Debate:Privacy clusterfuck

This is a Debate page. Feel free to add your own spin on the story. Please keep it civil! This debate was created by Π.

Terry Koeckritz

Just to make Terry Koeckritz a little more crazy and "on edge", a google search puts him in the Greater Los Angeles Area and he "runs" a Computer & Network Security apparently, whatever the hell that is. BTW, is his last name Polish or something? I'm Polish, but my last name is nothing like that (mostly because I have my dad's African last name). --Beishanlong ^grandis 23:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Whilst this shit is not a bad as yesterday, it has got to stop. The Community standards has anybody read this? For fuck's sake people you are not scaring him, this is his kind of sick game. Are you better than him or not? Nothing pisses me off more than people acting like him. We think he is a degenerate tosser, so why are you behaving like him? - π 00:56, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

WILL YOU ASSHOLES STOP STALKING PEOPLE?! Now. Seriously. ħuman 03:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

And will you calm. The fuck. Down. Now. Seriously. Googling somebody's name isn't stalking and if you think most people here haven't already done the exact same search, you're delusional. The stuff about his mother was clearly beyond the pale, but if somebody decides to create a public profile about themselves on the internet then they shouldn't be surprised if people they don't like find that information. Whilst I wouldn't have posted that information myself, there is nothing wrong with somebody doing so, beyond the policy violation. Rpeh 04:42, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

If there is nothing wrong with it beyond the policy violation, we would not have made it a policy. Problem have occurred in the past, we do not want repeats. Sure laugh at his idiocy and thuggery on CP, but leave his real life work out of it. - π 05:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't even a policy violation. He has volunteered the information - it's publicly available. If somebody were to use it to do further research (finding out companies he has consulted for, or something like that) then that would be different. In this case, nothing in the first post is secondary - it all comes from the first link you get off Google. If he didn't want that information public, he shouldn't have published it in a public place. Rpeh 05:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

No information gained through personal research should be presented. That is what Googling someone's name is, personal research. Have a look back through the policy discussions if you want to see the reasoning and details. This point is mute, what Beishanlong did was violation of policy as it is written. Your joke was both unfunny and a violation of policy.- π 06:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Pi, this kind of shit makes you no better than TK. It's not in the same ballpark as posting a picture of his mother, but it is the same game. Taunt him through text as much as you like, but don't fucking go anywhere near his RL. --PitchBlackMind 01:08, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry Beishanlong, I did over step the mark with some of my comments. A lot of people weren't around in the bad old days. When there were phone calls to people's work and letters sent to their universities trying to fuck with their actual lives, all because of a disagreement over the editorial content of a small online encyclopaedia which nobody reads now except for a laugh. When RationalWiki was set up there were legal threats against some people. This is why we have the policies we do, because we have seen what happens when the line between the internet and RL gets blurred. - π 01:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget the FBI! --Gulik 01:55, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I question whether that's even his real name for various reasons I won't go into, but who cares. Make it personal online, but leave the real life shit out of it and you'll thank him for doing the same. He really does call people's bosses on the phone if he can find them. User:Nutty Roux/sigtalk 02:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I remember reading about him threatening a soldier in an e-mail with his mysterious White House contacts. I like to think of how the conversation would go:

• General: (Answers phone) Hello, General Ripper speaking.
• TK: (On the other end) Hello, Jack! It's TK!
• General: Who?
• TK: You know, TK! From IT! I fixed your Blue Screen of Death back when you were a colonel.
• General: Uh, ok. Can I help you, TJ?
• TK: Yes sir. I know you're busy running two land conflicts, but I have the sad duty to report some serious misconduct of one of your officers.
• General: Shit. Thanks for telling me first, BJ. What happened?
• TK: Well sir, he said some mean things to me on the Internet.
• General: (Click)

-Corry 02:56, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Being the soldier from that TK incident, I went ahead and shared TK's emails to two of my bosses including the gems where he concluded that I had no honor or integrity. Being followers of the lunacy at CP they lol'ed....hard :) --DylanB 00:05, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Oops. Didn't know this would stir up a whole can of worms. I have better things to do in RL than "stalk" TK or excessively focus on CP my whole life. I just thought it would be funny to get his paranoia up. Besides, you all should know by now never to expect any good from someone who's a biploar (semi)drunk off their meds and rocker editing on a wiki. Honestly, who was the smart one who gave me admin rights!? JK Ace Either way, I'm sorry, and not completely useless. After all, I do have broad knowledge of paleontology, eg., not completely useless in dismantling feeble creationist arguments. And don't bother asking me how this conversation got here; I've been up for finals since Monday morning, and I actually manage to get some sleep tonight. Can't think of anything else better/more to say. --Beishanlong ^grandis 03:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)Suggestion: instead of summarizing the details, please link the search/articles instead. That way we are only looking at information they are willing to release to public, at the location of their choice. Summarizing/transcribing the content may have the problem that 1) the person may not want the information to be released here and 2) we may not be doing it in context/verbatim. Thank you for your attention. [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 05:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

