information to do what needs to be done is absolutely crucial, and if the person making the accusation fails to do that, they have to be prepared to accept that the resolution is going to be less than ideal for everybody involved. It's certainly easier to find the space to get things to work if there is some kind of functional policy in place, but it still takes a certain amount of time and adequate information for those polices to work properly, and making the statement of being harassed/offended and expecting an immediate response without giving any more information whatsoever is going to fail. This is where the responsibility of the bystanders comes in and where most of the changes truly need to occur; they can either make the situation easier or harder depending on how they choose to react, and the person in charge rarely has enough control over that be fairly called the attacker's newest weapon. If the bystanders are respectful and back up and let the person in charge deal with it, resolution will probably in most cases be quick and relatively painless. If they decide that they need to butt in to business they no nothing about and no authority to deal with, even if the intervention is well intended, that's when the vicious cycle described above usually starts. It doesn't start with the person in charge asking the questions; it starts when too many busybodys deciding they deserve to be more involved than they really need to be. Contrary to what many seem to believe, staying the frick out of the way is often far more helpful than trying to intervene; at least the person in charge has the pull of authority to fall back on if the situation turns out to be very different than what was expected. Random bystanders are more often than not going to be a nuisance to both the accuser and the person in charge, and should probably consider stepping back until their presence is requested or truly required. This does not mean ignore the situation or simply walk away; it means stepping back far enough to give those who have good reason to be involved room to function.</blockquote>

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