melannen | it's been awhile since I did any Ethical Dilemma Posting

it's been awhile since I did any Ethical Dilemma Posting

Ok, so, since I'm apparently in the mood to poke at dangerous things, let's have a discussion about names, and pseudonyms, and when it is and isn't okay to connect them.

I've been wanting to talk about this for..a while. Because slash fandom (and several online communities it's adjacent to) have very strict ethical norms about connecting the name a person uses with other names they may have used in other times or contexts, best summarized as: don't.

There are of course exceptions: when the person themself is completely open about connecting the names, it seems to be considered generally okay to make the connection yourself, but to still call them by the name they prefer.

And then there are the cases when the person is changing names solely in order to engage in shenanigans: for example, I have rarely seen anyone object to the names being publicly connected if someone is sockpuppeting to evade a ban.

But then we get into trickier situations, where a person has perpetrated fell deeds under multiple names, but also had actual probably-valid reasons for using multiple names, and that's when it starts to get really tricky, right? At what point does a community's need to know about a pattern of unacceptable behavior outweigh a person's right to (re)define their online identity?

This has been coming up more and more often in my circles: right now, I'm vaguely following that trademark infringement case about that one former fanwriter that just broke, in which fanpeople are openly connecting two pseuds and a heretofore difficult-to-find legal name; but also that thing in SF fandom where that one horrible person is calling hypocrisy whenever anyone uses his original legal name instead of his ridiculously pretentious nom-de-guerre; and also the thing that went down in dinosaur fandom this week, where one of the two prime assholes involved is a trans person who is getting deadnamed and nobody's blinking.

And that's just from this week.

So. I don't actually know where I'm going with this. And obviously with something like this, every case is going to have its own special circumstances. But it seems like what happens instead is that when someone does engage in that kind of bad behavior and multiple names are involved, the discussion gets distracted by arguing about names instead of the actual incidents. I guess I'd kind of like to have a discussion with my circle about this question in the abstract, when there's nothing specifically going on to trigger it. Except that it seems like there's always something going on, at least in the margins.

So. Where do y'all draw the line? At what point is protecting a community's safety more important than protecting an ill-doer's privacy? I really really don't know where I would draw a line myself, if it came to it. In the cases I listed above, I am vaguely uncomfortable with people using fanwriter's legal name but don't care if they link her pseuds, I use SF a-hole's preferred name just because it's so ridiculous that it hurts his case, and I am uncomfortable with the paleontology deadnaming but the person in question doesn't seem to object so idk maybe it's ok - or maybe they've just learned that objecting wouldn't help.

Here let's do a stripped down hypothetical:

You are a member of online Community A. Person A is also a member of the community, and they do Bad Things. They are the kind of Bad Things that, looked at one at a time, could just be mistakes or misunderstandings, but once enough of them have become public, there is a pattern, and it's a pattern that says this is a Bad Person Who Is Hurting People. Eventually most people in Community A start avoiding Person A and they drift out of the community.

You are also a member of Community B. A few months after Person A disappeared, Person B showed up in Community B. They remind you a lot of Person A, and all the details line up, and then you hear about a couple incidents of the same Bad Things, that could be innocent on their own, but as a pattern... So you talk to a friend from Community A, and they say, oh yeah, that's Person A, they changed their pseud because an enemy from their offline life linked Person A to their legal ID and was sending them detailed death threats.

Now at this point it seems like you have only a few options, none of them good:

A. Do nothing, it's not your responsibility, they deserve a second chance, and if they keep this up someone else will figure it out soon enough.
B. Privately warn other people but tell them not to make it public. This means stalker can't find them, but also means they'll be facing a whisper campaign and newcomers won't be warned, and other people could choose to go public.
C. Post publicly in Community B about what Person B did in Community A, but leave out all details that could link Person B back to Person A, so stalker can't find them, but nobody can verify or disprove your accusations.
D. Post publicly with all details. If they didn't want stalker to find them they should have stopped being a Bad Person.

