I won't get involved in discussing the "non-person", but would like to bring in my own experiences.
I've been attacked on Mumsnet, and from my basic journo education in the legalities, I could throw my toys out of my pram. I also know a couple of technical things about web conferencing that might make life mildly awkward and expensive for MNHQ, but here's why I don't (aside from the fact that I'm a grown up and can take it on the chin).
I was involved in one of the first snafu's of this kind in the early 1990's. I was a contract programmer, and we said various unkind (but true) things about a recruitment firm. One of their senior droids threatened us with legal action.
What he didn't realise was that a good % of IT journalists are also freelance IT types. He'd thus threatened about a quarter of the IT journos in Britain at one go.
The coverage in the media was really bad for the firm concerned, given this was their core business. Even now, in this group, the term for aggressively stupid behaviour in that group is known as "doing a Span".
Anyone who has had a full business education has typically been taught the lessons from Perrier, Tylenol etc where a big brand has found itself under attack. A core of this is that once journos start diggging, they will find all sorts of crap.
For instance Perrier allowed really really tiny amounts of Benzene a carcinogen into their water. They did the stupid thing of denying it, then claiming it did no harm, then shafting it's disributors with unsellable water, etc.
Journos thought it was Christmas. Their thrashings around led to literally dozens of distinct story lines about the firm. It turned out, for instance, that the "naturally sparkling" they used to put on their bottles was a lie. Normally not a big story, except when blood is in the water.
You can see the parallels with Cadbury's here ?
Fact is the level of toxins was really really small, but by threats, dishonesty, arrogance, and
belligerence, they lost a lot of brand image.
Brand is a big thing when you're selling water or books, or chocolate or pretty much anything else which doesn't compete solely on price.
No business, no matter how dull and law abiding doesn't have stuff it would rather keep mum about.
Finding good stories is hard, I know, since I'm still a freelance journo, and getting to grips with a new area is hard, so when you get a story, you get more words per amount of effort by having a quick dig around things you've already done.
Nowadays my main business is based upon a website with Mumsnet style chat. We are pimps for people in banks, and also do training and write books and learned papers.
I'll try not to sound too pompous about this, but having a forum where people can slag us off means we can say with credibility that we're much more honest and competent than the competition.
Our screwups are posted on the site for all to see. We don't delete them, even when we know them to be false, or simply abusive. It is not unknown for some unhappy people to suggest us having sex with animals, or that we are incompetents, racists, or as in one bizarre topic that I was somehow in league with a French Moslem conspiracy to subvert a major global financial institution.
(All I had said was that these people were smart, and thus got some good jobs).
We get attacked all the time.
The only stuff that gets deleted is when physical violence is threatened.
It makes us stronger. We have easily the best brand image of anyone in our game, even though we're new and still relatively small.
I also write for www.theregister.co.uk
The editor and his gang actually pick up the most interesting abuse we get, and publish it about once a week. There is a competition for the most abusive email we get.
It is a matter of some vague embarassment to me that no one really attacks my stuff much. It's nice to know that one quote of mine is on many office walls, but my home topic (C++ s/w development) is not exactly controversial.
But The Register is a huge success, depending on whose numbers you believe, it's pretty much the top techie website in Europe. The inclusion of the most vitriolic attacks on us, published by us makes us stronger.