/K{1}[0-9]{5}/ I have already removed the link because it was a violation of policy. I am frankly getting sick of this. Read the policy guidelines and if you are unclear feel free to leave a message on my talkpage and I will explain them details. There are several pages of archives of the arguments we had when writing the guidelines you can peruse to see the reasoning. But here is an idea, how about you give me your name and the city you live in and I will add all the information I can find out about you to your RationalWikiWiki profile? - π 06:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The ones acting like Terry Koeckritz are you and Human. You're telling people off because of the way you interpret the rules and because you take yourselves far, far too seriously. Rpeh 06:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I tell you what Reph, email TK your phone number and your place of work and find out how much fun he really is. - π 06:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Why would I do that? I haven't made that information public so it's a silly suggestion in this case. Neither has k61824, so suggesting that s?he volunteer personal information to illustrate the dangers of volunteering personal information was also a silly suggestion. Terry Koeckritz gave his name to the LA Times, which he was under no obligation to do (incidentally, don't you think outing SharonS as the anonymous contributor to that article was far worse than anything said on this page?). Terry Koeckritz has also posted personal information about himself on publicly available websites. Jumping up and down about it now won't change anything. Rpeh 06:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

That is right, he gave away his name once, in 2007 and you now are going to use this to gain what ever information you can about him? You wouldn't like it done to you, hence why you won't give out your name, so why should we subject TK to it? - π 06:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The bigger picture is this... Beyond the question of morality. We specifically said it's against policy, we argued back and forth when writing them and thati s policy. If you don't like it, you're welcome to take it up on the policy page and try to argue your case. Until then, don't post it. Simple enough? SirChuckB^{A product of Affirmative Action} 06:53, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

In fact I'm not disagreeing with the policy. I've already stated I wouldn't have posted the information myself. I'm trying to point out that there has been a vastly disproportionate response from Human and Π. Whether you like it or not, the information Beishanlong posted is out there on the internet, and not even remotely difficult to find. The fact that he only gave out his name once is immaterial. He did it, and it's now out there. This is a perfect demonstration of why you shouldn't give out information if there's a chance you might ever wish you hadn't.

Take my case. Since I'm on a few wikis, it won't take anybody interested long to discover that my full name is Robert Peter Edward Herbert and that I'm a computer programmer working in London for a shipping company. You'll easily be able to find my own Facebook and LinkedIn profiles (to save you the bother, here and here - the facebook photo is several years old). What you won't find is my phone number, address, or the name of the shipping company, because I haven't ever posted that information publicly.

So back to the point. The accusations that anybody has been stalking TK or in any way acting like him are unfounded. I personally haven't broken any of your policies, so claiming that I have is plain wrong. SirChuckB's response was perfectly fair and restrained, but I wish the same could be said of others. Rpeh 07:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yup, I'm absolutely convinced that is you rpeh. Yup, for sure. ħuman 07:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

This conversation is about to go badly downhill, inevitably ending in comparisons to Hitler, and hurt feelings all around. Stop now. Step away from the keyboard. Go pet a jerboa, or milk a goat.

I bet this is what TK would've wanted. Flare^Talk 07:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

TK loves this shit, we use to have this argument with him when he was here out in the open. I must say I always find your name worryingly close to one of his old socks. - π 07:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Well we haven't had comparison's to Hitler but we have had accusations of being TK - which amounts to the same. Why don't we move this to a debate page? I think I can see both sides of this and would like to contribute but I don't think this is the right page to do it on. Just my thoughts. StarFish 07:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

If people can lay off the ad hominem comments it might be worth having the discussion. Rpeh 08:52, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

If there’s just one thing that’s important its not sinking to TK’s level. For your self-respect for one thing. If you do try and take him on he’ll probably beat you anyway, not because he’s more clever than you, just because at no point will he feel shame when he's thinking about his possible 'attacks'. OncomingStorm 12:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I can't believe I agree with Not Jinx _{Hi NOT Jinx!}. - π 12:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Privacy policy on RW

(UI) here is how I have been parsing/interpreting the privacy policy (my interpretation in italics) on the part of people on other websites. Maybe it isn't the correct way, but the burden of misunderstanding is probably on who wrote/presented it (Just likie the Letterman jokes on the Palin family).

