I didn't respond to Jim's comments in the original thread for two reasons:
1) I didn't want it to appear that my response was necessarily the company's position, and by posting as an employee on a company forum people tend to get that impression. I'm not a spokesman for company policy, or even ad.com web site policy. I'm not even an employee for much longer.
2) Since Jim was banned, he wouldn't have been unable to reply to me there, if that was his desire.
Clearly there are issues that need to be worked out in the relationship between aD and its user community -- maybe more issues than anyone was aware of. It would be great if everyone calmed down, someone let Jim back on aD.com, and we could have an open and productive discussion.
