But I don't want anyone to ever be under an illusion that the comments system (a.k.a. reputation) is private. It is not. Future upgrades might expose reputation, and you shouldn't use that part of the forum to exchange private data. I may have hidden some of the front-end, but that does not make it private. Hell, the admin control panel allows me to view the reputation... whereas I have no means at all to view the private messages. So one is private (PMs) and the other is not private (reputation/comments).
2008: https://www.lfgss.com/thread12830-10.html#post389864