On 8/3/07, ElinorD elinordf@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/2/07, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
As for limiting the damage: what people have been trying to tell you -- and what some people just don't seem to get -- is that the measures being taken *aren't* limiting the damage. For one, the outing itself is already done; the worms can't be stuffed back into the can. Beyond that, though, the people whose questions are being silenced are *not* the ones you need to be defending against. The people who would harass SlimVirgin over this are not watching her talk page for news about this; they have rather more effective methods of finding such things out. The people who *are* asking, on the other hand, aren't doing so out of malice, and lashing out against them accomplishes nothing useful.
Kirill
Kirill, some of the people who asked were not doing so out of malice; some were. Here's one (message redacted by me) who was.
Quick Questions
Hello. Is your name now or has it ever been ________? Are you living in ________ under the name of ________? Have ypu even been employed by a government intelligence agency?
Just wondering.
Kisses! :) ~~~~ That user replaced the message on Sarah's page after it had been removed by an administrator, sent an obscene email to the admin who blocked him, posted about it on another website showing no regret, and has a record of vandalism and BLP violations on Wikipedia. Do you seriously think that it was an honest and innocent question, and that it didn't even occur to the user that the question might be unwelcome? Do you seriously think that ending it with "kisses" was not taunting? And that wasn't the only trolling question on Sarah's page.
As for those who did post in good faith (this is addressed to John Lee as well, since he has made similar statements), the only credible reaction from someone whose good faith question was removed from Sarah's page would be, "Oops, sorry. I should have used private email." And yes, these people should use private email if their only motive is to inform Sarah of something they think she might not know about, but which may breach her privacy. That's what I did recently when I came across something which I thought she should know, but which I thought she might not like me to post about on her talk page.
I've stopped responding to the thread because we're not going to go anywhere productive with it, but the fact is, we don't punish stupidity done in good faith. I am also wondering why it's fine to discuss potential outings on the list, but not on SV's talk page. Since both are public fora, if we delete good faith discussions from SV's page, should the list mods now be placing whoever originally brought up this topic on moderation?
Johnleemk