FYI to Keiva--re your PM i went back and edited my post
I was mildly upset by goldibears ad. this is a dot org, not a dot com.. i don't think our response was rabid. in a lot of bulliten boards, there would have been an all out effort to flame.. and to post her email address on an other bulletin board, inviting millions of other to bomb her mail box.. this is pretty standard response on many, many bulliten boards... we, by contrast, were very mild-- both in our behaviour and in our words.
What i was very upset by was her response.. For future reference... (in other words, when i do this the next time...!) our response was mild enough not to have detered her!
there is a big difference between using this board to place an ad, (goldibear), giving a plug to a commerical company, (TEd) and referering to a commercial company in passing, (Bingley). No body got bent out of shape then Xara asked where can i buy "Harry Potter" books... and there were replies that included links to commercial sites. we don't pretend to live in a world that doesn't include commercial activity. (and i didn't mind, when someone sent me a very nice, very comforting email, obviously from their work site that included a link to the company web site as a signature file. I think i would mind, it i got the same as signature file here, or in a PM from here!)
Goldibear asked rhetoricaly, if i were selling dictionaries for a $1, should i tell you? well, the standard price for soft cover edition of a dictionary is $1 on the streets of NY.. and i expect the sellers make money.. so the answer to goldibear is, If you are buying dictionaries wholesale for $0.75, and coming here to hawk them them for $1, the answer is again NO. This is not a dot com site.
There is a place for ads.. Anu is looking for sponsers. (ie people who pay a fee to be able to read a select (us!) audience.) No one objects to the sponsers in the newsletter. Goldibear has the Newsletter as an option, and lots of other options, with out subverting this forum for her own personal use.
there are plenty of dot coms around.. i want to go shopping, i know how to find ads, and places to spend my money.
