Pahoran wrote:And the answer is: C, None of the above. I'm going to leave it up to your conscience. Let us see how highly you value the "sanctity" of PM's. If my posting of one sentence from a PM you "trusted" me with was such a horrendous violation, I want to see how your principles stack up.
My principle is that it is acceptable to quote private correspondence (a) when one has permission from the other participant(s) in the correspondence, or (b) when someone is misrepresenting what transpired over the course of a correspondence, especially when the party being misrepresented has tried to resolve the matter through other channels. Otherwise the private correspondence should stay private. "But you were rude to me in our private correspondence!" does not an excuse to violate privacy make.
Exhibit A. (Scholar gave permission.) Exhibit B. (Christian Leader was hesitant about giving permission, and ultimately decided not to grant it.)
So if you will not grant your permission directly, I will not post it. It doesn't matter how rude you were to me today (and you were very rude); I will not post it. If you do not quote snippets from the correspondence and misrepresent them (as you did with our MDDB correspondence), I will not post it.
Any questions?