Identifying a poster on another site

May 25, 2010 10:07 PM

Does this kind of thing violate the prohibition on bringing a poster's personal details into a thread?

I've had this done to me before and it felt kind of aggressive and stalkerish, but perhaps there is a legitimate purpose to pointing out that you've identified the OP on another site and I'm just not seeing it. What do we think?

posted by HotToddy to Etiquette/Policy at 10:07 PM (19 comments total)

HotToddy: "perhaps there is a legitimate purpose to pointing out that you've identified the OP on another site and I'm just not seeing it."

Yes, to provide more answers for anybody other than the OP who is considering the same decision.
posted by yaymukund at 10:11 PM on May 25, 2010

If you ask the same question on a few sites, don't get surprised if people don't appreciate that.
posted by smackfu at 10:30 PM on May 25, 2010

> If you ask the same question on a few sites, don't get surprised if people don't appreciate that.

Why should anyone care? In most cases, the questioner is just casting a wider net in hopes of getting what they want. I don't think of AskMe as anyone's turf that needs to be guarded from reposts from other sites, unless the poster has nefarious aims like getting something up in the search engine rankings. If that's the case it's usually pretty easy to discern and root out.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:33 PM on May 25, 2010 [24 favorites]

I'm with Burhanistan on this one.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:42 PM on May 25, 2010

A repost of the question on a different site that's easily google-able? Hardly personal details. It's not like the commenter tracked down IP addresses and cross-referenced now-deleted content on archives.org. I guess I don't really see how this is aggressive or stalker-ish at all - your AskMe is public, too, and it wouldn't hurt to be reminded of that.

As for how this might come in useful, as yaymukund said, future indecisive students making a similar decision could stumble across this thread and realize that there were more answers to the same question on a different site. Alternatively, it could also let other answerers know that the OP has explored different and more industry-specific avenues and pre-empt the answers that are just like "hey, you should ask about this on [this site]".

(Which might not have been the case here, but it does occur sometime for technical/spec knowledge questions.)
posted by Phire at 10:45 PM on May 25, 2010

Does this kind of thing violate the prohibition on bringing a poster's personal details into a thread?

It's sort of borderline.

Going out and making a connection to someone's identity elsewhere in a way that makes explicitly public some part of their identity that previously wasn't so on the site is the main issue we're concerned about, and will generally get removed quickly unless the person in question is themself really explicit about it not being a problem.

This is more of a trivial case of crossposting, and there doesn't seem to be obvious identifying info on the other end to complicate things, so it's not really such a clearcut problem. That said, it's still probably not the best idea to do that sort of thing even if you mean well, unless there's some specifically good reason to go there.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:47 PM on May 25, 2010 [2 favorites]

I had it done to me once. Someone here connected me to my different username on a different site and yes, I was a little upset. There is a reason I don't use the same username on the 2 sites. However, Jessamyn was kind enough to delete the offending post for me.

It wasn't what happened in my case, but if you simply copypaste the question in 2 different places, then it's bound to show up in Google.
posted by IndigoRain at 11:00 PM on May 25, 2010

I actually found the OP's post, essentially verbatim, during the course of a Google search prior to answering; thinking that any answers there might be useful as a reference to anyone finding the AskMe thread later, I linked to it, assuming that both posters were the same person.

That said, it's still probably not the best idea to do that sort of thing even if you mean well, unless there's some specifically good reason to go there.

I'll keep that in mind. As I said, given that the questions were identical, I thought it would be helpful to have as a reference. I certainly did not intend to bring in "personal details" (of which there are none on either site, incidentally) by linking to another site.

If the OP would prefer to not have them linked, I have no problem with cortex, jessamyn, or mathowie editing my answer. (However, as IndigoRain mentions, Google knows all.)
posted by armage at 11:49 PM on May 25, 2010

I don't think that's healthy practice, in part because of the differing user names. Some people have static identities across the web but most of us who use different user names for different sites do so for a reason. Anonymity gets easier to pick apart as you start cross-referencing user names and details across sites.

I wouldn't like it, if it were me.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:34 AM on May 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

HotToddy: "perhaps there is a legitimate purpose to pointing out that you've identified the OP on another site and I'm just not seeing it."

Yes, to provide more answers for anybody other than the OP who is considering the same decision.

In other words, it's not helpful to the OP.
posted by Jaltcoh at 4:54 AM on May 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

In other words, it's not helpful to the OP.

So? AskMe isn't just about being helpful to the OP, it's about being helpful to the OP plus anyone else who might come along later with a similar question.

That's not to say this is necessarily OK, just that I don't get what point you're trying to make.
posted by russm at 5:35 AM on May 26, 2010

So it's the outing that the OP is also the OP on the other site that is the problem, not linking to the other site, right?
posted by sexymofo at 5:53 AM on May 26, 2010

So? AskMe isn't just about being helpful to the OP, it's about being helpful to the OP plus anyone else who might come along later with a similar question.

I've always looked at AskMe as an advocate for the OP, not a resource for whatever topic the OP happens to be asking, meaning if people try to answer in service to the OP a subsequent benefit to that will be that it helps others with the same question, but that the primary function is still to serve the OP's needs first and foremost.

But looking around the guidelines I'm not sure that I'm seeing that, so maybe that's just my philosophical leanings coming in to play.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 6:01 AM on May 26, 2010

AskMe isn't just about being helpful to the OP, it's about being helpful to the OP plus anyone else who might come along later with a similar question.

Well, I would agree with the above sentence if I were reading it out of context. In other words, I do think AskMe is helpful for people other than the OP.

But one of the defining qualities of AskMe is that the commenters are always (supposed to be) guided by the goal of helping the OP. So, yes, answers are often helpful to people other than that one person, but this is just a happy byproduct of the main purpose of the site.

There's no necessary reason this must be the case. You could make a Q&A website where someone asked a question and then the thread was wide-open for people to make tangentially related comments that clearly wouldn't be useful to the OP but might be useful to random people reading the thread. I would have no objection to such a website. But that doesn't seem to be the way things are done on AskMetafilter, and I like that about the site.
posted by Jaltcoh at 6:31 AM on May 26, 2010

"Please limit comments to answers or help in finding an answer. "
posted by smackfu at 6:35 AM on May 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

AskMe isn't just about being helpful to the OP

Mostly, it is. That is its primary purpose. As Jaltcoh says, helpfulness to others is a byproduct.
posted by cribcage at 7:05 AM on May 26, 2010

I actually found the OP's post, essentially verbatim, during the course of a Google search prior to answering

We assume that this sort of thing is going to happen from time to time and yeah, the issue is with the linking of a user's other accounts not saying "hey let's look at the answers you got elsewhere"

So generally speaking, be careful with it and if it's a problem for the person with the linked identities we would go in and remove something like that [notifying the person who posted the comment also].
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:27 AM on May 26, 2010

This particular instance wouldn't bug me if the commenter had just included the link and said, "Here's a similar question on another site, so the answers that gets may be useful to you as well."

It's the connection of the other question to the AskMe OP that bothers me; that's a) gratuitous, b) borderline creepy, as if it's anyone's job to keep tabs on other places this person frequents and c) quite possibly incorrect in its assumption anyway.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:32 AM on May 26, 2010

It's just a cut-and-paste, so it's pretty clear it's the same poster.
posted by smackfu at 7:45 AM on May 26, 2010