[Delphinus]

Sorry for the belated reply on this one. We (the moderators) talked about this and came up with a new policy that I hope will be satisfactory to those who expressed concerns in this thread. I was supposed to make a post but I've had to delay getting the message out due to being incredibly busy all of a sudden while at work and not having the 5 minutes to actually type this in.

What we've come up with is this: You can post prices in a thread as a matter of discussion, but you cannot post a shopping list of prices.

So for example:

"I was at <insert store here> and I saw CO2 regulators for sale for $20! Score!" This would be OK. (* As long as it's not in the buy/sell forums. More details about this one to follow.)

"I was at <insert store here> today and here is a shopping list of prices of the things that I saw." Or "Here are all the items and their prices from <insert store here> that came to me in a flyer in the mail this week." This would be not OK.

So, the obvious question is, what is a shopping list? Basically, once something gets to be a large list of multiple items and their prices quoted, then then this would be construed as a shopping list. Arbitrarily, if more than 5 items are listed, it's a shopping list. And be careful, because as soon as 2 or 3 people start replying with the 2 or 3 items they're listing, the whole thread can become, inadvertently, a shopping list. The reason this is an issue is because a shopping list is either potentially advertising, or worse, potentially becomes a "which store is best to shop at" thread, which never end nicely.

Also, when posting in the buy/sell forums, try to limit yourself to posting items that you are selling (or buying) yourself. BOCTOE ("but of course there are obvious exceptions"). The occasional "I'm posting this for a friend who doesn't have email" is, for example, one such exception.

...

Now, as for the sticky posts suggestion detailing guidelines for each forum. I personally would rather we did not go this route at this time. It is my preference that we just stick to common sense and good nettitiquette when posting (and I think that 99% of the time this is "good enough"). If we start posting rules all over the place, the board becomes a less fun place to be. My $0.02 on that one.

Thanks!