Question for skeptics*

[The Laughing Man]

*particularly those who run or moderate online forums

I have a question about the following:

In the Coach's Quarters, Farrell Till stated, "Max Tresmond ... spent most of his time threatening to sue us because we had used internet searches to find out his real name. He had posted under the name "Violinist Max," but when we posted the information about him [name, age, and address] ..."

This has also happened to me in the past, though not on Till's forum. I wised up quickly and started using anonymizing services, but the skeptics still tried to post what they thought was my personal information. (Recently, Infidel Guy and his forum mods took great exception to this and closed the forums to guests and blocked the IP for the anonymous service I was using.)

My question is this: is posting a person's personal information a common practice among skeptics in forums?

Follow-up questions may follow depening on the responses.

[Xmansmommy]

Dear Jinx,
To be totally honest, this is only the third message board that I have ever participated in, and none of the others to this extent. I honestly have no clue. Sorry I can't be of more help to you. Perhaps others may have something of significance to add.

[ACow]

Posting a person's personal information is a common practice amongst...how should i put this....wankers...

I don't run or moderate on other forums, but i have bumped into the "i'll post your personal details" phenomenon afew times on the ones that i have visited. Its always been by an angry individual though, never a mod or an admin or respectable member etc.

That being said, i have seen such anonymizing services and i.p changes used by said/similar people to get past bans and spam on sites, so they've often ended up blocking/denying their use on principle because they keep gettting used against them.

So i'd say no. Its not a common practice of skeptics. It is a common practice of idiots who want to try to lash out at you in some way, and yeah, the two groups aren't independant of each other. If its worth anything, one guy i'm particularly thinking of who did such a thing was christian/apologetic (in name at least), so its a "universal idiot" thing...

[EDIT: Oh, i should say the other guy/incident i'm thinking of is a rabid athiest, just so i dont appear biased. I should also point out most of the forums i've visited have been non-denominational/belief specific, so i can't really say what thiestic/skeptic boards are like compared to each other]

[The Laughing Man]

I'll have to take your word on that. I personally have never experienced that on any Christian forums - and I've been on a lot!

What I'd really like is to hear from Farrell Till in this thread. I'd like to know what rationalization these people use in deciding to violate a person's privacy (particularly if they happen to be Christian) while protecting their own.

[Celsus]

Hi,

I've seen this happen on II, in different circumstances. In all the cases, it was the administrator's policy to remove references involving the people. In one case, the name of a teacher at a high school came up, and this too was eventually struck off the entire thread because it might have compromised him in the case of legal action. One thread that appeared was a case of someone urging us to send hate mail to someone else. Needless to say, the entire thread was deleted.

Another more complicated case was a student who had been caught of plagiarising, and she started a thread which most people interpreted as a testing ground for excuses. Eventually, someone reported the thread to her college, and again, there was a massive outcry--in this case, both pro and con because of the nature of her cheating (this one was never really settled--she had voluntarily revealed the information prior to that). It most definitely would be condemned on II if it was revealed for the sole purpose of hunting people down.

Please note, however, I have nothing to do with the way the iidb boards are run. I just correct typos in boring papers.

Joel Ng
Editor, The Secular Web
http://www.infidels.org

P.S. Speaking in a personal capacity, people who do such things are complete tossers.

[John Powell]

Jinx72:
What I'd really like is to hear from Farrell Till in this thread. I'd like to know what rationalization these people use in deciding to violate a person's privacy (particularly if they happen to be Christian) while protecting their own.


POWELL:
I will attempt to give what I suspect would be Farrell's defense mixed with my own observations. He would likely claim that his personal information is available (personal address, etc.) so others should be willing to do the same.

My impression from reading The Skeptical Review was that Farrell felt it was wrong for people to defend some point of Biblical errancy then turn around and try again without having to admit to having been defeated in an earlier debate. He wanted, I think, to be able to defeat an apologist in one round and be able to use that against them for the rest of their lives. He wanted them to put their names to their apologetic works if they really supported them.

Partly because of that, I avoided any effort to hide my identity when I joined II Errancy. I found later, however, that this was not necessarily the wisest course of action. The assurances I heard expressed by him and others that one should have no fear of revealing their true identity at II Errancy were shown to be disingenuous. I think they preferred knowing such personal information partly so they could use it against someone they didn’t like.

Their great efforts to identify someone against their will is largely motivated, I think, by their desire to neutralize their opposition by identifying them as “trolls” or so they only have to defeat a new person once.

John Powell.