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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)
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)
no subject
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.
no subject
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. :/