Re: Warning: your posts can be googled

["ElsaHaas" <ElsaHaas@si.rr.com>]

Here's a striking demonstration of what I'm saying. Type what is on the next
line into your Google search box, exactly as shown: 

"terminally deluded" NCLB

The "terminally deluded" should probably be in quotes, but the "NCLB"
doesn't have to be.

When you do this, you will get a post someone made in reply to Art back in
November of 2006. The poster uses the phrase "terminally deluded" in
response to Art, and quotes him below that, so that it's pretty evident that
she's just repeating an insult he had used. But this would not be true in
all cases.

It seems to me (though I might have missed something because I don't read
all the posts and rarely read Art's now) that Art has spent years calling
people on this message board "hopelessly naïve", "terminally deluded", etc.;
that Monty has refrained from kicking him off (I guess he believes in free
speech even on a non-government site, which is up to him); and that once in
a while somebody curses at Art, or whatever, out of frustration (as Jerry
did). 

But anyone googling Jerry's name (a prospective employer, for example, and I
know that Jerry isn't looking for job - this is just an example) might see
Jerry as the "mean one". 

This is especially true since, soon after Jerry posted the f-word, Art
posted something that would seem (to anyone reading it without knowledge of
what's he's posted in the past) the sort of reply that would mark him as a
person who responds civilly when under attack (it talked about NCLB's being
a complicated issue, and that this complexity sometimes leads to
"profanity"). 

Anyone can sit down at a computer and google. They can put in your name and
find stuff, and won't necessarily try to understand the context. 

To come up with the demonstration of this that I used at the beginning of
this post, I had wanted to google some phrase used here recently. But search
results for message boards tend to be from a while ago. I think this is
because the bots that Google sends out to roam the Internet aren't sent to
message boards on a very frequent basis. So I tried to think of a phrase
that would have been used here in the past, and that's when I came up with
"terminally deluded", one of Art's favorites. (I added the "NCLB" to cut out
irrelevant results.)

Of course, you could always avoid using your full name on a google-able
message board like this one - but not if you WANT it to produce search
results in the future.  

Elsa Haas  

-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org [mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org] On
Behalf Of GERALD BRACEY
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 9:49 AM
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Warning: your posts can be googled

I was thinking ARN was open only to subscribers, but I guess not since I 
sent a message from an account that isn't subscribed (I think).

Elsa's warning is a good one.  Privacy is a quaint 20th century concept. 
YouTube will hold you accountable.

I turn 67 in less than 2 weeks so I'm not sweating it.

Jerry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ElsaHaas" <ElsaHaas@si.rr.com>
To: <arn-l@interversity.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 9:13 AM
Subject: [arn-l] Warning: your posts can be googled


If you use profanity or some other form of speech that you wouldn't normally
use in a public forum, do you realize that your post to this list may pop up
some day when somebody googles your name?

I say this because I hadn't realized, or had forgotten, that this is a
message board (not an e-list open only to members), and recently when I
googled my own name one of my old messages popped up (fortunately it was a
benign one).

I'm mentioning this not so much for Jerry, who seems to have already made
his reputation and might not be worried about it, but for anyone else who
might not realize this.

I rarely read Art's posts anymore (I got tired a long time ago of his
claiming that "only the hopelessly naïve or terminally deluded would believe
such a thing" - I think that's an exact quote).

Still, I when I see (just as an example - I haven't caught up with all the
posts, and there might be others like this) that Jerry used the f-word, I
give him the benefit of the doubt because I did read Art's post in the past.


Somebody who's googling you to screen you as an applicant for a job (or a
buyer for a coop apartment, etc.), wouldn't necessarily get past the curse,
though.

Elsa Haas