Some years ago, I gave my views on the use of pseudonyms and on sockpuppetry but I want to briefly return to it to clarify a point.
There are many reasons why commenters here may wish to be anonymous and I respect that and request that readers respect it too. Please refer to other commenters by the names that they use to post their comments.
I cannot of course stop people from probing into the backgrounds of other commenters but the only information that should be used here is that which the commenter has freely given, such as by revealing it in their posts or by linking to their own websites. Clues that they may inadvertently leave that enable readers to figure out more about them should not be used. This site is neither the NSA nor the GCHQ and people should not have to go to extraordinary lengths to hide their identities or any information about themselves that they do not wish to reveal.
Thanks.
Do you, then, privilege the privacy of abusers?
I assume you don’t respect someone’s “right” to anontmously make rape.racist threats..
In other words, you should protect colnagowhathits’ racism. 🙂
If you are referring to colnago80, he’s made no secret of being the former SLC1. Even announced the name change in a post, if I recall correctly.
@Marcus,
Threats that appear credible are a different thing altogether.
Mano Singham is actually MY sockpuppet. Bwahahaha!!
i don’t understand the hatred for sock puppets. Apparently most posters are too young to remember Shari Lewis.
Threats that appear credible are a different thing altogether.
I agree. I just wanted to raise the issue that it’s not quite as cut and dried as it looks. A racist who advocates the use of nuclear weapons on civilians is someone I certainly would not privilege with privacy any more than I would a KKK member posting as such. Whether they were appearing to actually be planning something or making threats, or just advocating ethnic cleansing and use of weapons of mass destruction they’re strange bedfellows.
I disagree, Marcus, primarily because your example is not a credible threat. Maybe such a person advocates such policies but is that person a policy MAKER or otherwise any type of person with the power to do such things? Probably not. If we are commenting in a system in which anonymity is the default, everybody deserves to have that. In the case of a person who is an actual threat to the safety of himself or others, then the “outing” of that person should be directly to the relevant authorities, and not to the whole of the internet for online mobs to abuse.