I’m a pretty tolerant person, but there is one thing in this world that bothers me more than anything else: dishonesty. I am extremely trusting and will take what people tell me at face value. When I find that I’m being deceived, it really makes me angry and frustrated. When I suspect that I’m being deceived, I will do everything I can to find out the truth.
A couple of weeks ago, someone (Person A) had asked me to delete a comment from another individual (Person B) on one of my posts that had said some not-so-complementary things about another librarian (though they were not really offensive, so I wouldn’t have deleted them as a matter of course). The comment also said some very nice things about Person A. I thought that was strange and when I looked at the comment, I noticed that it was from the same IP address as the comment from Person A. That made me even more suspicious. So I sent an email to the address listed for Person B (there were also some comments on Person A’s own blog from Person B listing the same email address, so I was willing to believe it could be a real person). I didn’t hear back from Person B until last night, but the response was that this person not only didn’t write the post, but isn’t a librarian and has no idea who the person is that they were supposed to have been writing about. When I looked at the blog of Person A last night, I found that every comment from Person B had been deleted (though they’re all cached by search engines so nothing is ever really gone).
My first reaction was “I want to expose this person.” But I felt that I only wanted to do that because I wanted revenge for being deceived, and I’ve been making a concerted effort not to act in anger. So instead, I contacted Person A and asked if they could explain this. The response I got not only didn’t explain it but that person told me that they’d been as candid with me as they could and that they’d be contacting legal counsel to determine what to do next. Since I know that I didn’t do anything wrong, I’m not concerned, but I’m offended that instead of coming clean, this person decided to try and intimidate me. If there is a list of “what not to do’s” on the Web, this person did quite a lot of them in a very short period of time.
I have contacted the target of the uncomplimentary comment and let him know about the fraud, but I think I’m going to leave it at that. No one would be served by exposing Person A and the people who really needed to know it was a fraudulent comment know it. I don’t want to do damage to anyone’s career. I deleted the comment and have blocked their IP address. I also added an additional sentence to my comment policy at the bottom of my sidebar:
The author reserves the right to delete any comments she deems offensive, irrelevant, or blatant advertisements. Any fraudulent comments will be deleted and every effort will be made to publicly expose the perpetrator(s).
Next time something like this happens, I will publicly expose the person on my blog. It’s not so difficult to ferret out sock puppetry like this and anyone who does it deserves to be exposed as a fraud. Stand behind your own comments!
In spite of all this, I still believe that most people in our little library blogging community are honest and have good intentions. If that makes me naive, so be it.
You grow wiser every day, grasshopper.
Why are the battles so bitter? Because the stakes are so low.
Well and fairly done, Meredith.
Legal counsel? Wow…
Greg is right, your much wiser than I would be.
I can only hope that we all continue to benefit from your wisdom and experience in matters like this…
Kudos, Meredith. You handled a rather challenging situation very well.
Haha, legal counsel? Geez.
It does make you wonder how honest this person is in their own organization. But I like the way you handled it – very professional.
Nice work. I probably would have exposed the person immediately, (or at least after the mention of “legal council) but your way is saner.
Let that person try the same crap on MetaFilter. They would get publicly drawn and quartered.
Believe me, it took everything I had to use restraint. 🙂
Exposing Person A would have felt great for a moment, but then I’d end up feeling sorry for them. The lying could be a pathology for all I know.
But you are publicly exposing this person, Meredith. You signed a comment on another blog listing Person A’s IP address and linking to their (now deleted) comment here.
I don’t have a problem with your exposing them; I just question the need to pretend you’re not.
my head is still spinning from trying to figure out the chain of events….
I’m not pretending anything, William.
At the time (a couple of weeks ago), I didn’t know for sure whether Person B was a sock puppet or just a friend and I was hoping that Person A would offer some sort of explanation. The IP address was already listed on the post I commented on, so it’s not at if I was exposing it. I was withholding judgment on this until I got some actual proof (which I have now).
It’s one thing to comment on a blog already discussing a topic to try and get to the bottom of things (since I don’t want to keep a post up from someone who may not have written it); it’s another thing entirely to write a post about someone in order to hurt their reputation. I’m not pretending to be anything; it’s just the decision I made, for better or worse. We all are faced with situations where we have to make judgment calls, and I think the best thing we can do is not act out of anger or frustration.
Meredith,
I see nothing wrong with either your comment or today’s post. However, you write:
No one would be served by exposing Person A…
Since this person is named in both your comment and the post you commented on, the identity of Person A is hardly secret. You are exposing this person. And their reputation will be hurt.
William, I think the point here is that no one googling Person A will find this post and learn the worst.
