Poll: Vigilant Social Media Manager or Social Media Vigilante?

There’s some buzz online today about STLtoday.com (website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) social media manager Kurt Greenbaum, who last Friday took some actions that resulted in an anonymous obscene commenter losing his job.

It all started with an innocuous “question of the day” feature. Friday’s question was: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?

From Greenbaum’s own work blog, here’s what happened next:

[W]hile I was in our 10 a.m. news meeting, someone posted in reply a single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy. It was there only a minute before a colleague deleted it.

A few minutes later, the same guy posted the same single-word comment again. I deleted it, but noticed in the WordPress e-mail alert that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included.

About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.

As you may imagine there’s no shortage of opinions about Greenbaum’s actions, in which he initiated contact with a commenter’s employer. There are 151 (and counting) reader responses to Greenbaum’s blog post about the incident (Post a vulgar comment while you’re at work, lose your job). Most are critical, with many including “you must be proud of yourself” admonishments. Others defend Greenbaum and argue that the obscene commenter got what he deserved.

Greenbaum remains unrepentant in the face of criticism, writing on his Twitter account:

Amazed at the readers who comment in defense of a jackass who posted a vulgarity on our site — and lost his job.

I’d be interested to see how WebNewser readers feel about this. You can weigh in by taking the poll below.

Kurt Greenbaum’s actions led to an anonymous blog commenter losing his job. This is:(survey software)

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.