@Sythe

SuF can you not post novels. I don't have the time or patience to read them. Just post the salient points you want to make. Keep it short and sweet.

I know the information rule was your baby but in the real world you have to let go of your work. Other people will come and change it, and that's ok. Most things are a team effort.

When I write papers and publications and even software for people I almost never put my name on them. They go out into the world and sometimes I see them crop up somewhere months or years later. I'm happy people find what I do valuable. Don't work for personal glory; instead work to make a positive difference.

The important part is below:

What I would suggest is the following:

1) Amend the blackhat rule to include a punishment for knowingly using, selling, disclosing, buying, etc anything that was obtained through any blackhat means. The punishment could range from a temp ban to a perm ban. This would make it clear that Hattenz was responsible for using Trin's name (which was found through blackhat means) to find out more information and would be responsible for that even though he did not have any part in the actual hacking (I think...?). We really already apply to this to gold sales and steam sales and shit, just more on a don't talk about it status, much like pins back in the days.

Proving beyond reasonable doubt that someone had specific knowledge at a point in time is very difficult. For this reason knowledge is rarely an element of a crime. So this is a bad idea.

2) Amend the personal information rule to a privacy rule. Anything that a user has not themselves disclosed or posted in the public view on Sythe is not to be posted. That covers whois information. That covers public records like arrest reports. It covers phone numbers, names, facebook links, photos, essentially everything and I think that is better wording than the current rule. The punishment should be written as "up to 6 months" or "at least a one week ban but no more than a one year ban" or whatever. Give the staff a range because posting a picture from a known Facebook is a lot different than posting someone's address or bank information. I would be perfectly happy to have a clause at the end that was something like "Due to the nature of being a staff member, privacy violations against any staff member will have a minimum ban length of _______".

Well I am happy to ammend the existing rule but my primary concern is that users will use the rule to entrap each other. This is a concern that does not extend to staff because staff are trusted users.

By entrapment I mean users could leak personal info deliberately to get a specific user banned. Given the intelligence quotient of many of the spam forum users I expect a large ban time will backfire if put to the general rule.

Again a range 'up to 6 months' is not a good idea because it will lead to allegations of bias among staff.

The best option for the rule is to split it off as we have discussed earlier into two rules: A reasonable person should be able to distinguish between information that is otherwise public such as a phonebook record and information that is otherwise private such as a tax return. Therefore one can in that case show that the offending party had knowledge of the type of document leaked.

Since you are so keen on the issue, why don't you draft two new rules to replace the existing information rule and post them in a new discussion thread in com gen so we can have community consultation.

I am keeping the special staff information at least until the information rule is fixed and possibly beyond there. I think the deterrent factor is more important than any reasons I have so far heard against it.