Outing Anonymous Commenters or Why Get Equal Needs to Get Real!

The Bilerico Project's Alex Blaze posts a picture of two Twitter messages posted on the account of Get Equal. Get Equal is a nationwide LGBT advocacy group, who was also one of the organizers for today's rally outside of the Indianapolis City Market. In the messages, the organization's director and co-founder Robin McGehee, wants to know the identity of a blog commenter. The commenter, AndrewW, often posts on LGBT blogs anonymously. And I guess his comments have hit a nerve with McGehee so much that she wants to know man behind the screen name. For what reason, I have no idea.

If this is the type of professionalism that Get Equal believes in, count me out. Indiana already has enough LGBT advocacy groups that do their work half-assed, and it doesn't need dirt diggers to add to the mix. If the largest companies and organizations spent all day replying and worrying about anonymous commenters on the Internet, they'd never get anything accomplished.

If AndrewW is reading this, you're safe here. I allow anonymous commenting because I believe in opening the lines of communication as much as possible. And while I might glance over the data provided by SiteMeter, I'm not going to do any serious dirt digging into finding out WHO it is. Most blogs practice similar methods because not everyone is comfortable with posting publicly for whatever reason.

My advice to the Get Equal crew? Take down those two tweets and move on. It seems your organization is relatively new, so just chalk it up to a rookie mistake.