an email from Sean

[Guest regulation]

That's right, Barry. If you want to tell me something that you want kept confidential, you'd be well advised to obtain my agreement to that restriction before you tell. That's a procedure I use in imparting confidential information even to people I've known for years, and I recommend it to everyone. My concept of courtesy does not include assuming an obligation of confidentiality that I've not been asked to assume with respect to unsolicited information that someone feels like passing on to me.

[+ honcho]

Regulation wrote (with me adding some emphasis):

 

>>That's right, Barry. If you want to tell me something that you want kept confidential, you'd be well advised to obtain my agreement to that restriction before you tell. That's a procedure I use in imparting confidential information even to people I've known for years, and I recommend it to everyone. My concept of courtesy does not include assuming an obligation of confidentiality that I've not been asked to assume with respect to unsolicited information that someone feels like passing on to me. <<

 

Even though I cringe when somebody gets up on a soapbox and attempts to instruct relative newcomers on what the unspoken assumptions, that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

 

I've been participating in e-mail and netnews discussions since about 1977; and it really is commonly assumed that if I send joe an e-mail relating to something being discussed in a public electronic forum, that I intend it for his eyes only. If I had wanted other people to see it, I would have replied in the public forum. And people *do* get upset when their private e-mail is publically posted.

 

No law was violated by Matt's posting of Sean's E-mail, but I kinda think that this is not something that Matt would do lightly; Matt must have made the judgement that the action of Sean sending what Matt perceived as threatening email was a sufficient breach of the social contract to warrant Matt's relatively smaller violation of publically exposing the implied threat.

 

Most long-term users of the internet would agree that the interaction between Matt and Sean was distinctly different than the interaction between HooBoy and regulation.

 

Regulation may have been well-intentioned in an effort to persuade Matt that there was an alternate, less sinister interpretation of Sean's E-mail, but the Miss Manner's among us would have asked HooBoy's permission to forward Hoo's private email to Matt privately rather than posting the information for public comment. (Or, alternatively, would have requested permission to make the public post).

 

And yes, regarding somebody suggestion of ignoring inflamatory postings, the people in soc.motss refer to the "mantra of `sit on your hands'" ;-)

[Guest Tampa Yankee]

Honcho,

 

Nice to see that old fashioned courtesy, etiquette, and confidentality haven't gone out of style with everyone else. I agree with your assessment of Matt's special case too.

[Guest craigrc]

Or, Tampa, maybe it's just that you are looking for an excuse, however flimsy, to criticize Regulation, who is someone you have disagreed with on other matters in the past. That is how it seems to me.

 

Honcho, I also am a "longtime user" of the Internet and I don't agree with your interpretation of what "most" of us do or would do. Maybe it's that you are confused about what happened. Reg didn't post an email that was sent to someone else, he posted one that was sent to him, unsolicited and without any request to keep it private. A number of people were posting questions about HB's opinion of what was happening. Reg emailed HB to request he take notice of what was happening. HB chose to reply directly to him instead of posting here and Reg posted the reply. I don't see anything wrong with that.

[Guest Tampa Yankee]

craigrc,

 

Sorry that is how it seems to you, which, of course, is just your way of saying I have base motives here and a personal agenda with regulator. For the record -- regulator is not on my agenda. But since you already see fit to attack my motives I doubt that my word carries much weight with you either. So be it.

 

As you point out regulator and I (as have you and I) have had some differences in the past and still do, many of which I have let go by -- I am sure that he could say the same regarding me. (Amazingly enough there have been one or two times that I have agreed with him, although I plead guilty to not trumpeting the fact since I didn't think it all that amazing to warrant stopping the presses and issuing a news bulletin.) So I don't think I needed to conjure this up as just as "an excuse, however

flimsy, to criticize Regulation...", there were plenty of issues to provide opportunity if that was want I wanted.

 

In fact, predating this thread, I had decided not to engage regulator in further discourse here, recognizing that we have fundamentally different view points on many things and because we end up talking past each other more often that not. Consequently,

we weren't providing any value to ourselves or the rest of the community. Had it

not been for the general topic under discussion, the seriousness with which I

view the subject of personal communication confidentiality, and the parallel I saw

between the two, I would not have engaged him at all.

