If the message itself is important, for example if you don't know if you interpret it correctly, then it makes sense to directly quote it. What I would do is decide whether the message itself is really important or only the general point it's trying to get across. In that regard I agree with Monica Cellio's answer that you should be careful with publicly posting anything that was sent to you in private. The problem is that you can never know for sure which of the 2 cases is relevant here as long as they don't confirm that you can quote them. This will feel like a big violation of trust. If you do they might still fall pray and can't do anything about it. In the second case you should never leave any identification on who wrote the message. In the first case you don't really do anything wrong with quoting them directly (preferably with name to give them credit). I believe there are 2 main reasons why a user would send you a private message instead of a publicly available one (in the context of reddit or similar sites).ġ) They fear other users might jump the bandwagon on the negative part of their message and want to spare you the humiliation that might come with it.Ģ) They don't want to become the target of people not agreeing with their point but think it's important enough to let you know. Further, if you make a point of being careful about other people's privacy even when it doesn't seem to matter, they'll be more likely to trust you when it does matter. I'm saying that you shouldn't decide on the other person's behalf. I'm not saying you need to be paranoid about what might well be an innocuous message. Doing so could reveal the identity of the writer, either through the statements made or through "tells" of writing style, position, etc. If you're going to do the first, don't quote verbatim. Get the person who told you to post it or give you permission to do so. In a case like that, it doesn't matter who it came from. This is also appropriate if you've received feedback that you're now going to act on, as described in this answer. This is hearsay, which is probably ok if the matter is not controversial but usually not a good idea if it's likely to inflame matters. If you want to transmit information you received privately, without violating trust or upsetting people, your options are:ĭescribe what you've heard in your own words and without attribution. This is even stronger when a conversation started in public (on Reddit in your case) and somebody explicitly moved to a private conversation. "Don't forward private email" has been one of the basic netiquette rules for decades. Even if you think there's no privileged information and the sender shouldn't be concerned, that's not your decision. The person who sent you the message could have posted publicly and instead chose to send it privately.
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