People share stories about their lives here, and while most of us do the very best we can to make it hard for people to pin point exactly who we are, anyone dedicated enough will be able to find information about you by simply following the gigantic digital trail we leave. Maybe you use the same email here that you used to sign up on facebook and from there they're able to see some of your friends and do this that or the other thing. Just because you don't have the imagination or the experience in social engineering to do it yourself does not mean that there are not methods, tools, and people that are quite capable of digging up dirt with a bare minimum of information.
It only gets worse when you consider that we are a community of people that have known some of each other for up and sometimes over ten years, and over that time we've all shared stories and had laughs and shared details of our lives that were too intimate to ever tell a friend or a family member. That's one of the things that made totse so great to me at least, was all that crazy stories of people living such vastly different, weird lives all over the globe.
Everyone should practice the best opsec they can, but everybody makes mistakes and those mistakes pile up after a while. All it takes is one fucking asshole to do the legwork and suddenly anyone and their grandma can send a swat team to your house and possibly have you killed.
That is NOT an environment that fosters a trusting community where we share knowledge and stories and laughs and tears (and...other bodily fluids), and without that breathing room than we have absolutely nothing and there is no point for us to even try. If we are continually at war with each other as a community then the gig is already up, it's game over man, it's game over!
Personally I don't care how dim of a view you take of the staff actually having to moderate, that is what they are here for and if they are not up for the task then we should either find people that are or just give it up for good. This PI issue is only going to get worse as the years drag on, if we do not work to put an end to it right now.
It is far better for someone on an internet forum to not be able to post for a few days because of something that may or may not have been a PI violation than for someone to have their REAL life ACTUALLY destroyed because of a careless staff that encouraged a cess-pool of malicious e-paparazzi.