: personally, I'm fine with this sort of message.
: Others may have different sensitivities.

My concern is that if we are going to say "But direct 'for sale' postings, commercial solicitation and ads are not allowed", in the masthead and further spell out:

"For Sale, Want to Buy, etc. Type Posts

The discussion forums here are for exchange of helpful information--not for your use in selling things you have or for promoting specific sellers of things. No 'for sale,' 'want to buy,' advertisements or direct links to dealer sites are allowed in discussion forum messages."

in the policies page we should enforce it and enforce it evenly, or it'll cause the moderators problems in the future.

: We are only trying to be on the look-out, so
: that the Discussion Forum doesn't get
: overrun with buy-sell-trade messages or
: become overly commercial. So far, so good,
: over the first year of this Forum.

This is the potential problem if we aren't careful...

: If we can help people find parts that they need
: for their watches, that is a great benefit
: of having this sort of
: "community".

How about permitting a RFS? Request For Sources? In other words, if someone is looking for sources for something (be it information, or materials, it's permissable for them to post a Request For Sources as long as they provide an email address and responses are done via email?

I think that's a reasonable compromise.

-- Chuck