I know that you know that Meredith knows that that previous thread elsewhere exposed that person as a possible liar/jerkface. But now that she and you and I know that Person A is almost certainly a liar and jerkface, she isn’t going to name him here. Also, it was someone else who first pointed out that Person A is likely to be a liar and Meredith just provided corroborating evidence.
Those who are feeling lost now are none the wiser, and those who don’t know anything about this situation but know the person in question aren’t likely to find out about it from this post.
Whew, my head is spinning (and now I am channeling Bill Withers singing “Ain’t No Sunshine” — “I know I know I know I know…”).
Still, while you took a good cautious course, keep in mind that you probably aren’t the only target for Person A. You write, “No one would be served by exposing Person A and the people who really needed to know it was a fraudulent comment know it.” Well, beyond wide public exposure, I bet there are a few people outside that statement who could benefit from knowing who Person A is. At the very least, if you have a couple of hours, you might do some quiet google work and behind-scenes suggest some people look hard at some of the comments on their blogs.
In my experience, big public exposes (expozays… I’m too lazy to look up an accented character) just lead to drama and bring out the worst in a group of people.
I think you’re smart to let this particular point of the matter drop.
What a pain in the neck!
Steve,
Presumably no one googling Meredith will find the full text of her last darn that dream post, either. People are still aware of it.
Each reader of this blog is a potential employer. I don’t know Meredith, and I don’t know A. Yet I could easily identify A from her post. Do you honestly believe many others will have trouble piecing this together?
On Twitter, Meredith wrote:
I’ll see if the person gets back to me and offers some sort of explanation. If not, I think a call-out may be in order.
That’s what this post is, a public call-out. Why pretend it’s not?
You write:
Those who are feeling lost now are none the wiser, and those who don’t know anything about this situation but know the person in question aren’t likely to find out about it from this post.
If true, why post at all?
As I said in my post, William, my first reaction was to call the person out very publicly. I chose not to do that, but to make it clear that things like this go on and that it will not be tolerated on *this* blog. I did not do it to purposely hurt that person (because clearly, their response to my email was not what I’d hoped to hear). If I had written this to hurt the person, it would have been a very different post, but I chose not to. It doesn’t make me a better person than if I had done it, but I feel much better about the choice I made.
I know a lot of people like you who like to argue every little point until you get the other person to admit that you’re right. I used to be like that, but I realized that I’d rather be nice than always be right (I also realized that there were more important things in life to get worked up over). That’s what this post was about too; not overtly naming the person even if that person may have deserved it (and that’s debatable too). I wasn’t pretending anything, but there’s quite literally nothing I’m going to say or do that will convince you of that. This post was about putting this behind me; the deception bothered me a lot and I really struggled with how to handle it. If you want to attack what I did or what I said, go ahead, but I will not take part.
What Meredith said. Whatever William. If that person had pulled this crap on my blog, his name would be on the front page. She did something a bit more subtle because she is a nicer person than I am.
Person A should have thought about this before Person A concocted Sock Puppet B. To Hell with person A.
Wow, that sucks. I think you’re totally right about most of the people in the library blogging community being honest and well-meaning. Even when we don’t all agree, there is a lot of good intention out there. But it only takes that one bad apple trying to get away with crap like this…
Calling the person out in an overt way is something that’s totally up to you. I don’t know what I’d do in this situation. There is a lot to be said for what you’ve talked about – just putting it behind you.
I’d just like to point out that regular readers of this blog *can’t* necessarily figure out who persons A and B are. Perhaps if everyone read all the same blogs, and if everyone always read all the comments on those blogs, maybe then they’d be able to figure it out. But there are lots of us who’d never figure it out, our librarianish Google skills notwithstanding. And you know what, I don’t even CARE who it is. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it happened and that it shouldn’t have.
Meredith,
I know Will doesn’t “have it in for” you. Your condescending and unprofessional response to him doesn’t change the fact that you seem to want to have it both ways. You publicly called this person out, and then want to act as if you didn’t. I can’t imagine anyone would fault the unmasking, so why act as though that’s not what’s going on?
Meredith has been nothing but professional this whole time. She hasn’t been the least bit condescending. And she’s shown far more patience that I would’ve shown if this were my blog. And calling someone “Person A” and “Person B” isn’t anything close to “unmasking” someone. I haven’t a clue who she’s talking about, and no amount of Googling would help me on this. This whole situation is absurd. Someone here is being extremely unprofessional, and it sure ain’t Meredith.
Meredith, I think you need to enlist the help of the XKCD guy:
http://www.xkcd.com/406/
🙂
You’re so completely in the right here, AND you have been far, far more patient and calm than I would have been. Don’t sweat this.
“Presumably no one googling Meredith will find the full text of her last darn that dream post, either. People are still aware of it.”
What happened to the latest “Darn that dream” post?
I’m so confused.