Thanks for the reply. I think the crux of our disagreement may be that I don’t regard “being relevant to EA” as a necessary condition for declining a request to remove personal information, unless that phrase is given a very broad interpretation that includes things like “keeping the EA Forum a place where people can’t make unfair accusations about others”.[1] Separately, if a user voluntarily discloses a piece of personal information, I think this should be beyond the scope of mod action, unless something happened in the intervening period that clearly justifies removing or encoding the information. People can still ask others not to share this info, but I think it should be up to each person to honor those requests, rather than being something enforceable by the admin team.
In this case, as you note, it was possible to remove the personal information while preserving the relevant evidence publicly, although I think the removal made it somewhat more difficult to appreciate what was really going on. But one can imagine other situations in which this cannot be done.
Thanks for the reply. I think the crux of our disagreement may be that I don’t regard “being relevant to EA” as a necessary condition for declining a request to remove personal information, unless that phrase is given a very broad interpretation that includes things like “keeping the EA Forum a place where people can’t make unfair accusations about others”.[1] Separately, if a user voluntarily discloses a piece of personal information, I think this should be beyond the scope of mod action, unless something happened in the intervening period that clearly justifies removing or encoding the information. People can still ask others not to share this info, but I think it should be up to each person to honor those requests, rather than being something enforceable by the admin team.
In this case, as you note, it was possible to remove the personal information while preserving the relevant evidence publicly, although I think the removal made it somewhat more difficult to appreciate what was really going on. But one can imagine other situations in which this cannot be done.