 

I'm sorry you don't share my views about personal communications confidentiality, which I conclude from your remark that it is just "... an excuse, however flimsy,..." -- I don't consider it just an excuse or flimsy. I just may be old fashioned, but it is an important issue to me and I would have thought to others too.

 

Go figure.

[+ honcho]

Nitpicking analysis of an interaction

 

(Ya know, the first time I ever had crabs, I *swore* to myself I was never going to use the term *nitpicking* again, but my resolve seems to have weakened!)

 

Craigrc wrote (more than this, but in part):

>>Honcho, I also am a "longtime user" of the Internet ... Maybe ... you are confused about what happened. Reg didn't post an email that was sent to someone else, he posted one that was sent to him, unsolicited and without any request to keep it private ... HB chose to reply directly to him instead of posting here and Reg posted the reply. I don't see anything wrong with that.<<

 

Craigrc,

 

My understanding of the sequence of events is the same as yours. And I repeat what I said before,

since HB chose to reply directly to Reg, it meant that HB did not want that reply posted publically, since he was perfectly capable of doing so himself. Reg should have tried to presuade HB that making that posting public would have had more of a calming effect than maintaining radio silence. I have not infrequently done exactly that - tried to persuade the author of a direct email that other people would benefit by his words.

[Matt_Vancouver]

The only reason I posted this message was because it contained a threat, and what better way to protect oneself than to post the threat on a public forum. ( how valid that threat was , or is for that matter, is not an issue. I know none of you any more than text on a screen, how is one to guage someones potential for harm, other than going by past postings)

I would never post someones private email to me, unless it was an extreme situation, and I guaged this to be an extreme situation.

So let's all be done with the subject, it is a dead subject as far as I'm concerned, I am sorry for Sean, he made some mistakes, and we all do, let's just let this one die, what more can be said.... nothing.

He clearly stated why he does the recording, if it is actually done at all, the issue I had was not with that, it was with the threat to bigjoey.

Let the man redeem himself, if that is at all possible anymore.

There were some pretty nasty things said about me in another forum, I do not appreciate being called some of the things I was, and I am not going to engage in this bullshit anymore,I'm a decent guy, who does a great job, and if that means I'm pathetic, well then I'm pathetic. This is the last thing on this subject you will ever hear from me.Promise.

oh one more thing, don't let this become a cavalry for Matt, I'm a big boy I don't need all of my friends here coming to my rescue, I apreciate it, but all it does is cause more critisism of me.

I know who you are that like me, that is enough.

thanx

Matt

now lets get on with sexy things, like talking about dick size or hot butts!! woohoo.

http://go.to/mattsplace

matt_escort@yahoo.com

[MiamiLooker]

I kinda doubt if HooBoy gave much thought when he responded to Reg as to whether or not his email would remain private. I was puzzled, as I think many of you were, at what appeared to be HooBoy's reluctance to place some kind of alert on Sean's reviews. Then there's the quote from Sean to Matt "I would suggest you ask Hooboy who you are dealing with" and the inferrance in one of HooBoy's posts that he may be sued over the matter just added to my puzzlement. Knowing from previous posts that Hooboy had met Sean, perhaps he had insight into Sean's personality which made him believe the boasting about the tapes was just a lot of hot air. But for those of us that have never met Sean, we could only base our opinions on what was posted. Reg has been one of the more vocal contributors on this topic, so common sense would suggest to me an email to him or portions of it might find it's way to the message board. If he had paraphrased or posted only portions of it, he may have been blasted for biased editing.

 

***We're all just screen names with opinions***

[Guest craigrc]

RE: Nitpicking analysis of an interaction

 

Honcho, this seems to be your day for breaking promises that you made to yourself. First the one about getting up on your soapbox, now the one about nitpicking. What's next? I hope you aren't going to start smoking again.

 

Frankly I don't try to parse the thought processes of people who send me emails. If they don't request confidentiality, I feel free to do as I want. The only exception I would make is in a case in which disclosing the content of the email would clearly do harm to the sender, and HB made it plain that this isn't such a case as far as he's concerned. Neither you nor your pal has any cause to beat up on Reg.