Personal info on a public message board

The BBQ Pit
1

(I’m putting this in the Pit because it’s referencing a Pit thread, and it may very well get heated anyway.)

In this post, an argument is made that people’s private lives are not open to public scrutiny on the SDMB. The counterargument is that some details were already revealed and discussed, and the scrutiny is coming from those previous statements already made.

Where do we draw the line between personal information and public debate?

If you’re allowed (for lack of a better term - no one’s being forced to post here) to post some information, but when pressed for more information, you reserve the right to withhold further information (or, indeed, discussion on what’s been given), is it suitable to be called to task for it? By not responding you look like you’re dodging the request, but by responding you have to give up more personal info. For those who are responding to what you’ve already said, what’s acceptable to withhold, and what’s a cop-out?

This is a public message board. If you’re going to post something, be it personal information or simply your side of an argument, it seems logical to me that you should then be prepared to follow through - publicly - with what you started off with. It is entirely possible to talk about your pesonal life and stick to the issues without giving away too much information you don’t want to give away; however, you should decide from the get-go what you’re willing to reveal.

I’ve learned, first hand and painfully, that you have to be very careful about what you post publicly for this very reason - you will be called on it, and it will come back to haunt you. Is this a lesson one can only learn by experience, or is someone out there smart enough to learn from others’ mistakes?

IMHO, that is.

Esprix

2

In my opinion, whatever a person offers up in a public forum is fair game. Within reason, of course… if someone mentions their poetry or their artwork, it is just as assholic to mock it whether you’re online or in real life.

If a person wants to make their personal life a matter of focus - by bringing it up in a debate, for example - then they should expect a request for more information. But that doesn’t mean they have to give it… maybe they felt that the first tidbit they gave should be enough, and further details are not cogent to the topic. After all, they would (presumably) know best… it is their own personal information.

My own philosophy is to not post up so much personal information anymore. I’ve… ah… seen that it can get just a leeeeetle out of hand. I imagine this makes me seem more closed to the SDMB community as a whole, but it’s better than some alternatives. In my opinion, of course.

3

Despite the linked thread being just about the ugliest trainwreck I’ve ever seen on the boards, I follow the principle that anything posted to the boards is fair game for debate. If you don’t want people talking about your private life, don’t talk about it yourself. And when you know you’ve got enemies on the board, you should be damned careful about what you bring up, because someone is going to throw it back in your face sooner or later.

4

Without getting into the specifics of the Pit thread, I tend to believe that you can’t request compartmentalization whenever it suits you.

I’ve always thought it was a bit odd that so many people love being part of the SDMB “community” but bringing up information learned on other threads is considered inappropriate by many.

There are a couple of contradictory things as I see it. A common complaint about politicians/actors/public figures is that they a person hypocritical if he advocates, say, “family values” then cheats on his wife and bangs his secretary. Why is the hypocrisy of public figures horrible but the hypocrisy of posters unmentionable? Somewhat related is that some posters argue that long-time posters should get the benefit of the doubt while new posters shouldn’t because the long-timers have a track record and their comments can be viewed in the context of their posting history. Yet there is a contradictory line of argument that the substance of a poster’s posts should not be brought up in an unflattering light.

I’m not pointing to any individual poster and saying they are an example. I certainly haven’t taken the time to do a statistical analysis.

I think that if you make an argument that can be weakened by reference to earlier posts by the poster then it’s fair game. I do think, however, that it’s a rare occasion. In the latest Pit threads I’ve thought some of it was allowable because certain actions contradicted claimed absolutist positions. It’s not appropriate to throw in personal information as a gratuitous shot. Of course, that line isn’t exactly clear.

Those are my highly unstructured thoughts.

5

If a person’s background is relevant to a their position in a discussion, making those details available to others establishes their believability. Without that, anyone can choose to take what the poster say with a mongo grain of salt. This is all presuming honesty in the disclosure, which can be quite questionable, as seen more than once around here. Too much can be given by some who just may wish to share, or don’t know when to shut up. If “factual” information is presented (I am 6’ 2”, I have been divorced, I have been in financial trouble), then contradicted later, I feel it is not only acceptable but proper to call the poster on it. Opinions can change, more experience can be gained, but history cannot be revised.

You reserve the right to hold back whatever you wish, obviously, but your believability may suffer as a result. Your decision.

6

I have nothing to hide. I am who I am here, and the same IRL. You see something inconsistant in what I post, call me on it.

No lies, no masks.

It makes life easier that way.
YMMV

shrug

7

Generally, I post to the board under the assumption that it is being broadcast irrevocably to the world. The consequence of that is of course, that it may get dredged up when I least expect it.

So I always do keep that in mind, particularly with respect to general security and the privacy of my nearest and dearest (e.g. I’m not about to give out my actual co-ordinates in case some psycho troll shows up at my front door, and I’m careful not to compromise the privacy of friends and family who may not be as willing to share some of the fine details of their lives.)

Generally though, I withold very little, but I also try not to divulge a whole lot of crap that isn’t relevent ('cause no one would really give a rat’s ass).