I supposed there's also combinations of those, shading up to "warn them privately to confess to the community or you'll reveal all" but none of the options are actually good. What would you do?

(edited examples for clarity)

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Sorry, by "dinosaur fandom" do you mean literal dinosaurs, or old-school fandom? If the latter, I think it's OK to say, of instance, "At that time, A-- B-- used female pronouns and the name V-- B--," but then go on to use male pronouns and that asshole's preferred current name. It was all completely on the public record, and it's not misgendering him to mention that there was a time in the past when he had a female pen name and used female pronouns. That's just a fact, and if you're not allowed to mention it you can't explain the full history of why he should be avoided at all costs.

Re: moral dilemma: depends on how bad the bad stuff is, and how dangerous they are to others. Like, are we talking plagiarism? Spreading false rumors about people? Death threats? Calling a person's boss and lying about them? Physical violence? Rape? Just as a for instance, I would not consider D for plagiarism or rumors, but I would for violence or rape.

Also, I can't tell what C would actually do. Would Community B also be warned? It seems like they're the ones at current risk. If so, would they be told,

1) "FlufferNutter is a bad person and has an identity that you would immediately recognize as bad, but I can't say why or what it is because that might endanger them. But trust me, they are bad news," or

2) "Someone in your community is bad and operating under a secret identity, but I can't say who."

1 might be a good option. 2 seems completely pointless.

Oh, I mean literal dinosaurs - there's a nice kerfuffle involving some abrasive people in paleontology about Evil Science Bloggers and Post-Publication Peer Review; you can get most of it at Jingmai OConnor Interview, if you read the comments (including a little bit of the deadnaming, although you have to get context beyond that comment thread to know that M--- M--- is trans.)

This one's less twisted than the fan thing you're referencing, and MM does not seem to have ever done anything worse than insult people's scientific abilities and general intelligence at great length and creativity, but it's a similar case of "oh, is this person the same as that person I dealt with back then under a name of a different gender? That explains a lot."

....and I meant "Tell Community B about what happened in Community A." I'll clarify that.

And I was thinking more like 1, maybe with some vagueified stories of Actual Bad Things They Have Done to top it off.

Edited 2016-02-11 00:58 (UTC)

Wow! Actual dinosaurs! Thank you, that was very entertaining (er, apart from the transphobia, but I didn't catch that in the thread itself). The capped drunken Facebook comment in a fight over the name of a fossil. Truly excellent wank.

MM does not seem to have ever done anything worse than insult people's scientific abilities and general intelligence at great length and creativity

Eh, I would probably just privately tip off people to not engage if I happened to know them. MM's prior identity and identical behavior is an interesting fact, but the behavior is annoying, not dangerous, and done in public and with their (new) name attached, so everyone in Community B can see what's up and make their own decisions based on current behavior.

If it was someone who does harm in secret, and/or if the harm was more serious, than I'd be more concerned about warning the entire community. But in this case, MM is already publicly insulting people left and right, for everyone to see. They could probably figure out on their own that this is MM's MO. The knowledge that MM also did that under a different name elsewhere doesn't add much more than entertainment value.

Yeah, that case I don't think the naming was that bad; I'm not sure the people doing it in that comment thread even knew she was trans, since her current name could just be a nickname. And she's not trying to separate herself from her online past at all.

But I feel like if it'd happened in my circles, it would've been 'yeah, that's the one, but let's stick to the name she wants people to use, ok?' instead of just 'yeah, that's the one'. And it wasn't really necessary because the person who brought up it clearly just had an old grudge, it's not like it added info to the discussion that wasn't obvious from her current blog. So it niggled at me a little as being outside the norms I'm used to.

I'm still stuck on the first case you're referencing (bc I hadn't seen that yet and woe, interesting!!!)

As for the pseudonym stuff--as you may remember I've had that issue before, so I'm really sensitive for people collapsing that boundary. Otoh, I feel it's a community convention that is meant to protect the community and its members, so I do think that B or C might be the best way to go about it. We've had some really horrible RL precedents in fandom where I think it's the community protecting its own (present and future) member.

