I'm totally with you. I don't like the idea of public shamings generally, to be honest -- I don't know that there should have been a public shaming regarding the Secret Santa last week either. Although that was less private info than AEs.
I think there's also a lot of potential for bad calls/inconsistency once you start going down that road, even by the most well-intending mods. If something really, really bad happens, IP ban the poster. But then don't tell people who it was.
In the ML life situation, it wasn't even *that* bad. Someone started a poll under an AE about someone's hair. The point was to insult the person, obviously, and it was cruel and immature, but it seems like a kind of minor incident to be honest.
Only two of us have the power to crossreference posts by IP address--me and Ellie. If you really want to be extra secure, you can stop those IPs from matching by using a proxy server when you post--it's very easy to do.
My personal philosophy is that AEs should never be outed based on the content of their posts. One exception--we had two semi-regular posters who were repeatedly posting personal info about Miso on ML under AEs. After we kept deleting it and they kept doing it, we outed their "regular" names.
I've never seen a reason to out an AE on MM, and I don't anticipate there ever would be one.
I agree it's not cool to reveal the person's "regular" name. It seems mods should have to abide by certain rules, but I get that moderating a board is a PITA and it's not practical to boot a mod.
As I understand it, Ellie provided the real name to the ML mods today after their request and they shared the name. The thread the AE posted was reported by at least 6-7 different people as harassment. I think if Ellie had it to do over, she wouldn't have shared the name, but sometimes these things are judgement calls and I think Ellie generally shows very good judgement.
If it had been me, I would have left everything (including deleting the thread) to the ML mods, because moderating things over there is more trouble than it's worth.
One exception--we had two semi-regular posters who were repeatedly posting personal info about Miso on ML under AEs. After we kept deleting it and they kept doing it, we outed their "regular" names.
Couldn't that have been solved by IP banning them though? I mean, that's awful, but I don't know that telling on them is the right thing for a mod to do. I think when mods are serving their mod function, they should be there to make bad things go away -- not to add to the drama.
One exception--we had two semi-regular posters who were repeatedly posting personal info about Miso on ML under AEs. After we kept deleting it and they kept doing it, we outed their "regular" names.
Couldn't that have been solved by IP banning them though? I mean, that's awful, but I don't know that telling on them is the right thing for a mod to do. I think when mods are serving their mod function, they should be there to make bad things go away -- not to add to the drama.
I don't feel any need to protect the privacy of a poster who is repeatedly posting personal information about someone. IP banning is also trickier than it sounds--most regulars are accessing the board from 2-3 places, between work, home, and phones.
If you just google free proxy server there are a million of them, and it's usually as simple as entering the URL you want to go to in a box on their site. Basically you're routing your web traffic through a different IP address so all we see is the proxy server and not your real IP address (actually in the new boards we can't see the IPs themselves, but we can still cross reference them)
Couldn't that have been solved by IP banning them though? I mean, that's awful, but I don't know that telling on them is the right thing for a mod to do. I think when mods are serving their mod function, they should be there to make bad things go away -- not to add to the drama.
I don't feel any need to protect the privacy of a poster who is repeatedly posting personal information about someone. IP banning is also trickier than it sounds--most regulars are accessing the board from 2-3 places, between work, home, and phones.
Also some ISPs assign rotating or random IPs to users.
I guess I'm in the minority, but I am not opposed to the outing. I don't get how being able to say crappy things without saying who is really saying it is a privacy issue to be honest. It's not that persons real name and address. That's privacy. But the fact they are a regular board poster (and that particular indenity) doesn't rise to the level for me.
I can also see a distinction between an AE used to abuse vs one for protection of particular family, financial and health information.
Note: I didn't read the thread or what was said. I just understand it was a given she was mocking someone. We shouldn't outlaw mocking (to the extent not harassing) but what's wrong with asking people to Stand behind what they say?
My gut says that if someone is being an asshole, they deserve a public shaming in a "let this be a lesson to the rest of you - you won't get away with acting like this" way.
I don't have lot of sympathy for mean girls and I trust the mods not to out people just for the heck of it.
I don't think the mods should have outed the AE. It's almost abusing their authority. I didn't see the post but is making fun of someone's bangs honestly harassing them? Maybe IRL it is, but it seems like there are a lot more hateful things said on the boards.
We can't see any part of IP addresses now, as far as I know. We can just search for other posts or users with the same IP. On the old board we could see the full IPs, but the few times I had reason to search them it would just tell me a city and an ISP. Verizon, Arlington VA. That's it. Maybe if I had some friends with fancy IP lookup skills....