Posted by so on June 6, 2005, at 16:50:00
In reply to Fairness, please....., posted by 64bowtie on June 5, 2005, at 23:29:47
To develop a fair idea of why he imposes policies as he does, I would want to know about family situation, his personal background, his religious and political affiliations and any other revealing information I could find beyond what he has published in professional literature or on the site. If asking him at his site didn't yield answers, I might pursue other means to get a well-informed idea what might influence a person to do what they are doing.
If I were a health-care organization wanting to hire him as a Web forum administrator, though, I would not be allowed to inquire about some of those matters -- especially family, religious or polical matters -- due to restrictions of employment law. But if I were investigating his work to understand the why behind it, it would definately be valuable information and I wouldn't consider my inquiry complete until I knew something about him as a person. The extent to which information about his personal background can be published is a delicate matter of libel law. He has made himself somewhat of a limited public figure by publishing this web site. If something happened to propel the web site further into the public view, including his own publications to journals about his work here, details of his private life -- his academic background, his family status, his place of birth -- might be more acceptable for publication elsewhere.
Besides just preserving one's privacy, and professional reasons to be somewhat removed and mysterious, there might be merit to him not disclsing too much in that by doing so he does not encourage others, at least through his own actions, to disclose too much about their own lives. Writing about one's family in a forum the family members know nothing about might lead them to feel their privacy was violated if they ever found the posts about them. In a mental-health community, regardless the good will of most members, there are probably security reasons as well to keep personal information private.
poster:so
thread:505616
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050530/msgs/508659.html