[jdl22]

Mason,

I agree with your position that authors should be held to a higher standard. That's fair enough, I just wonder what people will think when the post has a disclaimer attached, and others such as the examples I've given above don't. While there could be legal ramifications I'm not aware of, I don't see why a poster reading a review of a book or a coach would misconstrue it as your company supporting this person (or being against in the case of a bad review). People reading the review will get to the disclaimer and wonder why it's there. My guess is that the thread would then either get fully derailed or at least split into some sort of two threaded monster with one discussing the actual value of Ciaffone's coaching/coaching in general and the other discussing why the disclaimer's there and whether you treat "your competition" unfairly. If this were to happen we would have a thread go from being hugely beneficial to simply making everyone frustrated. In this scenario it's also not likely that you would come out looking like the good guy, despite being well intentioned.

Based on little I know of Ciaffone's limit advice I agree with your position. I haven't read his books but from hearing and reading about various examples of hands where his advice is clearly too weak-tight your view seems to be correct. While I can see why you would want a disclaimer, for the reasons mentioned above I think it would be best if it were left out and you responded to the post saying that you think his limit advice is often bad but his NL and legal advice is good. (on a sidenote, his discussion of rules seems interesting as well I'm curious what you think on that) That would get your view out there, make it very clear that the review isn't giving the official 2+2 publishing opinion, and would be much less likely (though still not probability zero) to end in a flame war. Hopefully, no matter your decision such a problem doesn't develop.

By the way, after all of this disclaimer discussion I skimmed the pages of the magazine looking for such a disclaimer and didn't find one. Shouldn't there be one? I'm being 100% serious here, this is in no way a continuation of the argument above. I would assume that the magazine is something like the editorial page of the newspaper where you accept and publish writings even if you disagree with the view given therein, assuming they are well thought out and written reasonably. Most (all?) newspapers have a similar disclaimer, and this would seem necesary in your case as well, especially since there usually are 1 or 2 controversial articles every month.

Your humble servant,

Jared