That's a reasonable argument against Google announcing what needs to be done. It's no argument at all against someone from Google contacting Matt Haughey directly, and telling him.
That's what surprises me most in all of this. Why hasn't Cutts picked up the phone, and called Haughey? Haughey's a long-time and well respect Web Dude. He's not a spammer, nor some 'random dude with a site.' Sure seems like a win/win for Google to help MetaFilter out of this jam.
I guess what Matt said to Haughey: your site looks like a content farm, lot of posts have poor content, filled with lots of links, none of them have backlinks so it was hit by Panda. Even if there is a lot of good pages on the site according to someones, it is enough to have also a lot of shallow pages to get caught.
That's what surprises me most in all of this. Why hasn't Cutts picked up the phone, and called Haughey? Haughey's a long-time and well respect Web Dude. He's not a spammer, nor some 'random dude with a site.' Sure seems like a win/win for Google to help MetaFilter out of this jam.