Crossposting personal info to other forums

[Fred Ma <fma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I normally post queries to
   
   comp.text.frame
   framers@xxxxxxxxx
   adobe.framemaker

I would manually keep the thread from splintering by taking any
followups from one forum and copying them as posts to the others.  I
avoid copying people's email addresses and last names when doing this.
The reason is because respondents in one forum may not appreciate
having their personal information made available in another forum.

However, this also prevents giving credit where credit is due.  For
professional reasons, it is fair for any readers of the follow-up to
know who's expertise it represents.  Unfortunately, I don't know which
individuals mind me copying this identifying info to other forums, and
which wouldn't mind.  It would be quite unweldy to ask each respondent
each time.

The alternative is to keep the discussions in the different forums
separate, even though the original post is the same.  This would be an
unfortunate barrier to diffusion of shared information, though it must
be respected if the participants wish.  This splintering of
information is one of the reasons why crossposting is discouraged,
even though the subject may be on topic for all of the forums.

What is the best way to deal with this?  The only way I can think of,
short of allowing the splintering of the thread, is to paraphrase
information from one forum to another.  For example:

   To: Forum#2
   Subject: Re: That Thing

   A respondent in Forum#1 suggested diddle-daddling the
   thingamajiggy.

This easily gets unmanagable, and still doesn't address the giving of
credit where credit is due.  In that sense, it doesn't improve on
simply copying responses from one forum to another, with last names
and email addresses removed.  However, it does cite the exact forum in
which the information was posted, so that if people *really* wanted
to, they can join that forum to get the full information -- sometimes,
but not always.  For example, if they tried to go to the freeframers
archive, they won't get any email info, but at least they will get the
full name and maybe a website for the author.

Obviously the root cause of the problem is that there are 3 different
forums that deal with exactly the same thing.  But given that this
will not change, what is the most acceptable etiquette to maximize
everyone's benefit, give credit where it is due, and not infringe on
anyone's privacy?

Fred

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