Posting highly sensitive personal information, such as street addresses, is not allowed on the Forum. Although this is the address of an organization’s campus, rather than a specific individual, it can nonetheless pose a risk to those using the campus.
As I see it, this was not meant to be a warning, or any sort of “punitive” action. It’s clear that Felix was just being helpful, and that the information was pretty public.
I saw it as a reminder of our general policy. It’s not always clear how “public” some information is[1], and it’s good to err on the safe side and let people decide what information they want to include in their posts and comments online.
see e.g. the famous case of Scott Alexander’s legal name, which has always been very easy to Google, but he understandably didn’t want it in the NYT article
We’re going to need to keep updating our sense of “searchable” as LLMs get better.
(Which means people need to be careful about what they post now—I remember when everyone thought gating something behind JS execution protected it from search engines.)
My current model is that it not being in searchable text is indeed a pretty big advantage.
Agree LLMs make this more confusing, but we can edit things as we get to that point. I might also get around to editing the image in the next few days.
Posting highly sensitive personal information, such as street addresses, is not allowed on the Forum. Although this is the address of an organization’s campus, rather than a specific individual, it can nonetheless pose a risk to those using the campus.
It’s bit weird to come down like this when the post itself already includes the location of the campus.
As I see it, this was not meant to be a warning, or any sort of “punitive” action. It’s clear that Felix was just being helpful, and that the information was pretty public.
I saw it as a reminder of our general policy. It’s not always clear how “public” some information is[1], and it’s good to err on the safe side and let people decide what information they want to include in their posts and comments online.
You’re very free to dox yourself if you want!
see e.g. the famous case of Scott Alexander’s legal name, which has always been very easy to Google, but he understandably didn’t want it in the NYT article
Taken literally the personal information policy does not appear (on my skim) to have any exemption for auto-doxing so the post itself is in violation.
Tempted to dox myself, but poking moderators with a stick to see what happens is a dangerous game...
Not in searchable text though?
We’re going to need to keep updating our sense of “searchable” as LLMs get better.
(Which means people need to be careful about what they post now—I remember when everyone thought gating something behind JS execution protected it from search engines.)
My current model is that it not being in searchable text is indeed a pretty big advantage.
Agree LLMs make this more confusing, but we can edit things as we get to that point. I might also get around to editing the image in the next few days.