[collaborative-vr] extra harassment?

[Cristen Polley]

Hi Sara,

Thanks for asking about this. It’s hard to say without doing a survey or gathering more formal data, but as far as I’m aware, AskAway is not seeing increased harassment from users who assume that they are speaking with a chatbot.

What I’ve heard anecdotally from service providers is that some users assume that they’re chatting with a bot and for the most part, when corrected, they are polite about it and adjust accordingly.

AskAway members have asked if we could include language on or around the chat box or messaging to indicate to students (and other users) that they will be connecting to and chatting with a human. I’d love to hear if anyone has suggestions for something along these lines!

I hope this is helpful. Happy to talk more.

Thanks,
Cristen

From: collaborative-vr <collaborative-vr-bounces at omls.oregon.gov> on behalf of "Peté, Sara via collaborative-vr" <collaborative-vr at omls.oregon.gov>
Reply-To: "Peté, Sara" <sara.pete at sos.wa.gov>
Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 9:39 AM
To: "collaborative-vr at omls.oregon.gov" <collaborative-vr at omls.oregon.gov>
Subject: [collaborative-vr] extra harassment?

Hi Everyone,

I received this question from a large academic library that used to be a part of AskWA but not they are independent. At AskWA, I haven’t heard from libraries that they are getting a bunch of extra harassment because users assume they are a chatbot, but I was just curious to check in with you folks and see if anyone is seeing that. Here is the question from my colleague:

“I’m wondering if any of the libraries in AskWA have reported increased rates of harassment/troll behavior in their chat services? One of the faculty at the iSchool recently mentioned that online reference services are being “bombarded” by this type of behavior because patrons think they are chatbots. I haven’t noticed this at all in our service, beyond an uptick of people submitting questions that look like they are intended for a bot...like instead of actually typing out “I’m looking for articles on the effects of climate change on the fishing industry” they enter something like “articles climate change fishing” when they come into chat. But I find that patrons quickly regroup when they figure out that they are interacting with a human!”

Thanks everyone – hope fall is going well for you all!

Sara Peté (she/her)| Community Outreach Librarian
Washington Center for the Book<http://www.washingtoncenterforthebook.org/> (Director), WSL Social Media, AskWA: Statewide Virtual Reference Cooperative<https://askwa.libanswers.com/>
Washington State Library | Office of the Secretary of State
6880 Capitol Blvd SE, Tumwater, Washington
c: 360-480-1005
Sara.Pete at sos.wa.gov<mailto:Sara.Pete at sos.wa.gov>
[Email_SecStateWA_Library]<https://www.sos.wa.gov/library/>
  [Facebook] <https://www.facebook.com/WashingtonStateLibrary/>    [Twitter] <https://twitter.com/WAStateLib>    [cid:image004.png at 01DA0CEE.D76DFBB0] <https://www.instagram.com/washingtonstatelibrary/>    [YouTube] <https://www.youtube.com/user/wastatelibrary>
~connecting Washington through the power of libraries~
Sign up for WSL Updates<https://sos.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=4cc76b29ebd6084a20161a5f6&id=40682e1d3f>, a weekly newsletter for and about Washington libraries.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/collaborative-vr/attachments/20231102/104bbd22/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 19305 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/collaborative-vr/attachments/20231102/104bbd22/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1127 bytes
Desc: image002.png
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/collaborative-vr/attachments/20231102/104bbd22/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 857 bytes
Desc: image003.jpg
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/collaborative-vr/attachments/20231102/104bbd22/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.png
Type: image/png
Size: 13148 bytes
Desc: image004.png
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/collaborative-vr/attachments/20231102/104bbd22/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image005.png
Type: image/png
Size: 946 bytes
Desc: image005.png
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/collaborative-vr/attachments/20231102/104bbd22/attachment-0003.png>