Wait...what the fuck? [RSSchen thread closing]

The BBQ Pit
41

OK, well, is there a line here that has been crossed, or isn’t there? I’d like a Mod to weigh in for clarification. If someone posts a plethora of personal information on the Dope, and people just repost it all in one thread, is that inherently wrong and a violation of the rules? I took from Giraffe’s warning that it was, though I can see the POV of other posters here, that if it’s all out there, why is it wrong to link to it? How could RSSchen sue the Dope if she voluntarily posted all this personal info here and people just spat it back at her? IOW, the Chicago Reader’s alleged legal concerns here seem like a non-issue, though maybe some lawyer-type person can answer that definitively.

Where the line got crossed, I think, was the implied threats, like contacting her husband’s ex as a way to rat her out, or someone (can’t remember who) saying he already had figured out her address and phone # based on info from her posts, and he could drop a dime at any time if he wanted to. Yeah, I was hard on her, on topics of debate and questions about things she said. I’m not a fan of people who post a lot of bullshit which is contradicted in their own posting history. Taking it into the real world is too far, and I’m on record as saying the same thing in other threads on other topics.

42

I don’t think everyone is aware of how easy it is to find out information about people on a messageboard and how much information you can get. I didn’t realize it until I had a friend that was stalked in person by some wacky person on a message board and she had to get the police involved. Some people are extremely good at finding out information about people. There was an argument going on at another board and a person posted links to the other person’s police report. The person denied it was their report but with enough information, anything’s possible.

The point was that she was told she should change her name and she did. It was sort of counterproductive for you to start a thread with her old and new username in it. If she were smart, she’d contact the mods privately and have it changed again.

43

RSSchen is what she is. She posted her shit here and opened herself to a lot of well deserved bile. That’s all fair enough, the name of the game if you will. Post what you will and live with the consequences. I always assumed the consequences happen to the username and the reputation of that name.

This bollocks however

is beyond the pale IMO.

There are implied treats in every one of those posts. If you want to do your amateur sleuthing keep it to email. This board isn’t about that, it never has been, even when an admin* pulled the real life shit it was still wrong.

There was a huge amount of self righteous shite in that thread and a lot of transference/projection. There was also a large amount of well thought out advise and criticism.

Slag her off for what she said on the board but once you even hint at RL and your willingness to bring it there you deserve a slap down.

*If you don’t know what I’m talking about then tough shit as I’m certainly not going into that again.

44

I, for one, am severely disappointed that there was no over use of the :mad: smily.

45

**Rubystreak ** I don’t think you did anything wrong. I brought up stuff she posted in the past too.

I think personal information that you find out about a person is crossing the line.

46

Blllerrghgh! Ewwww…

Good one! It’s rare I get a physical reaction to this type of post.

47

Sorry, but this is a bullshit instruction. Is there now to be a rule about how much of a person’s past posting history on these boards can be linked?

I understand if your instruction asked people not to bring to this board information they found elsewhere on the internet. But to ask people not to link to information that a member has posted right here on the SDMB is the height of ridiculousness.

If people trawled back through my 10,000-odd posts, i’m sure they could find enough information about me to identify my real name, where i live, what i do, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And you know what? I don’t care. I’ve got nothing i particularly want to hide from anyone on here, and i’ve got nothing to hide from my in-real-life friends and family that any SDMB member could out me for.

If i didn’t want people on this board to be able to identify me in real life, i would have taken steps to prevent that. I wouldn’t have put my location in the location field; i wouldn’t have posted a picture of myself in some thread two years ago; i wouldn’t have told people what i do or what university i attend; i wouldn’t have linked to my photo website that contains my real name; i wouldn’t have an email address with my real name in my profile; and i certainly wouldn’t have met members off the boards.

Some members do go out of their way to keep this stuff secret, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s understandable that some people might prefer to remain anonymous. But once you post something about yourself on here, then that should be fair game, as far as discussions on this message board go. Bans on dredging up personal information from past posts are not only pointless (people can still do it, even if they don’t post the information to a new thread), but they imply that parts of this board’s own history is off limits in board discussions.

I never had any interest in finding out anyone’s real identity, and certainly never even contemplated “outing” someone to their real-life friends or family for something they confessed to on this board. And i think such behavior would be wrong. But this board has always had a policy that members should think before posting personal information, and that the board would not go about shielding people who post too much of it (except personal addresses and phone numbers) from the consequences of their own stupidity. And i think that’s a good policy.

48

What most of you seem to be forgetting is that not everybody can do searches on SDMB. Guests can’t even do searches. So the only way to find all the information she has posted here is to become a member. Or to click on the links you all so ‘thoughtfully’ provided to the information that she’s posted before.

49

Do you really think her husband wouldn’t pony up the $15 to do a search if he somehow knew to look here?

As for clicking on the links to stuff she posted on the SDMB, it just puts the info all in one place, in a thread that disappears from non-member searchability soon enough. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with compiling what a person posts here of her own free will. That’s called consequences, which accrue from bad judgment. Stop wagging your finger in the faces of people who were calling her on shit she posted here. That isn’t agaisnt the rules, I don’t think, and if it is, it shouldn’t be.

