Martian

That's odd.

There are people on this forum who regularly have dinner together. I can personally say that I've visited and dined with several who I would consider now to be friends outside the normal forum interaction. One of them has even (briefly) met my sister.

And of course, that says nothing of the large numbers of real life friends or couples who just happen to share this space.

Interactions on TFP are far less anonymous than on the internet as a whole.

Regarding the ease of identifying an anonymous poster, you'll have to forgive me if I've overstated things. As a somewhat technically-oriented person, it's a fairly trivial matter for me to identify someone based on IP address and a small amount of correlating information -- I know that not all of our admins are so tech savvy as I am, and perhaps I simply made an assumption that is unwarranted. I also know from past experience with bulletin board software that generally IP's are logged on all posts, although I suppose anonymous posting might somehow circumvent that. So really I don't know with any certainty what the level of complexity is, though I did know prior to this that it is quite possible.

I trust our administrators to keep confidential information to themselves, but then then I haven't felt the need to use the anonymous posting feature to date anyway.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame