Internet commenters aren't generally known for their eloquence and impeccable manners. Still, people's tasteless little one-offs are relatively harmless most of the time—until the comment police happen across your note and contact your employer. That's what happened to one unlucky commenter posting to the online version of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (of all places), where a poorly chosen vulgarity eventually led to the loss of his job.

The Post-Dispatch had posted a story last Friday on its blog about the "craziest thing you've ever eaten." You're all geeks, so we're guessing that your minds are going all sorts of places. So were the commenters on that post. Kurt Greenbaum, director of social media for the Post-Dispatch who had made the post, noticed that one commenter had posted a "single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy" (let your imagination run wild). The comment was deleted, but this particular user must have been enthused about his cunning lingual abilities, as he went back minutes later to post it a second time.

That's when Greenbaum got irked. In a new blog post, Greenbaum described to the world about how he noticed the IP address of the poster in question—WordPress sends e-mail alerts anytime someone comments on a post with IP and Whois information attached—and identified it as belonging to a local school. Instead of merely accepting that this person had the maturity level of a seventh-grader, Greenbaum just went ahead and called the school. A few hours of investigation later, the school was able to identify and confront the employee. That person supposedly resigned "on the spot."

There are many things that are disturbing about this situation, starting with Greenbaum's apparent willingness to brag about it publicly—are we five years old here? "Ha ha, someone posted naughty words and I got him fired!" There's also the question of whether Greenbaum has done (or would have done) the same for other vulgar comments posted on the site—surely this isn't the first time someone has used a NSFW term in the comments of a story. "Of all the comments that you guys choose to 'narc on,' for lack of a better term, you chose one that was actually kind of funny [...] Vulgar, yes, but nowhere near as offensive as some of the racist stuff I’ve seen of here," one commenter named Karen wrote.

How does he decide what's a tattle-to-the-employer comment versus a merely annoying one? We tried to ask Greenbaum these questions but he declined to comment.

Then there's the question of whether pulling this move and then telling everyone about it was really worth throwing the paper's integrity into question—while other newspapers are fighting tooth and nail to protect the identity of their anonymous commenters, the Post-Dispatch has proven that it will reveal that info with little prodding. If commenters on a story can't trust that he won't report them to their employers if they say something he doesn't like, what about sources? It might give someone—say, if there was inside information involved—pause that Greenbaum might be indiscreet with that information as well. Whatever the end result, as evidenced by the comments on his blog post, he has certainly hurt the relationship the newspaper had with some of its readers.

Further reading: