School employee fired for comment post

Fri,20 Nov 2009 05:50 GMT -4:00 http://www.p2pnet.net/story/31333

- “Have you gone out on a limb for a meal? What’d you try? Did you like it? Have you had friends or family who have tried stuff on a dare?”

Kurt Greenbaum (right) asked that on the St Louis Post-Dispatch web page under the headline ‘What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?’

No surprise, he got all kinds of interesting responses.

But, “The headline was practically asking for a juvenile response and, thanks to the anonymity of the internet, that’s exactly what happened.,” says ReadWriteWeb, going on:

“In the comments section of the article, one user posted a single word response referring to a part of a woman’s anatomy. Of course, the site’s moderators quickly deleted the comment but it soon reappeared – obviously this juvenile was intent on having their say.”

I know how that goes.

But this time, the site’s ‘director of social media,’ Greenbaum, “did a little sleuthing,” says the story, going on, “and that’s where this story starts to get interesting”.

Greenbaum tracked down the poster’s IP address and told the school, ReadWriteWeb  says, continuing, “In his defense, he probably thought he was simply tattle-telling on a naughty student who would learn a valuable lesson about internet anonymity and would have to sit through a week’s detention or something of the like.”

But this wasn’t a kid. It was a school employee who, as a direct consequence of Greenbaum’s initiative, lost his job.

This kind of thing can’t happen on , though. Even if we wanted to rat someone out, which we’d never do under any circumstance, we couldn’t.

We’ve always treasured freedom of speech and for that reason, we’ve never logged IP addresses.

In other words, anonymous comments on really are anonymous.

Was Greenbaum doing the right thing? No way.

I see this kind of thing every now and then.

I just delete it.

End of story.

Jon Newton –

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More



St Louis Post-Dispatch – What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it, November 13, 2009

ReadWriteWeb – Leaving a Vulgar Comment Online Might Cost You Your Job, November 18, 2009


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