Disclosure of a previous Identity

Fr_Dougal

[EDIT BY DAV]
I've split this discussion from the Ts & Cs thread as it's not related to the Terms and Conditions but is important.

Dav wrote: »

On top of all that, mods are never meant to share mods eyes only information with anyone - if it's serious, they'll be demodded. If it's accidental, well then we have extremely serious words with people about their responsibilities to ensure that they're the only ones who ever see this information. If their acocunt has been compromised, we may have to get the Gardaí involved.

Say a user used the "closed account" function and opened a new account(I'm not talking about a re-reg to circumvent a forum/siteban here), is it acceptable for a moderator to disclose their previous account/username to all and sundry in a public forum?

Dav

I'm splitting this cause we're getting into something completely unrelated to the Ts & Cs.

There are a small number of cases where people are being harassed and have closed an account to get away from that - it's disappointing that something like that has to happen, but the unfortunate reality of the world is, there are a lot of arseholes out there. Sometimes people don't want to pass on the details of the harassment for us to take action and will simply close the account themselves and sometimes it's external to Boards and there isn't anything we can do to help except to recommend account closure.

If someone's being harassed on this site, I want to find and remove the source of that and I can't do it without being notified of it or without details, so I feel bad when an account is closed for those reasons when we're not given any sort of opportunity to help.

The vast majority of account closures are because people have had their fill of the site and don't fancy being a part of it anymore. Again, that's disappointing, but that's life.

I'm going to take this off on a bit of a tangent here and I'm getting into completely personal opinion.

Outside of the examples I mentioned above, I do find myself wondering as to why people would close an account and yet start a new one up straight away though - it makes no sense to me. I've been a part of this site since it started, that means a lot to me. I've spoken to thousands of people about thousands of different things and I freely admit I cringe (and chuckle) when I read some of the nonsense I came out with when I was younger when all we did here was talk about Quake and clearly, a lot of us still had a lot of growing up to do. However, I would never try and escape the fact that I said it, it is abhorrant to me to try and deny who you were or that you now hold a completely different viewpoint on a subject you once spoke passionately about - there's nothing wrong with admitting you were wrong or in a lot of cases for me, an idiot (and yet, they still gave me the job...)!

But anyway, getting back on track and to answer your question - sometimes it's very obvious that someone's a re-reg. Sometimes they make it very obvious who they used to be. There's not a lot we can do about that. But I would take a very dim view of any mod "outting" someone who has a new account unless it's for absolutely necessary.

I will say this, if we know someone's a re-reg, we will factor their "past" history into any moderation actions that may be necessary - say for example someone's been previously warned about soap-boxing on a certain subject, if they come along with a new account and do it again, I would urge the mod to ban them and be done with it instead of wasting their own time issuing warnings again because it's a new account.

Sully

Its happened before to me, and I told the account holder I would need to disclose it to the mod team but that's that. Nobody else.

Dudess

I can think of one person who had a chip on his shoulder in relation to a particular group and had at least three accounts, all of which he closed, and he didn't even slightly try to hide who he was.

Wouldn't see a problem in the least with anyone saying it publicly to someone like that.

Thoie

Dav wrote: »

I do find myself wondering as to why people would close an account and yet start a new one up straight away though - it makes no sense to me. I've been a part of this site since it started, that means a lot to me. I've spoken to thousands of people about thousands of different things and I freely admit I cringe (and chuckle) when I read some of the nonsense I came out with when I was younger when all we did here was talk about Quake and clearly, a lot of us still had a lot of growing up to do. However, I would never try and escape the fact that I said it, it is abhorrant to me to try and deny who you were or that you now hold a completely different viewpoint on a subject you once spoke passionately about - there's nothing wrong with admitting you were wrong or in a lot of cases for me, an idiot (and yet, they still gave me the job...)!

While I don't think I'd do it, the main reason I could see for doing that is if your original account had some personal stuff on it and the username was then "compromised". Say your new colleague/boyfriend discovers that you're on Boards, and is demanding to know your username. While one answer would be to suggest where they could go, for an easier life, some people may just rereg and tell the nosy person the new name.

In some ways I can understand it, Dav. Say if a person has been getting a lot of harassment through boards, like one poor poster I can think of that I was quite fond of, but shall remain nameless, and get completely fed up with it, yet want to continue to enjoy boards, they may want to close the other one and create a new one to get rid of said harassment - start anew, if you will.

Like you said, there are always going to be assholes out there unfortunately. It's just a fact of life and thankfully boards does manage said assholes quite well.

Actually - I just had a thought:

Would it be possible to set up a new boards email address - say something like: renewal@boards.ie, and update the registration page to include a message like:
"Were you a previous boards.ie user that had previously closed their account? If so, please email renewal@boards.ie with your previous username and your new one for full disclosure, with an explanation as to why the previous account was closed (or is that asked when you close the account?). Only admins and a select number of moderators (chosen by the admins) will have access to said list. This will greatly help us improve on this site."