Mark Ryan wrote:
With the high profile cases where administrators
have been stalked in
real life as a result of personally identifiable information they post
on the wiki, I feel it's mad for people to post their real names, let
alone photos of themselves, names of loved ones or photos of loved
ones. Sure, if you stay out of trouble on the wiki the chances of such
a thing happening is pretty slight, but there's plenty of nutcases out
there to go around.
I don't know Lara and I haven't followed this thread, but
I would speculate that her attitude might be similar to mine:
I refuse to grant those nutcases that much power. Some tiny
number of them exist, who have perpetrated some tiny number of
(albeit high-profile) atrocities, and now suddenly nobody else on
the entire planet can post pictures of their children to the net?
No; I defy that lopsided capitulation.
I absolutely agree. Much of this is a
matter of trying to find a middle
way between the nutcases and paranoiacs. There is no evidence to show
that the proportion of nutcases is any higher than it ever has been.
They just have more tools (as do we), and the media relishes giving them
more importance than they deserve. There's something dreadfully wrong
when we cannot perform normal acts for the sole speculative reason that
we might be face-to-face with a nutcase. Being overly protective of
children is damaging too when it prevents them from gaining normal life
experience.