Rich_by_the_Bay
Moderator Emeritus
A Rule Change
Executive Summary: no more web site links of any type, and no commercial references in signature lines - use your member profile instead.
With a recent increase in commercial links in signature lines, the moderators have determined that it would be best to limit all standing links to the member profile alone.
While many signature line links were to personal and noncommercial sites, many others were basically links to commercial interests. It has become difficult for the mods to track all these down, and even then it is sometimes difficult to know what is commercial and what is not. Because signature links are in your face every single time a user posts, we felt this was the best policy in order to spare our members from constant self-promotion. The community rules have been changed accordingly.
We freely acknowledge that many such links had no commercial motives, but it has simply gotten too cumbersome for us to check them one by one. This will also enable us to filter out the "one-time wonders" (one post, one ad, gone with the wind) more efficiently for you.
So, for those of you whose signature line has any links, any commercial content, or any reference to commercial content (including such content in your own profile), please move them to your user profile at your soonest convenience. After a while, the mods will delete them as time permits or PM the user to do so.
We believe this will help both the readers as well as the posters, who can now post free of any question of ulterior motives. Thanks for understanding as we work to keep ER a spam-free zone.
The Moderator Team