Mission Statement

The mission of WHOA is to educate the Internet community about online harassment, empower victims of harassment, and formulate voluntary policies that systems administrators can adopt in order to create harassment-free environments. WHOA fully supports the right to free speech both online and off, but asserts that free speech is not protected when it involves threats to the emotional or physical safety of anyone. WHOA further asserts that online harassment is about power in a community: a power structure that has tended to accept or ignore harassment rather than actively seek to cease it.

While WHOA does not wish to single any group out as an enemy, we recognize and celebrate that the tide of the community is changing as people from all walks of life begin to become active participants online. As such, we must begin to assert our power as a group of concerned individuals (no matter what our backgrounds) toward the protection of all people online against harassment targeted against them based on gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity, age or privilege. WHOA welcomes anyone who demonstrates sensitivity toward the issues of harassment and a willingness to support our cause.

Goals and Implementations

1. Educate the Internet Community About Harassment.

This will take several forms:

1. Educating administrators of BBS's, chats, IRC servers, web sites and other interactive media about the issues of harassment and creating positive, safe communities through the development of web site resources.
2. Educating the community itself and providing information about how users can protect themselves against harassment situations. Part of this involves the creation of a safe-site list that allows users to make decisions about the level of protection they are comfortable with at the sites they frequent. Sites that adopt anti-harassment policies and follow through on them will be added to the safe list.
3. Educating targets of harassment on how to fight back and protect themselves in the meantime against further harassment.

2. Empowering Targets of Harassment

In addition to education about what they can do to fight back, WHOA will provide advice and referral to targets of harassment.

3. Providing Policies For a Better Internet Community

There are several policies that WHOA will seek to develop and advance.

1. Policies against harassment or intimidation through public or private means (such as email).
2. Policies against public personal attacks, particularly involving the "outing" of private information about someone or libelous material.
3. Policies against threats of any kind.
4. Policies favoring the self-policing of sites.

All of these policies will seek to encourage administrators to use the control they have over the use of their resources to remove any persons causing offenses to those policies that are either severe or repeated. Administrators who choose to adopt these policies will be educated and assisted in putting them into practice. They will also be encouraged by appearance on the Safe List and permission to use the WHOA Safe Site logo if they choose. Administrators who do not choose to adopt these policies will not be censured in any way unless there are complaints against their site.