This anonymity issue is one that arises quite a lot with Wikipedia and the WWW and big data generally. Just because the data is public and can be aggregated and presented in all sorts of interesting ways, there are those who would argue that it is OK to identify individuals because none of the information was “secret”. But nonetheless many people live a quiet life, do not run for public office or engage in activities that would legitimately be a matter “in the public interest” even from a journalist’s perspective. And even journalists don’t always report everything they could; there are codes of practice in most countries in relation to coverage of certain kinds of events (e.g. in Australia, the suicide of an ordinary person will not be reported). Traditionally in research we expect research subjects to be accorded the right to their privacy and hence anonymity in the reporting of data. Personally I don’t see any reason to deviate from that in relation to research findings, no matter what the source of the data, and I think that practice would be expected in most research publishing.

I think the old-fashioned principle “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” applies.

Kerry