QuotingOutOfContext

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Quoting out of context is an example of ContextSwizzling

Examples:

Taking an internal company email and offering as evidence in a court case
Treating a humourous or ironic comment as serious
Treating a wild, brain-storming speculation, "Well what if we did this", as company policy. (Changing CommonContext)
Treating a flip Usenet posting from 5 years ago as a sober, considered opinion of today (changing TemporalContext)
Taking the comment "normally this guy's work is flawless, but this movie was badly let down by major structural flaws --A Reviewer", and plastering it on a movie poster as "A Reviewer: "This guy's work is flawless!".

See also ForgiveAndForget, KeptPages, LateralThinking? etc.

Apparently some people are really scared about this, to the point where they won't use their real names for fear their current words will come back to haunt them in the future (see eg ImportanceOfIdentityInOnlineCommunities, and the debate on UseRealNamesDiscussion.)

Some people advocate TechnologySolutions, such as expiring old archives (see debates on KeptPages). But obviously it is a community problem and as such deserves a CommunitySolution like ForgiveAndForget or just common sense and the realisation, that someone might be just a little bit more mature than five years ago, when he was sixteen (or sixty).