Trying to win on technicality? While one can definitely carry a private confidential conversation, PM is a good way to get attention of and talk to poster X without making redundant threads. Proof? Let me take a look at my PRIVATE message box:
Yes, PM is a good way to carry on a 1 on 1 conversation without redundant threads. Your point however was "Why did Patrick expect it to remain private?" While certainly people can send you PMs without any expecation as to keeping it secret, the problem comes in when you just assume they are of that opinion. Since it is called a "private" message, if you are going to err, in this case you should err on the side of caution, ie that the sender assumes private = private (since you asked, are you sure you can do maths?). You can't assume a private message wasn't expected to remain private. This is where simply asking him before hand would have been the ethical thing to do. Especially once you realised he had expected it to be so. But you just carried on regardless, because you wanted to.
And there have already been people who said they didn't get what you are saying. What's your point?
My point is that you wanted to ban me unless I proved it to *you*.
What I did wasn't unprofessional because my job is to give my readers an accurate picture of the gaming industry: games, developers, companies, publishers, and the gaming media. I'm sure that Bethesda thinks that it was very unprofessional of me to state a year ago that Fallout 3 is neither turn-based nor isometric, but unlike Patrick's job, my job is not about always creating positive impressions and helping AAA companies to sell more copies.
You could have done it without posting private messages. Hell, it didn't sound like Patrick wanted the core information kept secret. Did you ask him if you could post up Gamespys policy on reviewing Indie Games for the discussion of your forum members? Or even if he could do it himself? From the looks of it he was simply pissed off about the way you went about it, taking his private correspondances and posting them without asking. So Gamespy doesn't review indie games because most of them are unprofessional? Oh no, what a dirty little secret! From what I've seen he is indeed correct. It might mean he never reviews my game? Well so be it, I'm not going to be an ass about it.
Oh, and it would indeed have been unprofessional if you had stated as fact that F3 was going to be neither turn based nor isometric. Because you hadn't seen it at that point. You predicted it would be so, based on knowledge you had at the time and statements made by Bethesda. Predictions aren't unethical.
Now, the ethics claim. You claim that I did something that's morally wrong (if you are talking about professional ethics, then see the paragraph above). I maintain that it wasn't and file it under "public service" - the public has the right to know what the gaming industry doesn't want to tell them. Passing to the public only official statements and carefully orchestrated, often approved preview and reviews is unethical. I'd say that journalism is about sharing with the public what other parties don't wish for the public to know, be it an informative, honest review, inside information, or an image of a gaming journalist.
You sure he was upset that you passed on their policy about indie games? Or was he pissed about the way you handled his private conversations? You sure he wouldn't have told the forum if asked publicly? You haven't "scooped" a factory secretly polluting a towns water supply with toxins here. It doesn't seem like there a conspiracy to hide this information. The problem I have is just in the way you went about it.
Did I cause Patrick any harm? No. Like I said, it was a harmless conversation that you've blown out of proportion. Did I damage his reputation at the Codex. No, he damaged it himself. At GameSpy? No. Other than showing his bias and inability to handle arguments, he didn't reveal anything that would put his job at jeopardy.
Agreed, you caused him no harm. None whatsoever. Like I said, when you act in an unethical manner you damage your own repuation, no one elses. You probably could have achieved exactly the same result without giving him the proverbial finger. Its this whole Codex policy of "Basic courtesy = bending over and taking it" childishness.
And my only motivation for posting all this has been because I just thought it was a shitty thing to do. Maybe to people who don't give a damn about ethics it would seem like I would need another motivation, but I don't.
But anyway, an entire weekend of this has been enough, I'm tired of it. No more, I'm done. Weasel tag it is then, whatever.
...changing gears...
Yep, been working on my RPG for about 2 years now and its finally approaching something worth showing online. And I have recently been thinking about posting up info about my game here. Been putting together some copy and a few pictures to go with it, since I've been working on the art lately. The GUI still looks like utter shite though.
At the very least posting here should serve as a trial by fire.