One of the most fascinating aspects pf PPRuNe is the flood of input and analysis after a major accident. Sometimes the likely causes are identified fairly quickly. In the case of the MD-83, it's not so obvious. However you always get people saying we are not allowed to speculate. As with this thread, often there's a theme that what you say is automatically worthless if you are not a certain type of professional. But that's not the real issue. These people have a sort of religious aversion. Nobody needs to read these threads. They know that there's going to be no official enquiry findings published 12 hours after a crash, so why are they browsing? Also the curious thing is these discussions are mainly credible. You can't expect 100% but most people are making rational contributions or asking pertinent questions. Of course there's a lot of missing facts especially in the first hours and days, so it is speculation, but what is wrong with that? We'd all be very dull if we ignored things we didn't know were 100% factual, and what exactly would be achieved?