Now, people posting info from other sources, stuff that she didn’t post here, that they got from sleuthing on the Net? Not really OK, and I could see that being a violation of board rules resulting in official sanction. Nor is threatening her with RL action and interference in her life. But there is a difference between posting links to other SDMB threads and posting links to personal info posted elsewhere. Please make a distinction when scolding and guilt-tripping others.

50

Can you imagine the circus that would ensue if he posted a ‘sponser my membership’ thread so he could go a-searching?

51

Fucking hilarious. You are a sicko. :smiley:

52

Like you I couldn’t care less about someone searching my posting history, hell, a fair few of my RL friends and bosses actually post/posted on this board because I brought it to there attention. This case however started to look like a few people were going to use the board as a medium to organise their searching for RL info

That shit isn’t about calling someone on what they said on the board and keeping it there. They’re implied threats, and that is why the thread was closed IMO.

53

I think the problem is that posts like Equipose’s, intentionally or not, were encouraging people to go out and stir up real life shit against other posters, and maybe bring it back here. There are people who read this board just to do crap like that. You remember when that whole Number Six/Kaitlyn debacle blew up? The poster who exposed that came from the Snarkboards, and while he only posted to things Number Six had said on the board, he did it with the express purpose of creating as big a shit storm as he could. (He was also a sock, IIRC, but that’s neither here nor there.) I think the mods were just moving to prevent a repeat of that. Equipose certainly didn’t intend to stir shit up, but she was giving pretty good instructions and ideas on how someone else could do it, and that’s why the mods stepped in and shut it down before it could go any farther in that direction. Probably too little, too late, but what can you do?

Obviously, there’s not going to be a “new rule” about anything, here. What are the odds of a situation like this ever coming up again? It’s simply a case of the mods trying to prevent an already ugly situation from becoming exponentially uglier, and from spilling over into real life.

54

I am the one that called Equipoise a dumbass, and would like to apologize for that.

I got caught up in the emotional bullshit of that thread. I usually don’t get that emotionally involved in Pit threads, and consider the flaming more entertainment. This time I did.

I am a bit embarrassed for getting that twisted up in that trainwreck. And I was wrong to castigate Equipoise for doing nothing more than pointing out the possibilities that someone who posts x amount of personal info could get outed.

Again, Equipoise, my apologies.

ETA: I didn’t report your post, BTW, I don’t believe in post reporting.

55

Miller and yojimbo, i get what you’re saying, and i agree that some people did give the impression that they might actually go further than making threats, and might actually start doing some private eye work in order to expose the poster in question. And i also agree that we probably want to discourage that sort of thing.

My point, i guess, is that the Mods’ actions neither prevented any of this, nor did anything to correct the problem, and so, like many other half-assed mod/admin decisions, ended up being little more than window dressing.

After all, if someone were the sort of person who really wanted to find out those types of personal details from past posting history, i’m sure they would have known how to do it without Equipoise’s post, and without all those other similar posts. Hell, i remember thinking, before anyone actually raised it in the thread, that finding out the poster’s identity probably wouldn’t be very hard for a determined person.

Also, while the mods shut down the thread to discourage such posts, the posts that were already made remain on the server, so the damage that they were (allegedly) doing is still there for any interested person to see. I don’t want the threads, or the offending posts, deleted, but if preventing this sort of thread-trawling for previously-posted information were truly the intention, then that would be the logical solution.

And, finally, i guess i remain adamant that it’s our own responsibility, individually, to safeguard our own personal information to the extent that we feel is appropriate. Once i post something here, i know it’s here for good, and if i’m worried that something i post might come back to haunt me in the future, then i won’t post it. The Board rules explicitly warn people about posting too much personal information, and i think that the warning, combined with people’s own common sense, should be enough, without warnings about posting material that is accessible via the SDMB’s own search engine.

Just MHO.

56

In my opinion, the reason we are requested to not post personal information here, and why the warnings against posting it like those handed out in the recent trainwreck are not to protect posters from harm, but to protect The Chicago Reader from lawsuits if posters are harmed.

57

I resemble that remark!

I mean… fuck… :smack:

58

And THAT’S exactly the argument I was anticipating. I knew someone would say it’s o.k. because “anyone could do it”. Well “anyone” didn’t do it, Equipoise (and apparently others) did. And I think that’s fucked-up. And if you think calling me names is going to bother me, you obviously don’t know me.

In my opinion, giving hints as to how someone could invade another member’s privacy is crossing a line. If all you’ve got is the “anyone could do it” argument (oldest and weakest argument in the book), and name-calling, I’m not impressed.

59

Why is there a difference? What exactly is the difference between:

“Here is some personal info I got from another thread which could be used to find this person’s identity, and here is an explanation of how one might go about doing so.”

and…

“Here is some personal info I googled which could be used to find this person’s identity, and here is an explanation of how one might go about doing so.”

Please explain how the first is perfectly o.k. in your mind but the second is not. :confused:

60

Exactly.