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Complaints About Harassment

The Ombuds Office is an independent, impartial, and confidential mechanism that looks into complaints about unfairness or harassment. This page explains how the Office handles Complaints About Harassment. If you have a complaint about unfairness, please visit this page.

What is Harassment?

Harassment can take many forms, including, but not limited to, verbal acts, graphic depictions, written statements, and physical conduct. Harassing behaviors like these can take place in person, over the phone or on video calls, by email or text messages, on social media, or anywhere else on the Internet.

The Community Anti-Harassment Policy gives these examples of harassment:

  • Sexual advances, making sexual comments, or repeatedly asking someone for a date after they have already said 'no' or 'stop'.
  • Humiliating or making fun of someone, using insults or put-downs.
  • Repeatedly contacting someone online after being asked to stop; sending too many messages or video calls.
  • Making jokes that reinforce stereotypes; making remarks about someone's identity or appearance; mimicking, mocking, or dismissing cultural customs or markers of identity.
  • Showing or displaying pictures or objects that are inappropriate or sexual, especially where others can see them.

How can I make a Complaint About Harassment?

If you experience harassment, you should report it to the Ombuds Office as soon as possible. It is best to submit your complaint in writing so that all the details are recorded clearly.

Please visit this page for ways to Contact the Ombuds Office.

How is my complaint handled?

The Ombuds Office will follow the Community Anti-Harassment Policy to decide if harassment has taken place and if so, what the consequences should be.

Why might a complaint be declined?

The Ombuds Office may decline to take on a case if:

  • Too much time has passed since the issue happened
  • The issue does not affect the complainant directly
  • The complainant is using an alternative process that would adequately address the complaint
  • The complaint is repeated, not serious, intended to be abusive, or not made in good faith
  • The complaint lacks credibility
  • Action by the Ombuds Office is not necessary or possible to resolve the issue
Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."