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Due to recurring problems with questions that identify named individuals, we moderators would like to expand our policy against these.

This should only affect a small fraction of questions that cause a disproportionate amount of trouble. In this post, we are asking if you see any problems with the proposed policy or whether there is anything else you propose to change. (If yes, please post an answer.)

Policy

Moderators will delete a question without warning if all of the following apply:

  • It quotes a private communication, such as by copying-and-pasting an e-mail.
  • The author of the private communication is named or otherwise easily identifiable, such as by including their signature block or e-mail address.
  • The author of the private communication has a reasonable expectation of privacy: i.e., they have not given permission for their remarks to be published on the internet and they are not a public figure.

Users whose questions are deleted under this policy are allowed to repost their question if they can anonymize the individuals involved.

In the case of a form letter, the contact details for the individual sending the form letter should still be edited out, though we may just edit the question rather than deleting in this case.

Rationale

  • This is a natural extension of our policy against making serious allegations against named individuals. Most of the rationale there also applies here.
  • The private communications posted often do not reflect well on the named individual. This may be unfair (e.g., if the comments were taken out of context), and shaming people for bad behavior is in any case not the purpose of this site.
  • Even if the quoted text does not reflect poorly on the person who wrote it, it is still not really appropriate to publish private correspondence without permission. Further, the poster often realizes this belatedly and then attempts to delete the question.
  • In almost all cases, the same question could be asked by paraphrasing or anonymizing the individuals involved. Most questions that cannot be asked without naming specific individuals are not a good fit here in any case.

What should I do if I see a question that violates this policy?

  • Don't answer it, as your answer will be lost when the question is deleted.
  • Flag it with a note that you think it violates this policy
  • Consider adding a comment that links to this policy.
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    Seems reasonable Commented Jul 18, 2025 at 11:38
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    I think this is a reasonable response to a certain recent question, but I wonder about the application to questions about the interpretation of official communications from a journal, university, etc. For example, the email in this question even has an overarching claim that the email contains confidential information and shouldn't be forwarded to 3rd parties (i.e. us)... Though think the question would be improved by quoting only relevant parts of the email, I don't think it's problematic or should fall under a serious allegations policy. Commented Jul 18, 2025 at 16:27
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    @Anyon - re your link, I think if we got to it immediately, it would be worth deleting and telling the OP to repost without the signature block. I agree that if we got to it late and there were already answers and votes, we would probably just force an edit rather than deleting since it’s such a benign case. Commented Jul 18, 2025 at 16:36
  • +1. I wonder whether we should not only consider the author but also the recipient of communication. Right now, this policy seems to have a poster in mind who is unhappy with an email they received from a 3rd party and posts it here. What about "here is an inflammatory email I plan on sending to X"? Would this already be covered by our policy about defaming individuals (in this case, X)? Commented Jul 22, 2025 at 13:38
  • @StephanKolassa This sounds like a CoC violation. We already have network wide flags for that. Commented Jul 22, 2025 at 16:08
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    @StephanKolassa I think an email such as "Dear Dr. X, I have evidence you fabricated data/committed misconduct" should fall under the policy of making allegations against named individuals - quoting one's past self is not meaningfully different from writing in the current tense. I'm struggling to to think of types of emails that would be inflammatory, but not fall under that policy or be CoC violations (as MisterMiyagi points out). Do you have an example in mind? Commented Jul 22, 2025 at 16:14
  • @StephanKolassa: yes, perhaps a broader policy that just says "don't name names" would be a good idea. But there are some corner cases we would have to think through carefully (e.g., if a student uses their real name here, are they then not allowed to talk about their advisor, dean, etc?). And in most cases, just editing the question probably suffices, no need to delete it entirely. This policy is intentionally much more narrowly scoped. Commented Jul 22, 2025 at 16:28

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This seems reasonable. My only comment is that I don't understand how "prospective answerer" is meant to be interpreted.

Say for the sake of an illustrating example that someone's question contained private correspondence with Buffy, passing the last two policy tests.

Does such a question then fail the first policy test, allowing it to remain? Buffy is, after all, a prospective answerer of basically all of our questions.

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    Another good point. I've updated the policy to avoid the "third party" language altogether. Commented Jul 21, 2025 at 1:34
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In general I support this policy, but I think it could use clarification on whether it is intended to apply to correspondance from institutions as well as individuals.

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    The concern has to do with using this site to bully individuals, so I would say primarily the latter. It is already a best practice to anonymize institutions as well, though I don’t anticipate we’ll ever adopt a delete-on-sight policy there. Updated the policy, thanks. Commented Jul 20, 2025 at 15:55

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