Do you think
this would meet this criteria (also this thread should probably be moved)? Would
this ("...
go away or I post your dox...")?
I don't know enough about those cases to say. If you think so, create a new topic in Meta with your reasoning.
I would argue that
this probably meets the criteria for an exception -- this guy has scammed many people for a large total amount over a very long time.
For now, I'm thinking that maybe the whole idea of publishing dox should be reexamined. What does it really gain? If people are going to use the dox to illegally harass this person, then that's not a good result. If people are using the information for legal cases and police reports, then that is good, but I think that in most cases this can be done from the non-public Investigations board.
On a case-by-case basis, I'd like to see a utilitarian argument in Meta about exactly what is gained by publishing specific bits of uncovered info. For example, maybe there is significant utility in publishing this person's name and general location, to warn others, but not his full address. Another thing which must be addressed is how we can be sure that the person being doxxed is the person who did the scamming, and that they are actually guilty of the scamming. I certainly don't want to return to the scammer tag era of me single-handedly deciding these things. After a few of these cases are hammered out in Meta, perhaps a uniform policy will emerge.
Theymos
Say there is a thread in "Service Announcements" promoting a scheme which appears suspicious, posted by username XYZ.
A bit of research done perfectly legally by searching publically available data linked to XYZ and his scheme on company names, addresses and other info provided in that thread shows that in real life XYZ is John Doe, with an MO of questionable practices/outright scams/failed enterprises.
Will this new initiative prevent posts in that thread linking XYZ to John Doe and asking whether or not this is him and his history?
Instead, should I post a new thread in "Investigations" and crosslinks in the two threads? Will this be acceptable?
Yes, cross-linking is good. Post your conclusions in Scam Accusations (eg. x is an alt of y, x has a history of scamming, etc.), but keep the investigations themselves in Investigations. My idea is that trustworthy members will export any important information about alts, trustworthiness, etc. from Investigations, while keeping the actual private information in a non-public section.
Is this an indication of your personal view of the (lack of) importance and desirability of these type of posts?
No, that's just where it ontologically belongs.
If someone has dox in their signature do we report one post or all posts and how will moderators deal with that?
Report one of their posts. If they don't have any posts, post in Meta about it.
When a user is autobanned (ie. a specific type of permaban initiated by moderators, but then put in place automatically), their signature is cleared. If a user doesn't deserve a permaban, then either they can be autobanned and unbanned by one of the mods with manual-ban permissions, or else an admin can adjust their signature directly.
How will the custom Google search (found in between help and donate) handle threads in the investigations section?
They'll be deindexed a while after being moved.
