Since one of our topics here is creating tips for communities, we take real situations here and generalize them. However, this can sometimes creates the perception of "talking about me behind my back", or of veiled insults.
In addition to generalizing our prescriptions, we need to be careful to be direct with people whom we disagree with or are talking about.
In some cases this prescription contrasts with BeProfessional. Usually, however, you can criticize without insulting.
Hmm… I think this prescription was saying "AvoidObliqueReferencesToPeople for the health of the community" – if you are using a real life situation as an example and that person never participates in your online community, then I guess it wouldn't negatively impact the health of the online community – so this prescription doesn't apply.
I guess there are other reasons that doing that may be hurting your community, depending on what the story is; like, if the story is cynical or makes fun of people, it will push the tone of your community towards being cynical and making fun of people who aren't there. but, although here on CommunityWiki we don't want that tone, maybe some other sites do want that.
On the other hand, there are lots of examples of people who assumed that someone else would never read something online, and then they did. I try never to make that assumption, personally.
So I think you may be hurting yourself by posting whatever it is online (because the peson might find it later), but you may not be hurting the health of your online community.
This is only my opinion and of course, having not read the story, I don't know anything about the details of the situation.