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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6877253" data-attributes="member: 6667193">And if that is how they actually get used, they work fantastically, but I would say that it's fairly clear that's not how it ends up playing out in most of the scenarios that people are mentioning in this thread. In most small conventions and game stores, the policy doesn't actually kick in because they are small enough that it doesn't take an in depth investigation to figure out enough of what happened to for someone to either help the person making the complaint deal with the immediate problem and/or talk to the person that was claimed to be the source of the problem with very little fuss or difficulty. Most of the time one of the volunteers or workers (note, it doesn't have to be formal security) saw it or were close enough that they can get wind of it quickly enough to resolve it before it requires much more what you described. Most people who talk to the supposed offender though don't threaten to kick them out of the store/con; they will mention that the person need be mindful of the public place, keep an eye on both the accuser and the accused and leave it at that. That is where the big difference in what you are saying and I am saying comes in. Anything that comes with a formal warning of being kicked out almost certainly come as a result of either an investigation of some kind and/or repeated problems. That warning usually does come from formal security or an actual manager/convention organizer, and you can be certain that it didn't come out of thin air or is based solely on someone making the simple claim of being harassed without providing details. In most cases, I would suspect that staff is the preferred source for more information, as they are going to be the more reliable and consistent source that doesn't create a lot of extra headache, but that doesn't mean that the accuser is immune to having to answer questions related to the complaint if there is genuinely no one else who can answer them and the complaint is severe enough. Claims of sexual harassment especially are likely to create questions that the accuser is going to have to answer as the severity in today's climate is high enough that some kind of investigation is almost certainly going to be required if it's anything more than someone complaining about a random comment. I am by no means saying that the accuser will always have to answer more questions, but especially at medium to larger cons, the probability is quite high that whatever staff member is trying to help is going to require more than a simple statement of someone claiming to be harassed if for no other reason than it's quite possible that tracking down the person who supposedly caused the problem is going to be difficult at best and near impossible at worst, meaning that it isn't actually going to save them time or effort to use that particular approach. At that point, asking the person making the complaint for more details is going to be necessary to figure out if which of the various options they have available to them is truly going to be the best option.EnWorld isn't that much different in that regard; they will flag a particular post or make a specific comment if they see a big enough problem, but they aren't going to actually threaten anything more serious than that unless it becomes clear that it's a repeat offender that refuses to listen; in this case, the investigation consists of someone reading the posts in questions and making a judgment call based on them. The investigation isn't that hard or long or time consuming, but it is there, but just because it often happens almost automatically and frequently almost instaneously in most instance does not mean that the resolution is being based entirely on a simple complaint of harassment. Other information is being utilized even if the person making the complaint doesn't realize it. In smaller gaming spaces, like a store or a small con, they generally don't have to worry about the distinction. You get to the medium and larger cons, the distinction suddenly matters a lot. A staff member trying to deal with the situation not only has to deal with the complaint, but also usually has to be aware of how having a crap ton of bystanders around is going to impact how they resolve it. They may very need to pull the person with the problem aside if for no other reason than to remove the difficulty of dealing with the bystanders and that alone will push the situation beyond the kind of resolution you seem to think should be the norm. At that point, it is absolutely crucial for the person making the complaint to understand that their ability to simply make a single statement and walk away while letting someone else deal with it is gone.</blockquote>

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