Privacy Concerns: Why I would never edit Citizendium

[Denis Cavanagh]

You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Anyone who contributes here understands and accepts that these are our real personas.

No one is forcing you to sign up as a contributor if you choose not to accept this policy.

As usual, I have no idea why you are being so hostile. The man has legitimate concerns and saying 'if you don't like the rules, get out!' isn't helping anyone.

[Christian Kleineidam]

Anyone, and I mean _anyone_ can view all that information simply by typing my name into google.

A google search doesn't bring you to the citizendium article of a person. The things on the history page are robot.txt protected and aren't indexed.

In general I don't see that we don't have posts on gay issues.
There are people out there that study gender issues and have academic expertise in the topic. I don't see why someone like that would worry being associated with an article about gay liberation.
Fortunatly those are exactly the people that we want to create articles about the issue because they have expertise.

I'm sorry but I don't see the irony in Hayford's post.

I think there is even issue that the thread starter brought up that should be open to discussion:
What do we gain from saving the time on which a poster wrote something? As long as we have a date of the edit and the right order of edits I don't see why we need the time.

Removing the information about the timming after a day or week would also be an option, if someone thinks that it matters whether something was written 1 hour or 6 hours ago.

[Hayford Peirce]

Irony, like humor, I fear, probably is not always apparent if the language it is being deployed in is not one's native tongue.  I'll try not to indulge in it in the future.

But addressing the point that I was originally trying to make, about how anonymity lends courage to the fearful, here's a copy of what I just wrote in another, new, Forum topic started by me. I think it's apropos to this discussion:

"Poor old Arthur C. Clarke has only been dead 24 hours now, or even less, and already in the talk page of his article at WP there are approximately 10 million impassioned words dredging up the same subject that has already filled several Archives of the Clarke article, to wit, Was he gay, bi, a pederast, straight, neither, none, some or all of the above, and, if so, based on what sources, and even more so, should it be mentioned in his article, and if so, how, and... and... and....

"They looked like the same 10 million words that were written two or three years ago, or whenever it was the last time I looked at the place.

"One thing I did note: as before, none of the impassioned commentary was written by anyone who signed his real name...."

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I agree completely with Hayford: there is a certain sincerity attached to signing one's name to a letter, publication or comment -- regardless of whether that be in private, a limited public domain or on the internet.

Insofar as employers are concerned, if they are actually prepared to invest time and money in poking around on the internet for gossip, personal postings and possible or attributed postings of potential employees, two related questions arise, in my mind. The first is: "Would you want to work for such a person/company?" and the second: "If they behave in such an intrusive way for potential employees, presumably we can surmise that the way they treat actual employees is worse and not confined to internet searches?"

Of course, there are legitimate security and privacy concerns about the presence of personal data on the web. It is clear that certain personal details should never be revealed for these reasons, but CZ does not publish any more than your name and whatever you choose to write in your biography page. With care on your part, a CZ identity is highly unlikely to contribute anything that would assist in the criminal fraud of identity theft, for example. If such a case were ever to occur, I am sure that we would rethink the realnames policy in detail.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

There are people out there that study gender issues and have academic expertise in the topic. ... Fortunatly those are exactly the people that we want to create articles about the issue because they have expertise.

Not only that, but they are more likely to be able to cover the subject in a dispassionate manner.

Noel

[trying to be anonymous]

I have a story relating to the use of pseudonyms.

I wrote an article on Wikipedia which appeared first on Google search.  The author of a major book on the subject tried to blank my article multiple times without discussion. When the blanking failed, the author put a personal attack containing false statements about me on their somewhat popular website.

If I had written the article on Citizendium instead of Wikipedia these false statements about me would have appeared with my real name instead of my pseudonym. 

I don't have a issue when articles are published in obscure technical journals using my real name.  However, somehow the WWW is different. For example, I am sure somewhere there is someone who thinks one of my patents is total crap and I would have to be a total idiot to write such a thing, but no one will go to the trouble of posting a personal attack about it on a popular website.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

There are a few personal attacks on me on the internet: I don't give a #$%^ about them. Anyone with half a brain can see that the authors have some sort of agenda, and are writing crap. Life is too short to worry about quarter-brained idiots who write crap.

[Aleta Curry]

There are a few personal attacks on me on the internet: I don't give a #$%^ about them. ...

Yes, Martin, but you had the advantage of being able to approach this with (ahem!) age, accomplishment, and the security of an established reputation.  It may not be so easy for someone with less self-assuredness.


Dear TTBA,

The only thing I can say is that such things can happen.

But they happen in real life as well.

If I had my druthers, I'd ruther we were back in the days where you could sue the living *** off somebody would say anything bad about you they couldn't prove.  Alas, society is fast going to Hades in a hand basket.

