>I?m done with this post and don?t feel a need to continue the discussion or spend any more time on these boards

Bye Tony. Anyway, I'm sure most people who visit this site appreciate the lack of spamming and advertising. Whatever T-Rob wants to call it, that is spamming. The point of any swapmeet at any tackle store is to attract business. Despite what you might think, they don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. If the swapmeet was organized by Sal and held at some other parking lot, then perhaps it would be a different deal, but when tackle stores have events in their parking lot, 9 times out of 10 it's to attract business or introduce people to the shop. I think TRob is missing the point here; when someone shows up without contributing to the message board and posts one post which is promoting something, on every board, then leaves, it is called spam. Perhaps TRob is misinformed as far as what spam actually is, but that definitely falls into the category of shameless self promoting spam. As for just good buddies of the moderator being able to advertise, that's ridiculous, and just attacking the guy that lets you gather information on this website. I think you should re-read rob's post. The rules on advertising are- there is none. No advertising on this website. We'll pick on Chris since he happened to post the Mike Long seminar thing at the perfect time ;-). Chris has been around for awhile and has contributed and posted a couple reports. Had Chris posted something like "90% off of everything at BWW for a limited time only..." it probably would've gotten deleted.

Again, these things like swapmeets and seminars are to gather business. Seminars so offer more information to anglers, and could be thought of as more beneficial than a swapmeet, but we'll call them even as far as ways to gather business. As is apparent, you could go either way on this issue as far as is it spam or isn't it (on both of these issues, swapmeet and seminar). Since chris is a regular contributor here, rob let it slide as a perk for chris contributing. Since the bob sand's guy has never posted here and then all of a sudden posted on every single board (which is very annoying, btw) rob got rid of it. I don't see why you have a problem with this whole thing, it's really not that tough. If you think this message board should just be a free for all, post any self promoting advertising you want type of thing, then you're going to be disappointed. Nobody's forcing you to read this website. If you want to know about swapmeets, special deals, 90% off sales at bass world west, etc. then you'll have to go somewhere else. Rob chooses to keep this message board strictly information on fishing. Fishing reports, fishing questions, fishing observations, etc. For the borderline spam/not spam, if the person contributes here and it's apparent that he's not trying to sell something to benefit himself and is truely posting because he thinks it will benefit other people, then it'll stay. If there's a question about any of that, then it will go. I held my tongue long enough, but it's my PEROGATIVE to keep this board how it is.
-Brian