I'm not sure that an argument between car partisans on a board about selling cars is necessarily a bad thing. Flame wars engage people, some to participate, even more to watch. Looking at it like the cold-blooded marketeer I once was for part of my career, controversy sounds good to me.

A lot depends on the paid spokesperson. We know alpha forum personalities who can dominate a board and love to squash hecklers and take on all comers. (That does sound like TB, doesn't it? I'll bet he'd make a great forum salesman for certain kinds of things. Like the books of Ayn Rand.) The ultimate forum-salesperson type is somebody who can use the hecklers and trolls as foils to come out of it looking even better to the audience. Which is what I mean when I go on about the personal nature of this kind of selling. Mano-a-mano living on your wits. That seems inherently more honest than selling by advertising, don't ya think?