Screening is good and it should occur at all levels.
Providers should communicate with one another to encourage good business and so should clients. But communication does not always guarantee absolute effectiveness, especially if it is used to manipulate the market. There is a difference between clean and dirty communication.

For instance, clients who plug providers too frequently raise the ire of the board as do clients who might be untruthful in their reviews.  Likewise, providers can use their network to communicate about weirdoes and bad clients and so on.  Generally the market or the forum—even if a new one has to be created--will allow truth to prevail.  

My point about the prevailing climate of paranoia is that it tends to concentrate power in the hands of those in the know.  Often those “in the know” begin to feel comfortable that they won’t have a breach.  But sometimes that breach occurs from a completely different direction.  Sometimes it comes from a single event of carelessness (intentional or not).

Caution is good, especially in a group, because any can become a turn-coat for a break.  Most of us have weaknesses. Some of us have wives who get quite a high settlement if our activities were known, some of have children, some of us are public figures and so on.  People can put a lot of pressure on those weak spots: think child protective services, the IRS, divorce attorneys etc.  

If it gives you a big thrill to think we are heavy on the radar, screen, go ahead and entertain yourselves.  Hmm, I’ve been in on this internet scene for six years and the street scene for even longer.  The reality is that basic screening will work most of the time, and those that use it well stay in for the long haul. But that doesn’t mean caution shouldn’t rule.  Caution is good.  Often those we think are closest, most in the palm of our hands, can be the most volatile.  So many providers who never post, and don’t use the local cult of screening seem to be doing so successfully.

So please, by all means, keep the back channel going.  Keep up the screening. Screening is a boon to consumers and businesses: let word travel freely of bad customers and bad shops.  Let it travel from both directions, and let the unfair, the arrogant, and the mean spirited get brought down by their own dirty communication.

By all means, MOD, remove my post if it unfairly identified a provider, a client or situation that was inaccurate or mean-spirited it wasn’t my intent.  I feel like House Chairman or Speaker guy from Down South.  I was merely saying that something as simple as a client perceiving he was manipulated or a provider can be ultimate source of weakness.  More importantly, I was trying to discourage a hostile attitude toward other providers and a US AND THEM mentality that is clearly taking hold of this board. We can all make mistakes.  We should feel bad for a woman being harassed, not use it as an “I TOLD YOU SO”—especially when the basis of that I told you so is based rumors and in ignorance.