I wasted yesterday reading about the paleontology thing and then I was going to be! productive! today just as links to the fandom thing started showing up on my feeds...

It's really hard to work out, isn't it? And of course in my hypothetical they're Defintitely A Bad Person, but in real life there's often more doubt, which makes things even harder. B and C seem to split the difference, but they also are less likely to actually *work*, in terms of stopping the person, so you may end up doing more harm that way than you prevent. :/

Depends.

1. How bad are the things? How many are they hurting? How badly are those people being hurt? What does what I know say about their likelihood of escalating harm if unidentified?

2. What are the consequences? How plausible do I find the stalker story? What are my feelings on the person's ability to deal with the risks? etc.

3. What is my position in community B and what are my responsibilities? What is community B? what kind of vulnerabilities does community B have and how do those stack up in comparison to the other issues?

These aren't rhetorical questions. These are the various things that would weigh various amounts in the situation, should I find myself in it.

Yeah, I vagueified it on purpose because if I'd given specific examples, the discussion would have been about whether the specific things were Bad Enough rather than general principles, but of course the specifics are what makes the decision possible, if it's possible at all, right?

Assume the Bad Things are Bad Enough (whatever Bad Enough would be in your ethos) and that the stalker thing is completely verified, your friend saw originals of police reports.

3 is interesting! What would you say the position is? Like, I'd probably be actually *more* likely to post, I think, if I was not in a position of power in Community B, because it would... idk, feel more like objective reporting, and less like I was throwing my weight around? On the other hand it feels like there's more responsibility to the community if you're in that central place.

I'll get back to the rest when I get home, but:

If I have a role in whatever community that means I am responsible for its members, then my responsibility to avert harm significantly out-weighs any potential responsibility I might have to avert harm to the individual threatening my community. The more potentially vulnerable members of said community are, or the more overt/significant my role of responsibility, the more this is the case.

ETA: It basically comes down to: is it my job/responsibility to look after and protect this community? Then it's my responsibility.

And I'm going to be a bit more vigorous in that if, say, said community is full of teenagers or other vulnerable people, compared to a community of adults I'm confident can look after themselves.

So basically yes, the specifics change just about everything. *g* And all of them are issues to be weighed, not switches to be flipped.

But as noted in other comments, there are some really dangerous habits of thought that one can get into, and "but it would be awful if someone outed my pseud so I can't ever do it to someone else" is one of them.

The same sort of metric was in effect with MZB (to pick an easy case): "but parts of my life are really out of mainstream/my sexuality is considered "wrong" by much of society/I've been ostracized and excluded, so I can't possibly do or say anything about this."

And yeah nah. I'm not taking that road.

Edited 2016-02-11 06:19 (UTC)

If things are bad enough and I will stop their ability to do harm, I start with C and then if the lack of verifiability becomes a significant enough problem, escalate to D.

I am really, really unimpressed with communities that consider the circumstances of their Missing Stairs as more important than the circumstances of the Missing Stairs' victims. In-group identity is a poison like that, and community norms are exactly the kind of thing that sheltered (for instance) MZB and her husband.

There comes a point where you have to deal with the toxicity in your own living-room. It sucks, it's miserable usually for everyone, but that's being human.

I mean the overarching context here (because it's me) that's probably worth noting is that my goals would always be to stop the behaviour and protect people from it.

Thus, every decision would be in that context: is this going to achieve my goal? While issues of justice and balance and so on are very emotionally compelling, I'm far more concerned with stopping the harm and protecting people from harm. And there comes a point in behaviour where people become the thing to protect FROM, rather than the thing to protect.

But I'm also not going to start throwing names around unless I actually think it's going to achieve my goals. There's no point.

E. Post about the pattern of incidents by Person B. Say "I hope Community B isn't going to stand for this kind of thing, I've seen patterns of behaviour like this before in community A, and it starts off looking plausibly deniable but over time the pattern is really obvious and destructive, so let's not let behaviour like that happen here."

