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Re^5: Increased number of downvotes at the Monastery? (reason)by tye (Sage) |
on Mar 11, 2004 at 21:25 UTC ( [id://335983]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
The poster rather clearly stated their reason for choosing anonymous posting. I don't feel I acted in contradiction to that stated reason. whimsically[...]other than to say "I have the power" I'm sad that you can't think of any other reason why I might do this. I was trying to be helpful. There was no whimsy involved on my part. Yes, I am often whimsical or perverse, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised if sometimes such is attributed to me erroneously. It's been stated elsewhere that there are certain activities and procedures that will enevitably lead to the authorised person carrying them out to encounter private information. I also seem to recollect that this was a) rare, b) came with the suggestion that any such authorised person making such an encounter would keep the information to themselves and "try to forget it". A request was made for feedback on an issue that I feel is important to the Monastery. It raised a point that I feel is a valid item to be concerned about and I wanted to investigate the situation as an administrator dealing with a potential problem. In the course of that investigation I went through a process to get summary information about what votes the author of the node had received when not being anonymous. That process was successful and required that I encounter some private information (their likely usual non-anonymous handle and information about many of the votes cast upon that). I honestly don't remember what that handle was nor much about the votes other than what I said in that node. I would have preferred to privately ask the author if it would be okay if I looked into this, but to "privately ask" would require that I pierce their anonymity anyway. I was reluctant to do the search (and considered asking publicly) and then reluctant to report my findings, but both times I decided that the potential benefit justified the action. I can certainly see how some would take issue with those judgements and I may well take issue with them myself in the long run. In part, I think a big issue here comes down to image. I currently care less about instilling an image of propriety than about actually acting with propriety. Unfortunately, when it comes to privileged actions, there will never be great transparency so this preference for substance over image is probably ill advised in this case. I feel lucky that quite a few people that I respect actually trust my judgement (near as I can tell). But I need to remember that there are lots of people who have no reason to trust my judgement so I should be trying to appear trustworthy (my need to actually be trustworthy is based on other reasons). (I should probably try to phrase that more clearly... rather, I *have* tried to phrase that more clearly but have now given up, despite realizing that it may be misread and give the wrong impression, thus proving that I still need work on appearances.) Thanks for being frank. I'll try to do better (both at instilling trustworthiness and at actually treating the boundaries more strictly). - tye
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