Posting personal information of other people not kosher

May 17, 2005 5:19 PM

Good idea: Playing with kittens. Bad idea: posting the address and phone number of someone tangentially involved in a news story, who didn't do anything wrong, can't do anything about the situation, and actually tried to help in the only way he could. Oh yeah, and who may not even be the actual person referred to in the story.
posted by Saucy Intruder to Etiquette/Policy at 5:19 PM (11 comments total)

I flagged it, and would recommend other readers to flag it as well. Certainly inappropriate.
posted by VulcanMike at 5:24 PM on May 17, 2005

I'm deleting it. That's fucked up, and contributes to a attack dog mob mentality. Did the poster want people to ring his phone off the hook blaming him for things he didn't do?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:29 PM on May 17, 2005

For the record, the comment was

street address removed
Kingwood, TX 77345-1240
phone number removed

This is the only listing on whitepages.com for "Gorham," the new valedictorian. Maybe somebody who has more guts than I have should give him/her a call and tell him/her to make some kind of stand in his/her speech.

posted by jessamyn at 5:31 PM on May 17, 2005

thanks, number one.

What's the appropriate flag category? I picked "other" - it's not really noise, derail, or offensive. Maybe we need a generalized "WTF" flag.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 5:36 PM on May 17, 2005

like #1 said, that is fucked up. When I first saw that comment, my jaw hit the floor.

I think Saucy Intruder is onto something with the WTF flag idea...
posted by C17H19NO3 at 5:48 PM on May 17, 2005

Ok but I have to say I'm very glad the info as to WHAT was deleted is here (thanks jessamyn). I read the thread just now going, huh? Then came here and all was revealed and my world was right again.
posted by yodelingisfun at 6:22 PM on May 17, 2005

I saw that and thought about asking the poster what the fuck was wrong with him, but ended up closing the window after I typed the comment, as I do about 98% of the time.
posted by puke & cry at 7:06 PM on May 17, 2005

Seconding a "WTF" flag. And a Metafilter flag. I imagine something blue, green and liney.
posted by VulcanMike at 7:22 PM on May 17, 2005

Now that everything is solved, I'd like to say: Nice callout, Saucy. It made my day. The worst thing about callouts is that they just get too dang monotonous.
posted by Plutor at 7:33 PM on May 17, 2005

Well, the Something Awful forums were down this afternoon, so...
posted by smackfu at 8:32 PM on May 17, 2005

What's the appropriate flag category? I picked "other" - it's not really noise, derail, or offensive

...so you picked the right one. I don't see what the problem is, or why another flag would be needed.

Matt and Jessamyn are people, not robots mindlessly applying some formula based on the number of flags of each type. If you flag a post, they'll see it. I assume their heads won't explode if you flag something as "noise" when it was actually a "derail." And if you choose "other" I assume they can pretty well figure out on their own what might be wrong with the post.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:05 AM on May 18, 2005