Exactly!
Up until a couple of months ago, LinuxToday.com was an identical community meeting place for penquinistas, the hottest Linux news site on the planet, and the oldest.

Then it was bought out 18 months ago and almost immediately changes became noticable. The parent company was exploiting the community by censoring certain talkbacks, looping click-throughs to their other sites, etc. The maximum outrage was when it was learned that the executive editor of LT was astrotufting LT with derogatory msgs about other community members and competeing websites. Under various pseudonyms, he would act as a Microsurftie flamebaiter (to generate click-throughs), ridicule other LT participants, and called www.newsforge.com "newsforgery". He wasn't fired, only reassigned, which was an other outrage, because one of the editors, Paul Ferris, called him on his austroturfing and was fired for it. So it is obvious that the CEO was in aggreement with the astroturfing.


UT has several of advantages that LT didn't have. First, an ethical owner-moderator. Second, believe it or not, the ~$100 annual fee. which, in fairness might not be practical to ask of news readers, but goes a long way to proving the sincereity of members. Third, and most important, no anonymous logins allowed. And lastly, the high level of professionalism of the members, as indicated by the high signal to noise ratio.
JLK