What I would like to see when an accident/incident happens is a condolences thread where people who actually knew the persons involved are allowed to comment and another thread should be opened for anyone to discuss the possible reasons why it happened and to learn from events like this. Perhaps someone could start a 'Flying in bad weather' thread to kick things off and you can all disagree with each other on that.
I've been reading both threads and have refrained from commenting so far, both because I don't know the pilot, and because I don't know anything about the environment (both physical and weather) he was flying in. But I've been thinking about our "right to discuss" and I would like to comment on that just a bit.
As we all have learned in the PPL course, there is usually not one single cause of an accident. It's usually a multitude of contributing factors, and even if one of the factors would have been absent, the flight would have been hairy, but not with a fatal outcome. The Swiss cheese analogy is used a lot for this.
As forumites, when an accident has happened, we will want to discuss it. Call it natural curiosity, call it the safety consciousness of the aviation community, call it something else. But the accident will be discussed, either here or at the bar.
However, before these discussions lead to conclusions, and name calling of pilots, let's not forget that we as forumites, do not have a complete picture. We do not know the technical state of the aircraft. We do not know how much fuel was on board, and how much other load. We don't know the reasons for the flight (get-there-itis or not?), we don't know the originally intended routing. We don't know the qualifications of the pilot (IR?) nor whether his flight was filed IFR or VFR. We have no access to radio and radar tapes. And so on and so forth. All we know is that a plane is missing and wreckage has been found on a hillside.
So that leaves us to discuss the only thing that we can analyze, because the data is out there on the internet: the weather. And people have done so. Fine. But let's all be real careful to separate a weather discussion from handing down a final verdict as to what happened.
Oh, and a week or so ago somebody asked a question about searching for old TAFs (not METARs) and got no answer, basically. Historical forecasts are notoriously hard to find, so even our little weather discussion is most likely limited to actuals, whether they are METARs or personal observations. But we don't have access to the forecasts that were available to the pilot when he made his decision to go fly. Another thing to keep in mind.
The AAIB will attempt to give us a complete picture, eventually. That's the time and place for conclusions, not earlier.