That sounds like a good compromise! Although given my experience of these kinds of things, it would immediately lead to all of B's defenders saying "but this is totally different from all those other times! B isn't the kind of person who could do that!"

Oh, probably. But it's not those people I care about convincing, it's the people who've been on the receiving end of the bad behaviour, or who might be in future, or those who have thought something was a bit off but couldn't put their finger on it. Point to a recognisable pattern, and make it clear you think it's Bad Behaviour

"Well, B might not *mean* to be as bad as that pattern we see in Community A, but these two examples I mention are worrying, so perhaps B needs to be more careful about their behaviour."

I like this option.

Also wrt the stalker, depending on the potential severity, I *might* be inclined to not directly use their previous username that could be picked up by a search engine but something suggestive enough so that people could figure it out. Just in case stalker was, you know, stalking and trolling around looking for mentions and put pieces together.

There's actually case where person A was behaviour Shittily, and then, later, it became clear that they were now going by Pseud B, but had not made this generally known.

And I... have basically just sat on it? Because to the best of my knowledge they are not engaging in the shitty behaviour that distinguished their earlier career. It's not even like there's extenuating circumstances, like they changed their pseud because they were transitioning, or because they were being stalked. It seems like they just changed their pseud because they were tired of being known as the shitty person who did the shitty thing?

Man, I dunno, if they're not being a shit-head anymore, great.

OTOH, I do have a folder full of screencaps I'm prepared to whip out if they backslide. So it's not like I'm embracing forgiveness.

Trust but verify?

Not quite your question, but related.

Also re: the legal case, I thought all the relevant identities were open secrets, unless S. K. has a secret identity too?

I didn't know CC's legal name? I think it was a sort of open secret, in that you had to have made an effort to be in the know in order to know it, and in fandom spaces people didn't use it openly. That seems to be out the window now that it's in the legal filing.

Oh! I actually downloaded and skimmed the pdf, but didn't notice her government name because I wasn't looking for it. I'm not going back and looking, though, because it makes me feel ooky.

Yeah, I mean, it is on the record now, so whatever if people want to, but it does make me personally feel ooky too.

I never knew her legal name until now, but I wouldn't use it -- her pseuds are what she goes by, so I figure that the pseuds are the only relevant names at this point.

And in general on that point, I don't know enough yet about SK to make any informed decision on the merits, although from what I can see, and not being a lawyer even on the internet, I don't really think that SK has a leg to stand on -- and I wonder if CC had non-friend legal advice in the situation.

But there are others (AB is obv. the obv. choice) where the behavior is so bad and it's such a recurring pattern that I do think fans should be warned using his preferred name and pronouns, but linking back to early psueds as proof of the accusation.

I'm really amused by her being accused of plagiarism by SK because... honestly? CC is twice the writer, for all her derivativeness, and kleptomaniac tendencies.

Cassie's style doesn't suit me, but that is a personal quibble. I have read the first three books, and they do move quickly, and she's a decent writer.

I'm sorry this happened, because I'm always concerned on how these things will affect other professional writers and fan writers (the only real difference in many cases is that pros get paid).

I hope it can be resolved without bloodshed.

If there really was an actual trademark violation around the use of Dark Hunters (which apparently there was) and part of that settlement was an agreement to also back off on using Shadow Hunters as a trademark (which apparently there was) and she's now got a TV series with Shadow Hunters in the title (which apparently there is) I think there might be a case around that.

And presumably the similarities in content aren't arguing a copyright violation, they're arguing that the products in question are similar enough that CC's use of the trademark is materially reducing the value of SK's trademark.

I don't think there's a copyright case, but trademark is different. Especially if they're violating a previous agreement.

But I haven't actually read the pdfs yet. And who knows what they will end up actually arguing.

Yeah, but as I said, I'm stuck on the common word issue -- I've had some fan friends who went pro and wanted to trademark a created word, but weren't allowed -- they could SM it, but now TM it.

But you probably know more about this than I do.

