That's not the rule though. PI, per arnox's definition, is only identifying info that pertains to people who post here. If my info doesn't identify someone who posts here then it's not against the rules. The only way you can tell that it identifies someone is if you verify (again, per arnox's edict). How long do I have to wait on the PI verification process before I can repost the info in my OP?
Instead of testing things like this to the detriment of all involved, let's just chat about this stuff and try to come to a reasonable solution. I kinda like the democratic approach where everyone votes in the end. You've highlighted some important issues here to be sure.
Well we tried all PI being off limits and it clearly didn't work out very well. Zok had very strict PI rules and it didn't keep him from getting doxxed. Let's make all PI free to be posted and just have people willing to walk away from an account if their PI is leaked. Easy.
And I really don't want people to get their PI leaked, I know it sucks, my own PI is floating around the site and that's not fun. What we can do is make it possible to delete an account, which will limit the amount of damage PI can do. I understand why arnox doesn't want to do that but it should be clear that he's putting thread coherency and SEO before the well being of people who have had their PI leaked.
But what about the extreme cases, like what happened to Zok? The policies are in place to protect people from having things like that happen. I guess you would say that it doesn't matter too much because if it gets out and people want to share it it's going to happen on some medium regardless. But if you ask me, the fewer people involved the better. Stuff posted here publicly is a lot different from things being shared privately.
That said, if everyone thinks the PI rule is stupid then I don't see why we couldn't change the rules and simply allow it. My vote is that PI sharing sucks and shouldn't be allowed. I'll talk to Arnox about this and see how he feels about polling the community and discussing things in a more official thread.
Rules are never a perfect solution, and they all bring with them problems of their own. When a rule is worthwhile, the net benefit outweighs the net detriment. 'Course that's all subjective, but yeah. I'd like to hear more opinions.