Harassment & Bullying

Background Information

Posting content or engaging in behaviors with the intent to harass, intimidate, or humiliate an individual, whether in public or private. This includes encouraging others to engage in such behavior. Examples include:

• Finding a way to repeatedly message or engage with someone after being blocked

• Creating a Space for the sole purpose of harassing a private individual

• Adding questions about a private individual, that would appear to a reasonable observer, to be harassment

• Revealing someone’s personal or confidential information without permission (also known as doxxing). Examples of what we consider personal information under this policy include:

  • • • • • Home address

          • Physical location

          • Identity documents such as government-issued IDs

          • Social security numbers

          • Financial account information

          • Credit card details

          • Medical records

          • Biometric data

          • Real name of a pseudonymous account

If there is a question about you on Quora, you have the right to have the entire question and its contents removed. However, we allow questions about lawsuits or any topic mentioned in the media that may reference individuals.

How to Process in Queue

Step 1:

• Is the content or behavior targeting an identifiable individual?

  • • If yes: proceed to Step 2

    • If no:

      • • Check for other policy violations. If other policy violations exist, label according to corresponding policy violation.

        • If no other policy violations exist, label as OK

Step 2:

• Does the content or behavior consist of any of the following?

  • • Intent to harass, intimidate, or humiliate the individual OR encouraging others to engage in such behavior?

      • Examples include:

        • Creating a Space for the sole purpose of harassing a private individual

        • Adding questions about a private individual, that would appear to a reasonable observer, to be harassment

        • Finding a way to repeatedly message or engage with someone after being blocked

        • Revealing someone’s personal or confidential information without permission.

          • Examples of what we consider personal information under this policy include:

            • Street address

            • Physical location

            • Identity documents such as government-issued IDs

            • Social security numbers

            • Financial account information

            • Credit card details

            • Medical records

            • Biometric data

            • Real name of a pseudonymous account

      • Exceptions:

        • Content about lawsuits or any topic mentioned in the media that may reference individuals.

  • If yes to any of these areas above, label as “Bullying & Harassment”

  • If no other policy violations exist, label as OK

Internal Guidance

The following is prohibited:

Posting content or engaging in behaviors with the intent to harass, intimidate, or humiliate an individual, whether in public or private. This includes encouraging others to engage in such behavior. Examples include:

• Creating a Space for the sole purpose of harassing a private individual

• Adding questions about a private individual, that would appear to a reasonable observer, to be harassment

• Finding a way to repeatedly message or engage with someone after being blocked (Note: this will primarily be enforced by employees via the Whois page rather than in the queues)

• Revealing someone’s personal or confidential information without permission. Examples of what we consider personal information under this policy include:

• Street address

• Physical location

• Identity documents such as government-issued IDs

• Social security numbers

• Financial account information

• Credit card details

• Medical records

• Biometric data

• Real name of a pseudonymous account

Exceptions include topics mentioned in the media that may reference individuals, such as questions about lawsuits and other public matters.

Note that if there is a question about an individual on Quora, that individual has the right to have the entire question and its contents removed. However, questions about lawsuits or any topic mentioned in the media that may reference individuals are allowed.

How to differentiate between a private individual and a public figure? 

• Politicians, celebrities, athletes on major sports teams, and leaders of well known companies are always public figures. If the person has a Wikipedia page and/or articles written about them, then they are a public figure.

• Well known Quora users are always private figures, unless they are also a politician, celebrity, athlete, or business leader. For example, Jimmy Wales is a well known Quora user but he is also a business leader, so he is a public figure.

• For people that you're not sure about (for example, a YouTuber or other social media personality): if you Google the person's name and 1) every result is a personal social media account and 2) there are no news articles written about the person within the first two pages of search results, then they are a private figure.

Policy Violating Examples

Creating a space for the sole purpose of harassing a private individual

Examples of harassment & bullying

• Space titles such as “Jane Doe is bitch”

Examples of OK content

• Spaces dedicated to criticizing a public figure, as long as they do NOT:

  • • Threaten violence or call for serious harm to the public figure

    • Reveal personal or confidential information about a public figure (excluding topics mentioned in the media)

Adding questions about a private individual, that would appear to a reasonable observer, to be harassment

Examples of harassment & bullying

• “Why is Jane Doe a sensitive bitch who disabled her comments section?”

• “How do I delete John Doe? He is like a mossie, obsessed and unhealthy.”

• “Does Jane Doe offer refunds to her street hooker clients when they barf at the sight of her disrobing?”

Examples of OK content

• “A user keeps harassing me. How do I get him to stop editing my question? Mods don't seem to do anything and he is being racist.”

• “Is Hillary and Bill living proof that as long as you are locked in to the capital hill cocktail set that you can do no wrong or even if you get caught you will NOT face any repercussions?” (note that this is referring to public figures, so this would not violate under this subcategory)

• “In your honest opinion is Joe Biden psychotic, neurotic or sane? What proof do you have for your opinions?”

Revealing someone’s personal or confidential information without permission.

Examples of harassment & bullying

• “Jane Doe lives on 155 Highland Avenue”

• “Here is a photo of Jane Doe’s driver’s license [including a photo of the individual’s driver’s license]”

• “I found Gerald Smith’s medical records, here is a photocopy [including an image of medical records]”

• “I think this *pseudonymous account* is run by Sarah Harper.”

Examples of OK content

• Topics mentioned in the media that may reference individuals, such as questions about lawsuits and other public matters

  • Eg: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial

• Social media handles

• Occupation

Note that the following policy lines will primarily be enforced by employees via the Whois page rather than in the queues:

Finding a way to repeatedly message or engage with someone after being blocked

Examples of harassment & bullying

• Creating separate accounts to contact someone after being blocked

• Encouraging others to contact an individual on one’s behalf after being blocked

• “Joe keeps blocking me, but I will keep creating accounts and calling him out anyways. This is my third account today.”