“I’d Respectfully But Firmly Ask That You Stop Posting Comments on the Topic of the Morningstar Dispute”

Yesterday’s blog entry set forth the texts of e-mails between Jim Wiandt and me re an article that I wrote on Valuation-Informed Indexing for the www.IndexUniverse.com site. Those e-mails were sent on January 28, 2008. The two e-mails below were sent on the following day. The first was sent by Matt Hougan, who served as site administrator for discussions held at the site’s forum. The second was my response to Matt.

Mr. Bennett –

We’ve worked very hard to create a professional, informative Web site focused on indexes, index funds and ETFs.  Our discussion boards are a key part of that site, and we are committed to keeping the discussions there respectful and topical.

I’m not intimately involved in your dispute with the Diehards board, and I’m not taking one side or the other. I do not, however, want our discussion boards to become the forum for interpersonal disputes between you and other posters. I want to keep the forum open, but some of the recent posts by both you and others have crossed the line of civility. I’m going to delete many of the posts in the recent thread, which I have discretion to do as moderator.

I’d respectfully but firmly ask that you stop posting any comments related to the topic of the Morningstar dispute.

Best regards,

Matt Hougan

Matt:

I have never put forward a post that crosses the line of civility. I never will.

You do not need to be “intimately involved” in a “dispute” to know that making death threats is wrong.

If you want to set up an arrangement in which I notify you promptly when someone posts abusively on a thread at which I am participating, I would be happy to go along with that. Please just let me know any details of how you would like to proceed and I will do my best to make things work for all the people who are trying to learn about the subject of index investing. Those are the people I am concerned about.

Rob