Rather than hijack Askia’s memorial thread thread further with my questions about sending his mom a condolence note, I wonder about the practice in general about making people IRL aware of someone’s on-line identity. In **Askia **'s case, I think he would have been proud and pleased to have his mother reading his posts, if she wants to, and knows how to search the SD, and all that, so it’s not an immediately troubling issue, but I’m wondering generally if it’s such a good practice for Dopers to make RL people generally aware? Maybe you badmouthed a friend or relative in the Pit one day–would you like for that person to have access to all your posts ever, and read where you described that person in a negative light? Certainly when you posted it, you had the idea that this person would be very unlikely to come across your posts with a certain ID of your RL self as the author.
I’m trying to figure out the ethical and social implications of informing Askia’s mom that I knew him from SDMB, and more generally whether this is something to do very cautiously, if at all, in general. Is there any policy that applies to this situation? Should there be?
