Originally Posted by The_Jazz

For the record: only admins have the ability to remove someone's anonymity when they use this feature. It is not "quick" or "easy" (at least compared to many of the other features on the admin panel), but it can be done. It's also something that the four of us that are active in the board at large take very seriously and something that we don't really mess with unless we have to. I've looked a total of 3 times, once where something illegal was alleged, once where a pretty important rule was allegedly being broken and once when I was asked to fix a post and had to confirm that the person making the request was the anonymous poster. I have a fairly good idea about my fellow admins, and I'll venture to say that their numbers are about the same for the year and a half-ish we've had this feature.