I think the guidelines on exposing the secrets to tricks should be in whether they're using gimmicks, misdirection, hidden pickup mics, etc.. to claim they have mystical powers and tacitly say they're not magicians. Geller was evidently a bad magician who decided to ride the woo wave and claim he had magical powers but was not performing magic. To me (and to Randi and Johnny Carson) the means, "Geller Season Has Started - Getcher Muskets, Kids!". ..snip
And I think this point is so important for believers like Robin to understand. My little immersion month of reading about mentalist magic has made me realize, and really gotten me to appreciate just how impressive (good) mentalists really are! The amount of skill they need to have in order to misdirect attention here or psychologically cue a person to say something there, by themselves, I find impressive. Then add in the sleight of hand, memorization required, knowledge of human tendancies, etc, as well as being skilled at particular tricks, and the whole thing just really wows me. And don't get me wrong here. I know that I am by no means any kind of expert like Garette and RemieV and others. I am sure I don't even know the half of it.
The stuff Edward does, from a mentalist/magician standard is just not really very good. His cold reading relies almost entirely on his client's wanting to help him, and really really wanting to talk to their dead person, and the absolutely normal human brain tendency that when faced with a rapid fire onslaught of information, our brain quickly snaps on those things we think are important (hits), and deletes/forgets those things we think are not (misses).
An example of that could be Robin's own reading. Has anyone else noticed that she hasn't brought up John's misses? Anyone who's looked at an Edward unedited reading can see that for every hit there are misses, sometimes a whole lot of misses before he gets a hit. Yet Robin, who has argued that she cannot be fooled, and who has argued that the details details details of an experience are important to understanding or appreciating it, seems to have eliminated a lot of details from her own reading.
Can you explain that Robin? Can you remember ANY misses JE made in your reading? If so, could you list them? Because sometimes, knowing what they said "no" to, makes the "yes" guess not quite so out of the blue or amazing.
Does this make sense to you? 
I realize that now, almost three years after her reading, there is no possible way that we can figure out exactly how JE did his cold reading on Robin, nor can we tell which items were warm/hot reading or how he did it.
Just the same with RemieV's example, though I admit, I thought that was a lot of fun trying to figure it out. I bow to the expert opinion that it was hot reading. I know that JE does use that sometimes, because he's been caught at it at least once. My own persistance in the cold reading scenario, I hope to make clear, wasn't because I was saying, "This MUST be cold reading and here is how!" It is just that I find it a really really fun puzzle to ask, "Could it be possible to do this with cold reading?" and then imagine various scenarios where it could.
And I still think the exercise was worth doing. I think it is good for skeptics to polish up our analysis skills. And taking this story that appears at first read to be an astoundingly good trick, which most certainly HAD to be hot reading, and breaking it down piece by piece to find, as Old man did, that actually, depending on the reactions of the client, and his tablemates, that the whole thing COULD have been done with one lucky guess, good people reading skills, and a dash of bravado, was a valuable lesson, in my opinion.
Just like looking at other magic tricks. Some things just look astounding and unbelievable until you get a clue as to how it was done. And then you just think, "Geez, how could I have missed that?"
