Whimsical Christian
Whimsical Christian has PMd me to ask whether my post in response to him on 10 April on the War in the Middle East thread constitutes a personal attack.
I believe the correct course of action is normally to PM a host or to post here if one is questioning a hosting decision or if one feels it's a personal dispute to take it to Hell. Anyway, if I am out of bounds I should like it to be public. It is certainly not a matter to resolve between two parties by PM.
I believe the correct course of action is normally to PM a host or to post here if one is questioning a hosting decision or if one feels it's a personal dispute to take it to Hell. Anyway, if I am out of bounds I should like it to be public. It is certainly not a matter to resolve between two parties by PM.
Comments
It took me a while and even then I kept breaking them for a good while.
I've sometimes used PMs to apologise to people when I've overstepped the mark but generally do so publicly as well.
I've been here long enough that the process feels intuitive, but compared to systems like F-book or bsky, it's probably a little odd the way we do things.
A personal message is exactly that—personal. It isn’t legally privileged, but every message board relies on the shared expectation that private correspondence stays private. Quoting or reposting a PM without consent breaks trust and undermines the community. Confidentiality isn’t a rule; it’s the social glue that keeps conversations honest.
Hard disagree. I think there is a presumption of confidence in any personal communication. My friends are free to confide any details of their personal lives in me without fear that those details will become the subject of local gossip. They don't need to ask me to keep a secret each time.
Pseudonymous strangers on the internet cannot send unsolicited messages in which they say whatever they like and bind their addressee to silence regardless. The openings for abuse are too wide.
Just looked through the ten commandments, the FAQs and even the privacy notice. I see nothing about reposting a PM or the contents of a PM with or without permission of the sender. The above few messages seem to be asking for some sort of guidance. One person says there is nothing to prevent such a divulgence, several have come back to say there might not be anything legally preventing it, but there is an expectation a personal message should stay personal.
Let me put what I am arguing for this way:
A traveler once whispered a message to a friend at the edge of a crowded marketplace. The friend nodded and tucked the words inside his cloak. But another passerby demanded to hear it too.
The traveler replied, “If I wanted the whole market to know, I would have spoken aloud. A whisper is meant for one set of ears. Once you shout it, it’s no longer a message — it’s gossip wearing stolen clothes.”
And the market understood: what is given in confidence should be held in confidence.
Now, if the traveler whispered s/he is going to harm someone in the marketplace, there is the duty to warn even to report to authorities.
Someone who sends someone else an unsolicited message does not have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality. A reasonable expectation of confidentiality in internet communication, if such a thing even exists at all, requires agreement among the parties to keep the communication confidential. No one can impose it on another person.
There has been, and I've always disagreed with it. I think people see "private" and think "confidential." But it's no different than a sealed letter -- the person to whom it's addressed is under no obligation to keep the contents private just because the letter was sealed when it arrived in the mail.
The more positive the more there's an obligation to respect privacy. But there's no blanket obligation applying to all communication of whatever nature.
We would, of course, not look favourably on someone who disclosed information that would reasonably be expected to be held in confidence - which hasn't happened here.
"Reasonably" is doing a lot of work here.
Paraphrasing Potter Stewart "I can't define a reasonable expectation, but...".
(Not on either side of the PM confidentially debate, I was just kinda reminded of that quote. I will observe that, since there is AFAIK nothing to stop anyone from copying a PM and re-PMing it to third-party shipmates, a ban on publicizing the contents of PMs might be mostly symbolic.)
Meanwhile, the expectation of privacy is one of the principles of UK GDPR (The UK's version of the General Data Protection Regulations). It is reasonable for anyone communicating with the provider of a internet service to expect the contents of their communication not to be divulged any more than is necessary for dealing with their request.
GDPR doesn't apply to inter-personal communication, but does apply to people acting for the provider of an internet service.
My understanding is that the "right to privacy" includes private communication. "Reasonably" traditionally does a lot of work in UK law.
Indeed. And there's a big difference between sharing such a PM with a host or admin (for example), and publicly posting about it in Styx.
In this case someone objected to someone (from the management? I'm not sure) in private, so they made it public for more opinions on their conduct. Others appear to me to be free to say actually yes your behaviour was inappropriate.
This is really no different to me receiving a letter from an elderly relative and me saying to my daughtee "aunt Biddie was telling me that I shouldn't wear a blue tie to a funeral".
Nobody is harmed by the release to another person of this information at worst a conversation might be had about our relatives satorial comments, at best my daughter can (once again) remind me that not everyone appreciates my ties.
"Private" and "confidential" are not the same thing. There's nothing to say private things should all necessarily remain private.
And I don't recall any admin discussion of what to call them when the Ship got this software. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that's what the software developer named them, and that's the real reason they're called "private messages."
If I had a PM conversation with another shipmate about a beef or some private issue I had with someone, publicizing that in a Styx thread would probably constitute gossip and possibly some kind of slander.
This instance doesn't strike me as that. In my opinion, @WhimsicalChristian 's PM seems awkward, but not rude or horribly out of line. Funny, @Dafyd 's turning it into a Styx thread may seem similarly so. This all could've been taken directly to a host to handle without turning it into a big discussion among the general public, so to speak.
PM's in general are private, but not confidential, and maybe this is all a lesson in how we should all be careful about how we use the internet. Privacy online is always an illusion. Mind your boundaries, be respectful of yourself and your neighbor. And most importantly, do try to be kind.
They're not called Private Messages anywhere in this software - they were called Private Messages in UBB (the previous software), and that's the way many people continue to refer to them here - this has always suggested to me an understanding that they are messages that are private. And in my recollection, there wasn't any Admin discussion because no-one bought the issue up - it would have meant discussing something that no-one appeared to see a need to discuss.
I confess I don't understand the analogy of a sealed letter - what difference does it make if a letter is sealed?
A number of you seem to be seeing a particular distinction between "private" and "confidential" that eludes me. Maybe there are pond differences concerning the expectation of privacy in personal communication.
A PM is intended for one recipient, not the whole forum. That creates a reasonable expectation of discretion: you don’t repost it publicly because it wasn’t meant for everyone. The obligation is social and ethical, not formal.
Now, if the sender says, "Please keep this between us" it becomes confidential. Sharing a confidential message isn’t just impolite—it’s a breach of an explicit obligation, and the fallout can be relational, communal, and sometimes formal.
I lean to treating any personal message as confidential just to be on the safe side.
I confess I don't understand the analogy of a sealed letter - what difference does it make if a letter is sealed?[/quote]
I presume the point is that a sealed letter, unlike a postcard, can't be read until the recipient reads it. But there's no intrinsic obligation on the recipient not to share it.
If the letter is marked 'Private and Confidential' that generally means that it's reinforcing the obligation of third parties not to read it without the recipient's consent, rather than that the recipient can't pass on the information contained.
If someone sends me personal information then I shouldn't make that public (*).
Similarly, if they send me a message of support or sympathy concerning an argument about a third party I certainly shouldn't make that public (*).
At the other end, if they try to carry on an active and angry Hell call by private message without my consent to do that then I'm fully justified to make it public.
(*) Unless it's clear to me that it's part of a pattern of deceptive or manipulative behaviour.