8

I personally think the entire tone of the board would be improved if some posters weren’t so aggressive with another person’s information.

For example, if I post that I’m gay and having trouble with my boyfriend (assuming I’m a guy here for just a second), I find it appalling that a person would use that as an opportunity to be mean. And I think telling someone that they are going to burn in hell, or even that I think they are going to burn in hell is very mean spirited.

It seems that quite often, a person will reveal a piece of personal information, and then other posters will used the information as a weapon to hurt. I’m not talking about requesting more information on the subject, but actually trying to hurt the other poster with the information they shared.

For example, a while back I was involved in a train-wreck of a thread (which I will not link to here, and frankly, if no one else did, that would be swell), where I rather inelegantly expressed my dislike for smoking, in part based on my grandmother’s death from smoking. As I said, I was rather inelegant in my argument; however, a number of posters took that post as an opportunity to say things like “Your grandmother couldn’t wait to die to get away from you because you’re so horrible” to paraphrase. I’m not going to go find the old thread in order to directly quote anyone, because I really think the discussion is dead. I’m not attributing the above phrase to anyone specifically - sentiments along those lines were expressed by a couple of posters…

Obviously, something like that is said specifically to hurt - there’s nothing particularly constructive about it. I suppose it’s more effect to flame someone with a tidbit that you know will hit close to home than it is to just call them a nincompoop and be done with it, but I really don’t think it’s required.

Similarly, Opal shared some personal information which someone used to contact her physician in order to “help” Opal. I find this totally appalling. The spirit of community cannot be fostered if posters are afraid that every personal item they reveal about themselves may be used against them.

I honestly believe that if this was a real live forum, rather than on-line, people’s behaviour would be better and more humane to others. It’s a shame that a sprit of good will can’t be the starting place for some of the people here.

And yes, I realize that it sounds like I’m whining. I really don’t mean it that way. With the exception of the one incident I mentioned above, I don’t think anyone has ever used personal information I’ve revealed about myself in order to be mean. I just see it happen to a lot of posters, and I wish it wouldn’t.

If you’re going to attack someone, do it on the basis of their argument, not because of their personal life.

9

My sentiment, Esprix, would be, you place your personal information on the board in full knowledge that it may be used. You would, for example, be perfectly welcome to look up the threads from our run-in with FriendOfGod and the related stuff involving Snark and Wildest Bill, or my Pit rant against Uncle Toby, in which I revealed some of what has happened in my own life that has led me to be as vocal as I am, and draw what conclusions you will from those posts.

What you are not entitled to do, in my opinion, is to expect me to reveal other data about myself on request. You are welcome to ask; I am free to answer or not, as I choose. (And good etiquette would suggest that you assure it’s OK before publicly asking, but that’s a separate issue.) I think that Joe Cool’s response agreeing to ask Jersey Diamond if it would be OK to answer my thinking-out-loud in that thread by e-mail was the height of courtesy; as I said there, I did not expect an answer, given the necktie party they’d been treated to in that thread, but thought it worthwhile to say why one would have been useful.

You want to open a IMHO thread about where and how people lost their virginity? Go for it. You want to know specifically about where and how I lost mine? You can ask. But I don’t promise to answer.

But if I happen to mention the circumstances in one thread, and they later come to mind in connection with a post I make about age differences in romantic relationships, you’re free to bring it up for whatever purpose you like – I made it public.

10

My golden rule for posting personal info is I don’t post anything I don’t want strangers to know. If I were to post some snippet of private info and people demanded more information that I wasn’t willing to give, I simply wouldn’t give it to them. My life is my business, and how much I share is also my business. That said, I wouldn’t start a discussion about something deeply personal and then try to get out of it later - that doesn’t seem quite kosher either. Posting private info is something of an invitation to other people to concern themselves with your life; I wouldn’t issue an invitation then slam the door in people’s faces.

11

Humm - I think I was a tad unclear in my post:

If I post something personal on a message board, I fully assume that people are going to inquire or comment on it. (Assuming, of course, that they give a rat’s pitootie).

My point is that people don’t have to be mean and uncharitable to others while commenting or enquiring, if ya know what I mean.

Also, I don’t think it’s cool for people to assume because they’ve read a snipit about someone on a message board that they know what’s best for them, ala Opal.

12

I don’t think enquire means what I think it means…

13

I think the public vs. private hypocrisy of public figures is only interesting when they have sold their private lives as an example of public virtue; i.e. when they regard a Happy Marriage as a qualification for office. I would say the same thing about a poster.

“The private lives of public people may be considered private only so long as they don’t trade on them to advance their public careers. If an individual presents himself to the public for election as a happily married father of three, then he has made his weekend with a secretary or his visit to a prostitute of either sex a matter of public interest. If he makes a point of drinking milk in public, then the public will want to know whenever he gets drunk. If he buys his suits at Wal-Mart for the cameras, then proceeds to holiday on rich men’s yachts, he will be photographed with telephoto lenses. But if he were to present himself to the public for election as a believer in specific policies, he might well be judged on those … He would probably even be able to fall down drunk in public from time to time without anyone much caring so long as the interests of the citizenry were looked after.”

