How do we handle suggestions from dealers in question/product recommendation threads?

Daniel of lightake asked me about something and it occured to me there's one thing that is somewhat seperate from the "Where should new product promotion posts from budget dealers go?" and is particularly relevant now that the spam thing is implemented. For example, if we develop a budget dealers forum for their new products, it's still an open issue of whether they should be allowed to post when someone asks for recommendations. (Obviously we're talking about dealers who do self identify.)

I think all would agree there would be an expectation that their suggestion is on topic. Obviously if someone is looking for a torch and the dealer recommends a mobile phone, that's just dumb spam. But even if someone asks for a AA thrower and the dealer recommends an 18650 flooder we don't want that either. So the dealer should have read the original post at least and have some minimum understanding of what they sell and flashlights (although of course we have to recognise the language barrier that will often exist).

And we do expect some basic courtesy, like not continually posting recommendations (unless the questioner asks for them) to the same thread.

So in some ways it's not really the thing we can have fixed rules for since it's a matter of netetiquette. But perhaps one thing we should decide is a question of optout vs optin. I mean if someone is asking for product recommendations and says they welcome suggestions for budget dealers then we would probably always allow that (again with the above netetiquette considerations). At the same time if someone says they don't want suggestions from budget dealers, they definitely shouldn't post.

Cheers

Well said, Nil Einne, this sounds very reasonable to me. If we don't set down too many hard rules, I think that the polite, helpful users will stick around and the blatant spammers will be eliminated. Thanks for your comments. I'll try to make a final decision on the budget dealers' section soon.