Outing someone like that is not good. Someone I know in real life had this happen on another site. But they outing also included an address and phone numbers. Not good at all, and if my warnings about giving out such info to people you don’t really know had been heeded it could’ve been avoided, but no, “they’re my friends”:rolleyes:
Bottom line, anyone posting other people’s personal info like that without permission should be insta- and perma- banned for harassment.
Could you say “Hey, EgyptianBurrito, aren’t you **BurritoFromEgypt **at someotherboard.net?”
People should be able to participate in the community without their identities coming into play.
I am not talking about spammers or trolls or previously banned people – their only expectation should be that we will remove them as soon as we find them – I am talking about the great majority of users.
We have always suggested that people be judicious about their screen names – don’t use your real-life name as your screen name, for example. And we recommend people be thoughtful about the real-life information they share/give up willingly on this most public board.
Quoting from the registration agreement:
Common sense would tell you this would also include names.
If you wish to inquire about someone’s real-life information – I can see perfectly legitimate reasons to do so, such as “Are you the XPoster who is Sally in my exercise class/book club group/Sunday school teacher/neighbor?” That sort of thing should be handled in email or PM or IM as the user has specified.
If they have indicated they wish no contact from the Straight Dope community then you should respect their right to privacy and not make these inquiries in public.
As far as linking screen names from one board to the other, what goes on at other message boards should stay at other message boards and this includes questions of identity. If a poster discloses such information voluntarily that’s one thing but people should not be expected to answer such questions automatically.
I’m not too worried about anybody revealing my “real life” identity, since I’ve made no secret of it here. I figure I’ve been online with my real name since 1996, what with my personal Web site (which is linked in my profile) and, more recently, MySpace and Facebook accounts, so I don’t see any point in hiding my identity on a board where I’m posting as myself anyway.
I have occasionally encountered posters here whose user name is the same as a user name I’ve seen elsewhere, or vice versa, and wondered if it was the same person, but if I ask them about it I do so via PM.
Yes, and one poster recently divulged he was a very low level political activist (by name), which in turn led to him threatening to use the board and a bunch of posters. Another good reason to not divulge too much personal info.
Different people are in different places. There are some people with no problem being open about their real life name, and there are some people who are very uncomfortable with it (for a variety of reasons.) I don’t use my real name, and I’m glad not to: early in the Message Boards days, I had a poster stalking and threatening me online (on account of my pro-Israel stance) who lived in Chicago. I was very glad that he didn’t know my address.
So, I think that each poster is entitled to take whatever position they feel most comfortable with. And I think that other posters should respect their wishes and rights to privacy. Public “outing” is not allowed without the explicit advance consent of the poster being “outed.”
In case anybody is wondering, I am pretty sure DrDeth meant sue, not use, as in file a lawsuit.
I know, as I was one that was threatened with the using 
:smack: (it must be OK, the spellchecker didn’t catch it, right? )
However, in that case of that poster, can you be sure it was “sue”
not “use”?
No telling there on that one.
Did I tell you I JUST HAPPENED to get a very strange phone call from the Chicago area code the Monday following the weekend all that shit went down that ended up with the banning?
If that was a coincidence, it was a damn strange one. Note, I am NOT accusing the straight dope staff of tracking me down and calling me. I circumstantialy suspect the “sueing poster” actually lived or knew someone from Chicago, which given that Chicago is the the “home” of the SDMB, seems suspect. Honestly, I am not sure I have EVER gotten a call from that area code. It has certainly been many years, if not never. Fortunately, I have yet to “be served”.
I wasnt trying to be nitpicky with the sue/use thing. Its just that for someone who wasnt familiar with it, I could see them NEVER making the use meant sue connection.
You can’t just leave it at “strange”, here, you know that. People are going to want details.
The SO heard it on the answering machine first. Basically, it sounded like a debt collection call from a mild branch of the mafia or something like that. The only words that were recalled were along the lines of “it would be in your best interest to…blah blah blah”.
The SO was sure it was baloney so it was deleted. I later glanced at the phone number ID. It sure wasnt an area code, much less a number I can ever recall getting a call from. So I deleted the number and I forgot about it. Though I had identified the area code as having come from Chicago (I had to look that up), I just thought “odd” and moved on.
Later in the week I had a wait, Chicago = SDMB connection :smack: moment.
Either it was one heck of coincidence or the soon to be banned poster had some decent hacker/detective friends. You decide.
I wouldn’t reject out of hand the possibility of coincidence. I must get one call a week, message left on machine, supposedly about my credit card or bank account. Spam, spam, spam.
However, if it wasn’t coincidence, I’m truly sorry that such a thing happened.
(I assume you mean that the banned poster was possibly calling you, not that any SD offical was? On no account should that have happened. If you think someone from the SD was pestering you, please let me know in email. )
Oh no, I never thought it was SDMB folks. At least not trying to pester me !
I did PM a mod to check if it was just a really garbled message from real life good intentioned folks, like maybe a SDMB lawyer rounding up the wagons so to speak.
It WASNT that. As for spam calls, yeah we get one every few weeks, but first of all they arent usually that “strange”, and secondly the caller ID is either obscured or obvious. That part was a bit strange as well, though I’ve already forgotten how exactly. Finally, I can’t EVER recall getting Chicago area code spam calls.
In any case its no big deal, and given that my car has yet to be set on fire nor have lawyers shown up on my doorstep, its finally been relegated to an odd story / coincidence.
I actually felt kinda bad about the whole thing because it was my little comment that started the whole thing that eventually lead to the poster threatening to sue folks. Unfortunately for him, thats a BAD thing to do here, but in his world such threats are probably business as usual, and his two worlds collided here and the damage was done before it could be undone.
Thats probably enough about this for now as its causing significant thread drift and I’ve said about all that can be said about it.
I wouldn’t feel bad, billfish. In my opinion that was an explosion just waiting to happen, if it hadn’t been set off by one post it would have been set off by another.