I think most folks don't realize how forums such as this one are on the razor's edge.

Several years ago, the online aviation magazine Avweb got sued over comments made by forum users regarding a certain attorney. Avweb itself had only posted a factual story about an ongoing lawsuit; users then posted negative public comments about the plaintiff's lawyer. The lawyer sued the users, as well as Avweb for not policing the comments. Avweb had to post a public apology.

Avweb, being a small company with very few assets, didn't have much to lose. EAA, on the other hand, is a pretty big corporation with some heavy-duty assets. A MUCH riper target for a lawsuit.

So, consider: One day Hal gets called into Jack Pelton's office. A company is upset about negative things said about their product in the EAA Forums, and is threatening to sue.

Forget whether the lawsuit has any merit. Because Pelton is going to ask Hal one key question:

"What value does EAA derive by hosting these forums?" Maybe he's paged through the various forums, and has noticed several examples of less-than-stellar behavior by the participants (coughautoenginescough). He finds insults to EAA's sponsors, its advertisers, and its own employees. He's going to want to know why EAA should put their corporate logo on these comments.

"What value does EAA derive by hosting these forums?" How's Hal supposed to answer? Put a dollar value on it, since the bean-counters aren't going to care about fuzzy touchy-feely stuff. Just getting the lawyers to investigate the corporation's vulnerability to a theatened lawsuit will probably cost five thousand bucks. Does EAA get $5,000 worth of benefit from the forums in a month? In a year?

For twenty years, the company I work for had a internal set of unmoderated forums (basically USENET newsgroups with company-only distribution). The legal department found out about it, looked at the content, and forced it to shut down. All in one day.

Keep that in mind the next time you want to complain about a product, insult the EAA staff, or wax nasty about politics on EAA's nickel.

Speaking of Hal, keep in mind that he doesn't set EAA policy. He does a great job trying to chase down answers for us, but if EAA doesn't want to make a statement, there's nothing Hal can do about it. Hounding him won't help.

Ron Wanttaja