I think the title explains itself, but if I know that, say, EgyptianBurrito is really Suzie Robson from Seattle is it Ok to say so?
No, unless she gives permission.
I don’t know about the rules, but I think it would be “bad form”
That would be a seriously jerkish thing to do. Being a jerk is against the rules.
Why would you even want to? Is Suzie a danger to us all or something?
Definitely inappropriate and potentially dangerous behavior. If it’s not explicitly against the rules it surely falls under the no jerk clause.
Why the hell wouldn’t it be against the rules? I mean, unless you have proof that a poster is somehow Charles Manson, and even then, I think you’d need to send that info to the admins.
From the registration agreement:
I would interpret the bolded part to mean that you should not reveal the real name of any other poster without their express consent. Doing so, especially if meant maliciously, would be a rules violation.
Definitely a big violation of both board policy and board rules.
I haven’t seen this happen in the wild, but depending on the instance, I can easily see it being a banning offense. While a lot of people here parcel out so much information about themselves that an investigative mind could easily track down who they are and where they live, it is still considered their prerogative to explicitly reveal their own identity. Having it done for them would, for starters, be a major violation of Rule #1: Do Not Be A Jerk.
Dude, if you knew her…
Perfect.
I started this because in a thread somebody did it a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t like it but nobody said anything about it.
If it worried you, you should have reported it. You shouldn’t assume that a moderator has seen something just because it’s been posted.
If we see a rules infraction, we have been instructed to report the post, using the red triangle icon (with the exclamation mark in it).
I once called a poster by her first name when I was pissed at her – just her first, mind you. And I was rightly slapped down for it.
I was slapped down by a poster for calling him by his first name when he *signed *all his posts with his first name.
Wouldn’t people who try and out who Cecil Adams is (as if we don’t know already) also fall afoul of that clause? If I’d seen this rule before, I would have reported people who were trying to ruin the fun.
Huh? Now that’s just retarded.
So mote it be.
I simply thought it was silly and childish.
Without knowing the exact context, it’s hard to evaluate how serious it might be. I can see two posters who know each other in real life calling each other by their real first names and no one worrying too much about it. I can also see it being done to goad or harass another poster, in which case it would be much more serious. In any event, it should be avoided. If people want to divulge their real identities (and some do post under their own names) let them do it themselves, even if it’s nothing more than a first name.
It probably depends who does it. 