Outing People Is NOT Okay
Kevin Ohlandt, of Exceptional Delaware, has crossed a line. He has outed an anonymous commenter – and one that doesn’t post on his blog. Publius posts on Kilroy’s. I disagree with Publius almost 100% of the time. His comments read like a high school burn book, but that is no excuse for what Kevin has done. There might not be many rules in blogging, but this one is carved in stone.
I hesitate to link to the post because giving this sort of behavior more hits is wrong. I have emailed Kevin asking him to pull the post. I’ll update with his decision.
Tags: Delaware Blogosphere, Featured
Looks like it may be amended already?
I just clicked over and am still seeing the post. What are you seeing, Mike?
I will NOT take it down. As I wrote in the email I just sent you, if you are okay with cyber bullying left unchecked but it is wrong to expose the person doing that, I don’t subscribe to that point of view.
Still there.
Yeah, I was in the wrong place. Nevermind. You may delete my earlier post if you wish.
Kevin Ohlandt felt perfectly okay making snide comments about me during the worst period of my life, but he doesn’t like cyber bullying? And that was only possible because I was outed on this blog by Geezer, Kwacko and another freak who’s name I can’t remember. You don’t have to specifically use someone’s name to out them, although Ohlandt did.
Excuse me AQC, but what in the world are you even talking about? And people in glass houses really shouldn’t throw stones. You’ve slung quite a bit of mud in your time. Please direct me to these “snide” comments? I can certainly share some of the crap you have put out there. I didn’t open up this can of worms on Del. Liberal today. Pandora did. I made a choice, and she made a choice. But let’s continue to deflect from the true issue here…
What is the true issue, Kevin?
And how in the world do you blame me for opening this can of worms? You wrote a post outing someone. I responded.
You want to sit there and judge me for outing someone we can all pretty much agree is a bully of the highest proportion that has gone left unchecked for years and years? Really? And hides behind a screen name to do so? God forbid we try to put a stop to that! But no, let’s draw attention to the outing and not the acts that followed it. You can sit there and downplay that portion of the story which was the impetus for my article today. Seriously, where do we draw the line between personal attacks and protecting the identity of a known cyber bullyist?
I draw the line at outing people.
Publius is a troll that you constantly feed.
Responding to bullying with bullying just makes you a bully too.
If you are feeding the trolls, you just get more bullying. Funny how that works.
And yet trying to expose anonymice is a constant online, here and everywhere else.
I once started out using my own real name, and immediately became targeted at my place of employment for what I wrote. The urge to silence someone you disagree with is among the strongest human urges we have. I’m still not able to use my real name for related reasons, and won’t be able to for six more weeks.
This case, on the other hand, is one of an insider with pull to influence an issue hiding his identity. I don’t know if he was trying for deniability or just didn’t want to deal with the fallout, but it’s easy to see why he wrote under an alias.
@cassandra: I speak from experience on this. When you see yourself as fighting larger powers, it’s hard to see that your zeal can translate as bullying.
Monitoring comments on this site, and others, can be difficult to keep on top of – but when a commenter outs someone we have pulled comments and banned people. That said, the contributors at DL do not write posts outing commenters. That’s a big no-no.
I don’t run a blog, but don’t blogs have “block” capabilities? If true bullying / harassing is going on, couldn’t you just block that person or ignore them entirely?
The “bullying/harrassing” is taking place on another blog (Kilroy’s). So Kevin can’t ban this person, only Kilroy can. I always thought Kevin gave as good as he got. Disclaimer: I haven’t read Kilroy’s in a long time – mainly because the comment section is cringe-worthy.
Somewhere in this, there is a lesson about how online anonymity allows us to be more awful to each other, and may be creating a more hostile discourse well beyond the bounds of the internet.
Outing someone is about as stupid as it gets, unless you want an echo chamber.
There’s nothing like outing someone to drive everyone else away.
And yet trying to expose anonymice is a constant online, here and everywhere else.
Indeed it is. And if you hangout at any of the commenting sites where you have to use your FB login (your real name, presumably) to comment, it is pretty clear that the bullying doesn’t hide behind anonymity anymore. Still, people who think that unmasking other people somehow leads to some accountability are often people who aren’t especially accountable themselves. My own observation is that the outing nazis do that because they can’t engage on the ideas, but think they can stop ideas they don’t like by associating a real name with them.
