Heather:
In my opinion, there is a difference between pure speculation, and stating something as fact. Speculation is fine by me, in fact, I quite enjoy reading it. You could say that you heard that Paramount's Kings Island was getting a launched-giga 4th Dimension coaster for the 2004 season, and I wouldn't give it a second thought. But as soon as you put "My sources" or "I can guarantee" in front of that, you're setting yourself up for investigation.
There are so many people who claim to have sources and to be "in the know," when most of them actually aren't. I don't need sources of my own, because I have these boards to get information from. However, there is a process of deciding which information to listen to, and which to throw out with the trash. I'm skeptical because I don't feel that people should be able to spread lies over the internet, where anyone can access them. We enthusiasts often complain about the General Public spouting false information, when there are those among us who do the same thing.
You say that "it is our God given right to talk about and speculate all we want," and I couldn't agree with you more. Speculation and opinions are the basis of these message boards. If the only thing we could post were facts, there would only be a handful of people in the conversation. It isn't our God given right, however, to lie. Once you say "This is going to happen, without a doubt, I'm telling the truth" and it doesn't, well, you were obivously not telling the truth. I can understand this happening once, or maybe even twice, but not as many times as I have seen it from certain people. We all get wrong information sometimes, but not all the time.
The best way to describe this is to use the good old saying of "Those who know, don't tell."