Yeah, if Person B was pretty much behaving, and they were in a different milieu, I wouldn't say anything. (I know there are people in fandom who would disagree, and even people who would say being outed is a fitting punishment for old crimes, but I hope there are not many of them.) People can decide to become better people. (And I know at least one case where the problem was serious undiagnosed mental illness and once the drama broke they realized, oh, shit, all of these people are telling me that was not ok and I didn't realize it, I think I'm actually sick, I should get treated. That is a story that should allow them a second chance, and it's a story they shouldn't have to be public about in order to get a second chance.)

...I might still quietly warn an individual person if it was, like, somebody who was apparently reformed but with a sketchy history around consent offering to lead, like, a youth group. Or if there were possibilities of it creating a legal or PR problem for the group as a whole if it came out later; that would be a case where I might quietly talk to the leadership first. But even then I might have to think about it, because people do deserve a second chance. (I think it would also make a difference if Person A gave some indication that they knew they were wrong before disappearing. Although sometimes disappearing is all you can do and apologies don't help anything, so, *shrug*)

And if they're interacting under a different name with the exact same group of people they screwed around with before, even if they're making a clean start, I would feel a lot weirder than if they'd moved on. "This new friend is secretly the same person who screwed over those folks over there" feels a lot different from "this new friend is the same person who screwed you over". And also feels less like making a new start and more like being creepy. But even then it might depend on circumstances.

IDK. I want to be in favor of second chances, but this is revealing that I have more caveats than I'd thought.

Yeah. And I am not in the fandom in question, so I could be monitoring more closely. But I know I'm not the only person aware of the situation.

Well, I'm gonna say, re: copyright/trademark infringement: she got outed because a legal case was filed against her for trademark infringement. I don't know if you've read the whole filing through, but I did because morbidly curious. This isn't about what she might have done as a person writing fanfiction for no profit on the internet. This is about legally actionable behavior done in a professional creative sphere. Some of which, to be fair, seems to be a problem with her publisher - why weren't they on top of this?? this is a problem that could have been fixed with CUT AND PASTE REBRANDING TEN YEARS AGO before it turned into what may be a multi-million dollar lawsuit - but it's not a case of individuals going after a fan or deadnaming her. She got named in a lawsuit. Also, her two pseuds are 1 letter apart, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Uh, from personal experience, option B. No, it's not a good option, but it's the one that draws the least direct heat to me, and I know enough people that information can go pretty far. That's all I'm gonna say in a public DW post. ;)

eta: I wouldn't go route C because people are just going to immediately demand receipts. If you go B, you can give receipts privately.

Edited 2016-02-11 04:57 (UTC)

Yeah, when your two pseuds are that close I don't care if you claim you're trying to keep them separate, you're clearly trying to bank on name recognition.

But she'd kept her legal name pretty much out of it (I mean, I've been casually following the saga for fifteen years and had no idea what it was until yesterday), and I don't really like the idea of "you got involved in a lawsuit so haha we don't have to care anymore." That seems like it sets a bad precedent. Being involved in a lawsuit doesn't mean you deserve whatever you get. (I mean, in this particular case it probably does, because past the point you're signing movie deals you probably should no longer expect to keep your legal name out of the press. But then again there are people who still argue about whether we should ever use Tiptree's legal name.)

I mean, as a general rule, I agree with you that lawsuits are not in & of themselves reason to out someone. But in this particular case, I honestly don't care. Are the repercussions of a pattern of behavior in someone's private fannish life that spilled into their professional authorial life finally coming to bear with consequences? She wasn't sued as [legal name] for something unrelated to her work, she was sued as her public authorial identity with legal name required for further ID. This isn't about her fannish life, either. She made a choice to chose a pen name that's BASICALLY THE SAME as her pseud. None of these things are true about Tiptree, to the best of my knowledge.

