If you have successfully posted a comment on our site before (or several times before) without revealing your personal information, congratulations! The comment system isn’t that hard to figure out but we understand some of you are first-timers, multitasking, commenting while looking over your shoulder to make sure partners aren’t hovering around your cube or otherwise confused by the way it works. Therefore, we’ve put together this simple guide that should take the guesswork out of commenting on our site. Those of you who have figured this out may sit this one out, or fast-forward to the comment section to make fun of those who haven’t.

First, if you already have a Disqus account, the easiest thing to do is stay logged in on your machine and ��������������������le heart’s content. Your comment box will look something like this (except with fewer “likes” because you’re not as funny as I am and fewer comments because you hopefully have more of a life than I do):

Where it says “Type your comment here,” you will type your comment. Confirm that the avatar and name shown are actually yours unless you’ve hacked into your editor’s Disqus account to post embarrassing details about his personal life in front of all to see like this:

Anyway. Pretty self-explanatory, and great if you want credit for whatever you are posting but what if you prefer to remain anonymous or are a troll hoping to leave shitty criticism of people’s personal and professional lives without having the balls to sign your name to them? No problem!

Let’s say (theoretically, of course, I would never troll my own website) I wanted to respond to this jerk who called me out but want to make it appear as though I am not actually me so people think I actually have friends. Your comment field should look like this if you are logged out or unregistered:

Now, coming up with a snappy comeback is up to you. But once you’ve figured out what to say about this person’s Mom/dog/grandma/balls/whatever, pop it in the comment field and hit “Post as…”

It’s the window that pops up after that that seems to give people the most “trouble” so read this next part very carefully as we will not repeat it again and are this close to refusing to delete any identifying information since so many of you seem to get this part horribly wrong.

What this means is that if your email address is [email protected], typing that into Disqus will CHANGE “Guest” to “firstnamemiddleinitiallastname,” meaning if you do not double-check the field before hitting “Post comment,” you have now just exposed yourself to the entire Going Concern audience. This will make your joke unfunny, make you look like a douchebag and annoy the crap out of us when you inevitably email everyone on the Going Concern team demanding we take down your post at 11pm on a Friday night because YOU couldn’t pay attention.

Note: if you use Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or OpenID to log in, this will link directly to your respective profile on those sites. So don’t use this option if you don’t want the troll you just humiliated to have your personal information. I repeat: do not use this if you don’t want people to know who you are. In fact, I’d advise against using this option altogether.

If you have any questions about our comment removal policy, please review our Terms of Service carefully. The short version is that we will not delete comments because you accidentally used your real name, posted identifying information about yourself such as actual office and cube location and/or Social Security number, made some remark that you now regret because of all the haters who attacked you after you made it or spelled important words wrong and now feel like a douchebag. So think it through and please, for the love of all that is sacred and holy please double-check before you hit “Post comment.” It isn’t that hard and everyone will be happier in the long run. A lot of you seem to have issues with this lately; don’t make us remove the option to comment completely from this site, as we believe the comment section is what makes Going Concern such a great place to waste all those billable hours.

With all my love,

AG