In pursuing RationalWiki's missions, we often comment on the activities of individuals at other websites, but similar caution should be taken in respecting their privacy.

This is the statement defining the purpose of the statement that follows, if I am reading it correctly

Personal information regarding a living person should be limited to information which they themselves have released into the public domain, either through their personal website or a website they are associated with, or other formal publications.

Regarding links to sites containing their personal information that they agreed to to be put there, since they agreed to release it there, should be fine to be included as a link without any summary of contents. (that means we aren't supposed to talk about what that page has, perhaps loosely identifying it up to the vagueness of "open directory content/personal webpage/news article" or even more vague than that)

No information gained through personal research should be presented.

This is why I am against putting the summary of contents or other informations as part of text. For the purpose of this article I would interpret "through personal research" as "through the poster's personal research". For the purpose of links I have interpreted it as "someone has this piece of info on this person here," so it is for the most part not the poster's personal research(it's the research by the author of the article/website in question). For the purpose of search engine pages, since the audience has to make some efforts to pick the articles to read, as long as the poster does not identify which article to look for, it's ultimately the personal research of the audiences.

No information divulging the names of family members (that are not themselves figures of interest) or "real world" contact details should be posted.

Ok, so posting the link of family members of someone are not ok, because of this, and the fact that you have to do personal research of who these people are or whether these people exists. Also I have been saying not to summarize the contents of the websites in question, since they invariably would contain sensitive information.

If you are unsure, don't post such information.

Well, "not sure" is often not caused by misinterpreting the policy (once you have an interpretation of it, you probably are sure about it, although not necessarily in the correct interpretation). maybe it would be better to phrase it as "Discuss with someone(admin perhaps) before you post material containing personal information."

Maybe someone should write it to have less space for misinterpretation. [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 13:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree with almost all of that, especially with the last point: judging from the discussions on this page there seem to be at least five different interpretations of the current policy so it needs clarification. The only thing I'd contest is that I think careful discussion of the contents of external links is appropriate - otherwise there's not much point in having the link. As a hypothetical example, if an external link contained a claim to be a computer expert it would be valid to highlight that if the person had written poor articles on computing. Rpeh 14:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Somebody else is confused too. That's three out of four people who don't think the privacy rules mean what П wants them to mean. Definitely needs a rewrite.

Are you still on about this shit? Nice selective sample. If you read through those two and also this (note the vote) you will see, other than the last person that whined, everyone else had the idea of what it meant. - π 13:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Obviously I'm still on about it or I wouldn't have posted. One reason is that neither you nor anybody else has answered most of the points brought up on this page, and another is that clearly (just read up a few paragraphs) the current policy is open to misinterpretation.

You (and I mean in the plural here) want the policy to disallow all posting of links to "private" material. That's fine. I don't really agree, but there's a clear majority in favour of it. The problem is that the policy does not say what you want it to, and there's ample evidence of that in the number of people who have expressed that opinion or broken the intended rule.

So instead of chewing me out for pointing out a problem, why don't you fix the problem? I'd do it myself but don't feel it's appropriate to be messing around with your policy pages. Rpeh 13:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

If you want to submit policy, do so on the talkpage were you posted about the use of "u"s (I a pro "u" myself). The use the site intercom to attract attention to your posting. General site news is the applicable group. Sorry if I sounded like I was chewing you out, that was not a good way for me to handle it. Being new here can be a little tough, I remember my first three months Human use to follow me around changing every edit I made. It made me a better editor though. - π 13:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll do that later. Incidentally, I'm sorry to keep going on about this. I know the joke I made was crap but I honestly didn't think it would be classed as violating policy. From other incidents in the last couple of days, it seems other people are also confused, unless they just haven't read the policies, which I suppose is possible. Originally I was trying to change the policy, but you've already had your discussion on that so I'll let it go. Now I just want to tighten up the language. Once that's done, I'll shut up again. Oh, and can non-'crats use the intercom? The second dropdown is empty and there's only a Preview button. Rpeh 14:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

