Key Post Why speculation about Irish house prices is banned

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I wonder if there are any underlying legal reasons for the ban?

None, afaik

Why would discussion of market prices be illegal? Contrary to vested interests perhaps, but illegal no.

Do bear in mind that the ban was introduced at a time when prices were rising. The "vested interests" conspiracy theory may be tempting for someone who has only recently found AAM but for those of us who have posted here for years it is laughable.
 
The vested interests conspiracy theory may be tempting for someone who has only recently found AAM but for those of us who have posted here for years it is laughable.

Why was discussion of house prices allowed when sentiment was positive but not when it turned negative?
 
Joking aside, there are no legal reasons why discussion of property prices is banned on AAM. Although sometimes moderators need to be vigilant that individual posters don't post anything defamatory or potentially libellous about named individuals or companies, e.g. estate agents, this vigilance extends to the whole board. In such an instance the owner of the site can be sued - whether or not such an action would be successful thankfully remains to be seen on Askaboutmoney, which is a credit to the moderators.

And I find a certain irony in the fact that the only two references to "vested interests" come from posters who have connections with other less popular discussion boards.
 
It is a great tribute to Askaboutmoney that some people feel that it is the only site which has the capacity to provide balanced, unbiased and informed views on the future direction of house prices.

I have to say that I don't think that Askaboutmoney deserves this tribute. I don't claim to know what way house prices will move over the next twelve months. I don't think that any of the other moderators claim any special knowledge.

We have tried to facilitate the discussion.
We allowed a thread go to over 8,000 posts although there were many calls for the thread to be closed as it was repetitive.
I asked on many occasions for a balanced summary - none was forthcoming.
I provided one myself and we allowed discussion. The discussion was restricted to Frequent Posters to try to maintain some order. After a promising start, we had to close the thread again for the same reasons we closed the original thread:

1) There was no new information - it was generating only heat and not light
2) It required too much time of the moderators. This time is better spent on facilitating balance, informed and unbiased views on other topics, where we do have something to add.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions in this thread. The issue is now closed.

Brendan
 
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