[CliffBeer]

Hi Ron,

Interesting you post this - I recently ran a little test to try to determine if a certain member and commercial vendor on the forum was utilizing other profiles for the purpose of influencing opinion to encourage the purchase of product. Net, the suspected "alter-ego" profile of this vendor employed the same grammatical errors as the vendor, and, with a high degree of consistently included a pitch to buy the vendor's products. Seemed really weird to me and not appropriate for the forum. In connection with this I did seek a policy statement from the forum as to the acceptable limits of commercial "soft marketing" so I might have an idea of what is the consensus on this point.

Related to this I suspect, immediately after I (diplomatically) inquired about the acceptable limits of commercial marketing upon the forum by vendors, my reputation got majorly trashed. It had been very positive and increasing then immediately I was in the red. That seems weird too, particularly since I did received many private messages indicating thanks for bringing up the issue and suggesting we have some clarity on the point. Apparently there are lots of other folks on the forum who dislike the "soft marketing" that some vendors employ via this forum but don't choose to speak up publicly due to a desire to avoid conflict.

Anyway, my hope is that everyone just gets along, the commercial guys respect the reasonable limits of commercial marketing in their presence here, and we can get back to enjoying the good comraderie and spirit of a bunch of great folks who love all that is gt40.

Thanks!