When you see yourself as fighting larger powers, it’s hard to see that your zeal can translate as bullying.
I totally get this.
With such thick skin, Kevin, you will make an excellent school board member… I mean it’s not like the public, whether “out in the open” or anonymously on blogs, ever says anything bad about board members…
Spare us the righteous indignation… This wasn’t about Kevin Ohlandt standing up to a bully… This was about Kevin Ohlandt losing his temper and striking back at someone. Like it or not, dude, you’ve made yourself somewhat of a name in the blogosphere. You write a metric shit-ton of material that has personally insulted people, called into question their professional integrity, etc… (see long litany of comments about DOE staff, select educators, Markell, DSEA staff). All because the decisions they make in the course of their work runs counter to what you personally think is in the best interests of public education…
So boo-f***ing-hoo… You’ve been insulting and nasty and bullying to folks in what you’ve written, so hard to have sympathy for your perceived blog-comment-bullying at the hands of an anonymous person.
FWIW, DelawareLiberal’s policy, as I understood it in the old days, was that outing someone was a lifetime ban from DL. Dave Burris was banned for a post outing another blogger on his site.
Goddamit! Where are all those scrolls with the rules given to us by Bleep-Blorp!
Found ’em
http://delawareliberal.net//about/
GODDAMIT!! All hail Bleep-Blorp!!
You would ban me based on something that wasn’t even discussed on this blog even though a commenter on this very thread specifically names other commenters on here who specifically outed her but they are still allowed to comment? Is it just me or is there something very jacked up about that? And your rules say NOTHING about other blogs.
The posted DL rules don’t cover Kevin’s situation. This post is just an opinion piece, not a ruling.
Kevin Ohlandt, be not distracted. We are all here by the grace of Bleep-Blorp. Go out to heat up a cup of soup and you could be gone. We all could.
Maybe.
We banned Burris because he outed another blogger (who comments here) on Burris’ old blog. The banning was mostly a recognition that someone who would out another colleagues was someone who could out any of his colleagues. It was a decision for the kind of community we wanted to encourage.
The outing you did here was for someone who doesn’t post here (that I know of) or even at your place. But it does call into question what you might do when you decide that you can no longer engage on ideas, but need to lash out at one of us. There are plenty of folks here who choose a pseud for perfectly good reasons. We’d like to protect those folks too.
I’m getting misty-eyed. We haven’t had a “rules of blogging” thread in years.
My 2 cents, I say ban him and move on. If outing is a serious infraction, we should just do it.
All hail Bleep-Blorp!!
“But it does call into question what you might do when you decide that you can no longer engage on ideas, but need to lash out at one of us.”
If that were even an iota of the situation, that would be one thing. Pandora, I don’t care if you share my most recent email with the other admins on here to get a better perspective of this situation.
I haven’t shared the emails, Kevin, because you sent them to me personally. If you want the other contributors to see them, then I’ll forward them along.
The most recent email is okay.
Dave Burris was banned because he hate-outed a blogger (the person claimed that Burris was incorrect, BTW) because the blogger attacked a friend of his (a semi-public figure) based on the friend’s LinkedIn profile. None of the posts were on the DelawareLiberal site.
I’d go back and dig out the emails, but the sturm und drang would probably annoy me all over again.
And if there is a banning (right now I don’t think there is), it won’t be voted on in public here.
Is it really outing someone when the person outed set up a Twitter account under his (real)name @ (his pseudonym screen name) and then declares in a tweet who he really is?
I think that twitter account was bogus, SussexAnon. More trolling and outing.
Jason330, I’d actually like to read those “rules of blogging.” For example, does “open thread” mean open topic?
Yep! You can bring up whatever topic you want on an Open Thread. Open Threads help keep other posts on topic.
Trying to be as fair as I can be here, what was the point in outing this guy? What was gained?
Sorry, kevin, for a guy who crosses the line as often as you do, righteous outing is rank hypocrisy.
I don’t post too often, although I do enjoy reading the threads and replies. I have to agree that it can get really mean and nasty with the difference of opions, on ANY comment section, not just here. Hell, I think I had it out a couple times with Geezer a while back, lol …. but the way I see it is if someone is bullying with text, ignore them!!! I read a poster at my dentist one time that showed a picture of teeth and read “ignore them and they will go away”.