In the spirit of transparency, and a caution.

[WheelyFixed]

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I'm posting this as a mix of cautionary note, and transparency about how we have handled this situation.

A user, Paul-Sapir, joined EA about a month ago. He had not posted any messages in the forum, but starting about a week ago, several of the board staff and members got private messages from him asking some personal and arguably invasive questions about our identities, and motivations for unspecified research.

I asked and he said he is not associated with any University or other institution. We felt that asking this sort of question in private messages, presumably because of a desire for information that we would not wish to share on the forum, was inappropriate behavior and told him so, and warned him to stop. (this is why we had the recent announcements on this topic) We continued to get reports of the same invasive PM abuse.

He did not give any specifics as to his reasons for this 'research' or how the information would be used. After considerable discussion amongst the board staff we decided that this was cause for him to be banned from the forum and we did so.

Paul-Sapir appealed the ban, and asked us to reconsider. We have decided to do so on a probationary basis, with a very strongly worded letter to the effect that he should be more forthcoming about his own background and reasons for doing this research, and that he post any requests for information in the public forums (specifically the “Medical Research and Resources” subforum) and NOT use PM's for this.

If you get any invasive PM's from anyone, especially Paul-Sapir, PLEASE forward them to me as soon as possible.

Paul-Sapir is on probation and will be banned if the problem continues, but we need to know about it. You may also want to be cautious about what information you share with him.

This is the first major problem we have had in the nearly a year that EAv3 had been up, I thank all of you for making my job as moderator as easy as you can.

WheelyFixed - Lead Moderator

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