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Someone edited this question to include what I consider a confidential personal detail about the original poster:

How to convince my wife that my best friend and I are just friends?

I then edited the question to remove that detail, but my edit was rejected.

The original poster chose to not include that detail in this question. Is it appropriate for someone else to insert that detail, whether or not the detail is relevant to the question, and whether or not the original poster may have mentioned it elsewhere on this site?

I think that it needs to be immediately clear, whenever a personal detail is disclosed, that the person to whom it is attributed has given consent for it to be made public.

If I am interpreting Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange policy correctly, it requires a strong burden of proof for discussing someone's personal information:

Can you give me another user's information?

Per our Privacy Policy, we do not give out user information except as required by valid legal process.

— Help Center > Our model > Can you give me another user's information?

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Those details were added in (now deleted) comments on that question and mentioned that it might be relevant, so the information was added and the comments were removed.

Comment from OP of post that reads "I don't know if this has any relevance but I thought I would include it anyway that I was recently diagnosed with Autism. But I don't personally agree with that and also I have a job etc and friends so am pretty 'normal' even if it is correct. Just a bit more info that might help someone answer."

This comment was partially removed because of what it says being somewhat unkind towards people on the autism spectrum but this information was provided by the OP in the context of this question and that is why I rejected your edit.

As a note, my edit reject reason did mention the comment, though it was half incorrect as the OP did not add the tag themselves. That was an error on my part.

OP added tag and a deleted comment mentioned that they are on the autism spectrum.

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    Now that the comment is gone from that thread — even though the OP wasn't the person who deleted the comment — I'd suggest that the moderators ask the OP to add that personal detail to the original question, so that the matter of attribution and consent is immediately clear to the reader.
    – Gaultheria
    Jul 20 '18 at 4:22
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    There's no way to know if the OP will even ever return to the site. This is how editing on SE works, though. We don't expect the OPs of posts to do all of the work and we don't leave comments around after they are no longer useful, particularly when they include content that is otherwise problematic. And now this meta question exists to clarify.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jul 20 '18 at 4:24
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    Ideally, when the edit was made, the edit summary should've indicated that the information came directly from OP's comment to avoid exactly this confusion.
    – goldPseudo
    Jul 20 '18 at 4:39
  • @goldPseudo — The edit summary mentioned the OP's comment, and that it had been deleted, but didn't have the OP's own words to confirm the source.
    – Gaultheria
    Jul 20 '18 at 4:48
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    I was the person who added it back in, and added the tag. My edit summaries were "It was mentioned in a now-deleted comment that the OP has autism" and "Added information from now-deleted comment." I kept the OP's precise wording: "I was recently diagnosed with autism." If they decide to roll back the edit, they are absolutely welcome to, but I essentially copied-and-pasted the relevant part of the comment into the question, as we usually do for clarifications the OP makes in comments. The only unusual thing here was that the comment was deleted in a bulk comment cleanup by another mod.
    – HDE 226868
    Jul 20 '18 at 5:00
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    The OP fully intended to have that information be public; the edit that removed the tag was not done with the OP's consent, and was the problematic thing here. If the OP had posted another comment saying they wanted to keep the information public, or had approved that edit, I definitely wouldn't have added the information back - that would have been inappropriate.
    – HDE 226868
    Jul 20 '18 at 5:01
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    @HDE226868 OP shows doubt that their diagnosis is legitimate. (I can relate to this sentiment, because I was also wrongly diagnosed with Autism a while back, only to have the diagnosis reversed by another specialist) I think that OP's whole comment should be included in the edit, because the current edit is leaving out important information.
    – Ryan
    Jul 20 '18 at 5:12
  • @Ryan That's quite a good point. I've gone ahead and done that, thanks.
    – HDE 226868
    Jul 20 '18 at 5:23
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    Hi, I am the OP. I am a longtime SE user, with good rep over many sites, but I made this question through an unregistered account for privacy reasons, therefore, I don't mind it being included in the main question. However, other people certainly might have been upset in this situation. Also, my ignorant comments about autism were supposed to be self-deprecating humor type remarks. I guess that didn't come off well... maybe I am on the spectrum after all xD xD
    – Teri0
    Jul 20 '18 at 9:09
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    @Teri0 Poe's Law, buddy. Poe's Law. :)
    – NVZ
    Jul 20 '18 at 18:52

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