I Signed.

Cyber bullying is, without question, a growing problem in today's social networking society, and quite literally, a silent killer. It is our feeling, as deviants, that more action should be taken by the DeviantART staff to prevent this.

According to DeviantART's etiquette, cyber bullying would fall under “discouraged commentary”, being known as having “the potential to escalate into an aggressive or abusive situation...we discourage public accusations and other similar situations.” It is clear that the DeviantART staff does work to keep the peace on DeviantART, and make it a positive experience for all of it's users. They discourage harassment and exploitation of other users and heated public disputes and encourage users to report acts of such nature; however, discouraging is still tolerating, and we do not believe that bullying should be tolerated on DeviantART.

It is important to understand, however, that cyber bullying does not include things such as a mutual argument between two or more people. Cyber bullying is deliberate and personal attacks intended to intimidate, threaten, humiliate, degrade and/or disgrace an individual on the internet, whether or not they are posted publicly or sent privately. This behavior is quite different than two or more people engaging in a personal argument and thus, should be handled differently. Cyber bullying should be considered “Prohibited Commentary”, punishable by banishment. It is a concern of many that simply discouraging such behavior by removing the offending deviations is ineffective in preventing bullying because it allows the bullies to continue their behavior and encourages them to then resort to harassing via private communication.

We understand that there is always more than one side to every conflict and sometimes it can be difficult to define a behavior as “bullying”, because some conflicts are made to look one-sided, but might be a mutual argument. This is why, to be fair, we believe that anyone accused of bullying should be given an opportunity to plead their case before being banished.

Therefore, we as DeviantART users believe that cyber bullying should be treated and handled with more severity than a 'discouraged commentary', and should be treated as an offense that is punishable by banishment.

Signed,

1. RachelErica

2. Spectra615

3. DevithewRHG

4. ririmania1335

5. M3tr0idgrl

6. SMDKFan

7. SweetMint9

8. MagicNinja-Gal

9. Vesuvitheechidna

10. andreabunton

11. nuii700

12. Drakolance

13. Dogmouseart

14. FionaRain

15. SierraFaith