TK and big fucking grey zeros

Firstly why the fuck are we arguing about TK? Shouldnt everyone be aware that no matter who we do not engage in stalkerish activites at RW. Fuck who ever it is, TK or not, everyone should fucking know better. Remember you internet etiquitte and the RW "holier than thou" way. Secondly the big fucking grey zeros on WIGO are freaking hideous. Ace McWickedⁱ⁹ 11:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

From my point of view, the argument isn't about TK, it's about what is and isn't unwarranted stalking. I've posted a couple of links in the Saloon Bar and people have posted comments about them; others have copied and pasted material from pages in a similar manner. None of this activity has caused any comment. What is different about posting publicly available material about a person? SuperJosh's Schlafly Doo and the Conservapedia Gang stories (which are very funny incidentally) contain details about the general location in which Andrew Schlafly lives, but haven't been subjected to the kind of vituperative comments seen here. Others have posted similar things about TK and again, nothing.

So why is there a double standard? Why can publicly available material on some subjects not be linked to or posted? All I've had so far is "Bad boy for even asking!"

Finally, I should add I have absolutely no problem with material such as yesterday's posts about TK's family being removed. THAT was stalking, and bringing people with no links to CP into it is clearly wrong. Rpeh 12:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to interject briefly, the Schlafly Doo stories regarding Andy Schlafly's location of New Jersey is widespread knowledge, and as such isn't classed as stalking or digging up information on him or whatever. SJ ^Debaser 15:25, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

And can somebody explain how this policy fits in with the links on Roger Schlafly's page? Rpeh 12:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

He provided them all on his CP page. This shit is getting out of hand I am moving it to a debate page. - π 12:28, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing on his userpage now, and although there was a deletion, the comment was "no content on page" so I can't see where they would have been. I also can't see why he'd be linking to a story about his eating contest defeat. Rpeh 12:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The hotdog eating contest was on the mainpage in the broken news section when it occurred. We all had a good laugh that day. - π 12:43, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed the only two other issues. - π 12:58, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Much better, although you're still encouraging people to Google for him. I'll take your word for it that the others came from CP rather than Google. Now what about the other questions I asked? Rpeh 13:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It more depends on what you end up with when it comes to Googling someone. If you Google Ray Comfort and come up with his 101 website, that is okay as he runs website fall of his nonsense. If you come across stuff, buried deep, that contains information about his home address and family, that is a different matter. The important question is what are they known for? In TK's case it is a wiki and forum troll, so that is fair game, his work is not. Ray Comfort, it is his job as a professional bullshit pusher, so where he is pushing bullshit is fair game. - π 13:12, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not sure why a distinction is being made, but at least that makes sense as a policy. It might be worth making the policy page clearer on this point. One other link I just noticed on Roger's page is the "He's available" link to HotOrNot. Was that really on his CP page too? Rpeh 13:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

HotOrNot has a funny history with CP. Some of the sysops were at one time admins of HotOrNot and a few were recruited from there. TK was one of them. He played his power games there and almost destroyed the site, it has never fully recovered. A few lurkers of ours are old HotOrNot admins that ran a foul of TK, I think on either lost or nearly lost his job because of him, they read us to keep tabs of him. I think the link to his HotOrNot profile came of one of his blogs actually (at least that is how I first saw it, I don't know who put it there) either that or one of his friends left it for us. - π 13:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Turdblossom
This is one of many discussions that has descended into petty sniping and trolling idiocy on RationalWiki.
Here are the others, in case you are curious, bored, or enjoy pain:
- Community Standards/Revamp, January 2009 -- Community Standards/Revamp draft -- Requests for comment/HeartOfGold -- Community Standards/disruption -- HeartOfGold Sysop vote -- Site politics -- User:Copyvio's campaign to stop copyvio -- Serious Business -- Epic debate -- Cat fight -- Constitutional Convention, April 2008 -- Barroom brawls -- Voting Procedure -- Inactivity -- Property rights in WIGOs -- Nuclear Option -- The Rationalwiki Reform Society -- Community Standards/TK -- Drama dump -- The case of MarcusCicero -- Voting standards -- User rights and moderation revisited -- Make TK a sysop? -- Analysis of the relative income streams of the National Football League and international rugby union -- The mobocracy -- Statement candidacy for the RationalWiki Foundation Board of Trustees -- Is RationalWiki under the control of Feminist activists? -- Chicken coop/Archive37 -- Chicken coop -