I could live without early 2000s internet wank (all of which I was present for and many close friends were in internet/RL proximity) getting dragged up constantly, especially the adjacent con artist stuff, because it's hurtful to my friends who were swept up in the drama. A lot of that drama is about people who have had f2f relationships, including meeting at Nimbus (which I attended), but aired in text on the internet in a way that's left a permanent record. Do I have a grudge against [person]? Not personally, really. But I could live with her getting judged by a court of law instead of the court of public opinion 24/7, so hopefully we have something more recent and clear to point to the next something she does something.

Yeah, I mean, she's sort of a special case, because of all that history and how long it's been ongoing and how the drama had kept spilling over (I keep seeing people defending her by naming all the fun, cool YA authors she's friends with, and wanting to go, no, you don't understand, roping in good people to be her defenders is part of her pattern, you should be sad that they're going to inevitably end up in her drama.)

It'll be good to see it in a court of law, but on the other hand apparently SK is not drama-free herself, so there are tons of ways for it to get worse in the process, and I could've done without it getting dragged up again at all.

...and yeah, none of that applies to Tiptree, who as far as I know was a beautiful person all 'round, but Tiptree never voluntarily gave up the non-pseud identity, just conceded once it was clear the cat was out of the bag. So it's part of an ongoing debate of whether authors (paid, pro authors) have a right to stay behind a pseud of choice, or whether merely being pro concedes that right to privacy.

Although -- you can't trademark names or common words. You could probably get her on fonts the names are printed in, or the logos being too similar.

I'm no lawyer. But I'm interested to see what happens.

Hope they both have good lawyers.

B, with concrete examples and text excerpts as available. I probably only tell one other person, maybe two, just so they can keep an eye on this potential problem when I'm not around. If I think further action is needed, I also have them to discuss it with (although, a neutral party might be better, come to think of it).

Then again, I admit I did publicly connect several usernames when I got sick of his dumb ass trying to stalk me. No real names were used.

Dinosaur fandom is a lot more dramatic than I envisioned.

Academia in general has every kind of drama you can imagine, but dinosaur fandom especially can go strange places, since there are so many non-professionals who also get really excited about dinosaurs.

I'm usually too clueless to end up in the knowledgeable insider position. I always miss these wanks going on or don't notice things like dodgy behavior until they end up summarized on a fandomwank wiki, even if I am in that fandom at the relevant time.

Yeah, there's always that way out of the trouble. <_< I somehow tend to be better at noticing these things online than in RL; in RL I would completely miss that anything at all was happening. Until I innocently said something unaware that it would touch off a storm. Even online I'm usually the person who is skeptical of the conspiracy theory until all the evidence is out there, though.

I tend to miss things in RL too. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think I have a somewhat phlegmatic disposition that just makes me not care very much about subtle community moods or something.

I think in your example I'd actually try to confront B privately about their bad behavior before I started a whisper campaign of talking behind their back or a public revelation to get them to stop (even if the chance of success was low) because direct confrontation seems fairer to me. That is unless their bad behavior isn't merely unpleasant but they'd be likely to threaten me seriously in turn, like they also do credible death threats or that level of harassment. And then I'd care less about threats they'd face in turn tbh.

I have a fairly high tolerance of direct conflict and confrontation, but very little patience for maneuvering or doling out information among allies or any such politicking. So I'd try the most direct and open way to resolve thing among concerned parties.

Oh gosh, I'm so glad I'm merely dipping my toes into dinosaur fandom -- I'm much more of a Cenozoic fangirl.

And really, I have no idea what the right thing to do in the hypotethical is, if there even is one. They all seem like bad options, and I suppose I'd have to decide who it bothered me the least to hurt...

I follow a couple of blogs, but it's just enough that when something like this happens I get enough of a hint to go find it. :P I like the Cenozoic too, but most of the real paleo batshittery tends to cluster around archosaurs and squamates for some reason.

(It's also always about who gets to name a species. There's a reason I want that AU where officially naming a species give you the power to summon it to fight for you. It would explain why all the drama around naming, and you could resolve the drama with pokemon battles in the atria of natural history museums.)

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it's been awhile since I did any Ethical Dilemma Posting

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