Especially when it comes to flags, they are permanently on an account. theymos made this very clear from the start, with that there should be more care taken when creating and supporting/opposing them.
The weight certain evidence carries will vary from user to user. Sometimes screenshots are all there will be and I think it should play out something like this. "Evidence" is presented, both parties come and say their piece in the thread, conclusions can be drawn, or even a lack of definite judgement is achieved. Either way it's better than jumping to conclusions and negatively impacting the investigation/situation.
This could have gone much worse at that. I don't blame Tedfrost for their expletive laced response to the thread, being falsely accused. The problem there is how often does that generally make them look like the guilty party? It generally leads to an instant backlash and further skews the public opinion of guilt. I'm glad that a few yesterday did check things out and that JollyGood retracted so soon, but was fairly upset looking at the situation this morning.