The difference is that my comment is a comment and explicitly expressed as my personal misgivings. Their's is stated as a fact, in a submitted hint, as justification to use said hint. To me, that is a huge difference. What some idiot says in the comments doesn't carry nearly as much weight as something in a published hint on macosxhints.com.

If you had read the Ars article about TimeMachine and file system events beforehand, and then come across this hint and read that statement, you also might have thought "woah, where did that come from"? Unsubstantiated claims that something is "dangerous" and will "actually" (the word used) "actually slowly corrupt your backups" is alarmist. Consider how the statement would be interpreted if read without prior exposure to the Ars article, or other sources. No corroboration has appeared from the poster in subsequent posts, whereas palahala has included several links rebutting the claim. No instructions to say "do this to demonstrate corruption". No links to documentation. Not even a link to something as anecdotal as a web forum where someone reports corruption. Now after the fact, we are seeing comments like "I don't know exactly how time machine does it's thing" or "I don't think either of us knows" coming from the submitter, and at least one instance of an argument based on a misinterpretion of a linked article. So what exactly were the original claims based on?

I'm still hoping to see the proof, but if an admission is coming that the statement was based on speculation rather than fact, the sooner the better.

By the way, I'm not vaguely devaluing the hint at all. I think it's a fine hint that I'm sure many will find useful. That doesn't excuse the inclusion of (still unsubstantiated) statements of what is looking more and more like speculation as fact. Speaking generally, the fact that hints on macosxhints go through a screening process before publication has helped to keep the reliability of the information that can be found here at a high level, something that would be threatened if unsubstantiated claims and misinformation are complacently allowed to persist.

Good points. Fair enough.