Not that I'm a money-grubbing, stock-sucking bastard, but speaking as a member of the "community", I'm a little spooked by how reckless journalism, and off-hand comments on mailing lists, affect peoples (read: companies) financial futures (this is actually just the tip of the proverbial iceberg).
It has another effect, which is that it tars other posts with the same brush. Those of us with glimpse-index memories can often remember who posts generally good stuff. Few would categorize Sean Donelan's outage posts in the same group as "Vendor X's network sucks". But knowing not to so categorize them relies on either extensive past knowledge of NANOG or Sean. Discussion of operational issues is made more difficult when many posts are (or seem to be) tainted by misinformation. -- Alex Bligh VP Core Network, Concentric Network Corporation (formerly GX Networks, Xara Networks)