People tend to argue that the Internet is different, because you can reach more people over the Internet and therefore cause more devastaing trouble.  Well, I know for a fact that that's not necessarily true, and I can remember a most serious and malicious incident from my youth (I wasn't the victim, but I knew her well) and the harm it caused and the young woman in question could do nothing to stop the gossip or to clear herself from it.

In any case, no one or two or two-and-twenty incidents is enough to negate the benefits of requiring real names, which is just the same as the requirement in real life for a person publishing in any medium of any calibre at all.

You wrote:

"If I had written the article on Citizendium instead of Wikipedia these false statements about me would have appeared with my real name instead of my pseudonym. "

No, and no. You're drawing a conclusion based on false premises.

1) If you had written the article on CZ instead of WP, whichever one of you was the idiot would have become very clear very fast.  2) Famous book author cum website operator would not have been able to blank your article several times without discussion in the first place.  4)The correct information would be publicly supported, whoever wrote it--we'll assume for the sake of argument that that was you. 3)Book author would have to justify any invasive surgery performed  5)S/he would certainly have had no justification for writing anything false about you on said website, and would have been exposed for a liar if s/he had.  There are the differences.

If you only want to publish reputable work using your true name in obscure journals, by all means stick with that.  If you are expert in something and the subject is an esoteric one, I very much doubt you'd get into any trouble at all publishing at CZ.  If the subject is a popular one and you are not an expert in it, well, yes, you'll have people arguing with you.  Big deal.

[Tom Morris]

The only difference, in my eyes, is that when you publish an article in journal or magazine, only the final, copy-edited, peer-reviewed version makes it to the public eye. You don't publish the entire process of creating the article, revealing all the drafts, omissions and errors on the way. It is the nature of wikis to expose those things.

So what? Making mistakes - even ignorant mistakes - is not against the law.

Also, when it comes to controversial or political topics, many traditional media do publish under pseudonyms. Even highly respectable publications like The Economist have columns by pseudonymous authors. I can't imagine that many authors are going to dare editing the Citizendium article on "Gay Liberation" for instance unless they are openly gay.

Why, exactly? I've edited Citizendium pages on social Darwinism, fascism, racism, anti-intellectualism and Christianity. I don't believe any of those doctrines. I would quite happily edit a page on gay liberation - my sexual preferences, like my religious or political beliefs - are irrelevant to what I write on Citizendium.

The Economist, by the way, does not publish bylines at all (reference). For the vast majority of journalism, pseudonyms are not used. And where it is, it is so that a person can write personal opinions without threatening their professional regulations (example: the British conservative opinion writer and general medical practitioner Anthony Daniels - pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple - who wrote opinion pieces for the Spectator under that name so that it didn't connect with his medical practice). Again, Citizendium is not the Spectator or the Economist. It's an encyclopedia project. Such pseudonymity is not required.

[Robert_W_King]

I'd write about Gay Liberation if I was a sociologist or a psychologist; but it's just not my field of expertise or experience.  I'd write factually and completely.

However, I don't like to speculate on or fudge things I don't know.

[ArtDowns]

The use of real names (and screen names that are easily linked to real names through profiles and published phone numbers) goes a long way to assure civility on the Net.

My screen name has changed little since I first signed on with AOL before there was unlimited use.  I have used a frivolous screenname for a piece of satire that got a big reaction.  Some folks don't seem to appreciate satire.

I write letters to newspapers, magazines, and elected officials. I always give my name and address.  When I communicate via amateur radio, I use a call sign that can be linked to my name and address.  This assures a civility unlike what was found at the height of the 'hobby CB' era (with fanciful 'handles').

Should the net be a medium for rational and civil discourse or is to degenerate to an electronic version of a public bathroom wall, with anonymous notes reeking of insecurity and inadequacy.

I did note that when I 'googled' my ZIP+4 number, three items showed up.  One was the full text of a letter sent to the WaPo and included my full address and work and home phone numbers.  This was a bit much but it did not bother me.

[Tom Morris]

Insofar as employers are concerned, if they are actually prepared to invest time and money in poking around on the internet for gossip, personal postings and possible or attributed postings of potential employees, two related questions arise, in my mind. The first is: "Would you want to work for such a person/company?" and the second: "If they behave in such an intrusive way for potential employees, presumably we can surmise that the way they treat actual employees is worse and not confined to internet searches?"

I hope that any future employer that is considering me for employment will read what I write on Citizendium. If I didn't want people reading it, I wouldn't write it.

And I like ArtDowns post. Why is it that, oh, The Philosophical Quarterly gets by quite fine with a real name policy, but the wall of a public toilet does not? Don't answer that. 

[Robert_W_King]

And I like ArtDowns post. Why is it that, oh, The Philosophical Quarterly gets by quite fine with a real name policy, but the wall of a public toilet does not? Don't answer that. 

Hilarious, Tom.

[David E. Volk]

Why would one pseudonym waste time slandering another pseudonym.

We still get a laugh when bands call to set up gigs at the club asking for our mock names "Neil Down" and "Gene Pool".