-John Ralston Saul, “Private Lives”, The Doubter’s Companion

14

It’s just a game Exprix. I know you post an awful lot but you don’t LIVE here.

Sure, on SDMB there is a good chance of reading stuff from people who are wise or amusing, or who generously share their knowledge, but it’s on a computer monitor, like ‘Doom’ or ‘GTA’.

As for people who air their personal problems in a public forum, they may get some useful and supportive replies as well as unsympathetic disbelief, so they just have to filter out the rubbish. That bit is like real life, I suppose.

I drink. That’s why I talk bullshit. Everybody on this board has an excuse, most not as good as mine.

15

Pluralgravity, I’m sorry to inform you that your fecal content is approaching 100%.

I do know what you’re saying – a message board is not “real life” – but some, this one in particular, have transcended the state of “a place you go to play” and have achieved the status of being real communities.

And yes, what happens here is significant in people’s lives.

16

The difference being that there’s two sides to the computer monitor in this case… there’s your side, where you’re reading everything from. Then there’s the side for everyone else on the planet, who can come here and see everything and anything that they want to, if it’s posted. Comparing it to a computer game ain’t the same thing, buckaroo.

17

A very thoughtful OP, and very thoughtful replies thus far.

As one of the people who spoke out against the demands for personal infomation from others, this is a nice opportunity for me to expand a little bit on what exactly I objected to.

I tend to agree with Polycarp on the idea of expectation. As a community, we’ve gotten somewhat used to people providing, voluntarily, quite a bit of personal information along the lines of “after sleeping with 87 uncircumcized men at once, let me share my opinion about it” or “I hate my mother because of this long list of things she did to me” or even “I let my cat roam around outside all the time, in fact, I even let him get his own job and now he takes the crosstown bus every day during rush hour all by himself and he is much happier and healthier than cats that stay indoors all the time.” And I think that this is one of the neat things about this community, and I’m somewhat amazed (in a good way) that the SDMB has struck such a balance between factual information and wild personal anecdotes. At the same time, I wonder if this leads to a sense of expectation, that people should provide this sort of information on demand. And I don’t agree with that. Cool if you choose to, not cool if you expect it of others.

The expectation issue then combines with one of assumptions, as we saw happen in the thread in question. If I said I had a child, it’s assuming quite a bit to ask me about my divorce. I could be a widow, I could have been raped, my child could be an adopted child, my child could be a demonic changling. Asking that sort of question is akin, IMHO, to asking “when did you stop beating your wife?” Not exactly quite, but close, because it puts me in a position of either revealing actual information that I might wish to keep private, or claiming “that’s none of your business,” which, while true, doesn’t address the issue that many people are now speculating about my alleged divorce, or rape, or demon child.

I understand that everyone has very different ideas about what is too personal, and what is not. People have volunteered information about all sorts of things. But in general, it seems to me that there are some issues that we, as a society, might generally think of as potentially too personal for specific, individual queries. It’s one thing to ask me about my cat (and I’m sure there are many posters who would be more than pleased if I suddenly decided little Gryffy was far too personal a subject for these boards), and another to ask about my sexual history. I don’t mean threads that ask anyone about their sexual history, I mean a specific post such as “Delphica, tell us about that time you slept with a circus clown in his little car.” I think many people are pleased to bring up the fact that they have children, however asking about the parentage of those children is rather dicey.

18

The veil of anonymity the internet provides is a double-edged sword. On one hand it allows us to speak freely – much more freely than we would in a crowd of strangers. On the other hand, it allows us to speak freely – much more freely than we would in a crowd of strangers.

Just because you allow people to read a chapter of your life doesn’t mean your entire life is an open book. And if people get all bent out of shape because you’ve decided to close the book, that’s their problem.

19

FWIW, I know I post a lot of stuff here about Airman and Aaron. I’ve also posted the town where we live. And from my e-mail address and a certain Pit thread from last summer, y’all know our full, legal names. Big hoopty-doo. (We have an unlisted number, so it’s not like y’all can find us easily.)

However, I am prepared to defend just about everything I post, save that which involves others; in those cases, I try to keep it as anonymous as possible. (If y’all remember the Pit thread I started about my aunt, that’s a good example.)

I don’t think that personal information should be used to harass other posters. And I don’t think that every aspect of one’s life should be open to scrutiny. I may tell all, but it’s going to be the all that I choose to tell, and you’re going to have to be happy with that.

Robin

20

I think we agree. That was my point, but maybe I wasn’t clear. I think that the same standards apply on the boards and in real life. The people who said crap about alice_in_wonderland’s grandmother were jerks, just like they would be in real life.

But if a poster claims to be an absolute pacifist but has posted earlier about beating up a potential mugger, then that information is germane to a thread in which the poster condemns all who use violence.

And, again, just as in real life, nobody can demand information from others. But if you want to post personal information and then claim your privacy when people want clarification it’s reasonable to expect that some people are going to draw inferences from the refusal. The inference could be wrong, of course, but that’s just a risk you run on the boards or in real life.