I'm writing a book on work-life balance, featuring advice with 100 professionals. My research also uncovered valuable insights from Quora users. Can I ethically cite these users as references in my book, while respecting their privacy?

I don’t see why not. Anything published on Quora has been published in a public forum. Nothing people type on Quora can be considered private.

If you were to dig into their private lives and say, “For example, this person, an author who lives by herself in Missouri with six dogs and two cats,” you’d be getting into details that can be found by digging, but could possibly be considered private.

As long as you restrict yourself to citing information already right out there in public, such as written in Quora credentials, questions, answers, and comments, I can’t see any privacy concerns whatsoever. If they didn’t want that stuff read by random strangers, it should have been in a private email to a personal friend, not out in public on Quora.

Copying that information and including it in your book without permission is iffy, but not from a privacy perspective.

Just as a side note, a lot of trolls have fake information in their credentials, and some people who claim to be writing professionals are clearly, obviously copying crap from ChatGPT or some other AI generator, often without even bothering to remove the 1, 2, 3 formatting. If you’re featuring quotes, comments, or advice from anybody who says they’re a professional, I hope they really are professionals in whatever field they say they are. Though “professional cheat” is, I guess, something that is sort of a professional.