[StuartDH]

We delete quite a lot of spam and adverts on here, and we've also binned some obvious new member "where can I buy" questions that had answers from new members with "the best place is...". We've recently received a complaint from someone telling us to level the playing field on 'free ads' and basically allow them to post, or they'll report us to the charity commission. With regards to PMs, they've apparently been given PM recommendations that gave 'biased' support for some suppliers and 'unfair' criticism of others.

Their complaint is that we delete some recommendation threads, but apparently allow others to promote suppliers on the site, so in effect we must be endorsing or looking after these suppliers. They've also made the insinuation that we must be getting well looked after by these suppliers to let them get away with it.

Personally, I've put a massive amount of time, money and effort into WAB and I doubt that the total benefit from sales on all of the recommendations on every thread on the site would add up to what I've put in over the past 2/3 years. Wild About Britain doesn't benefit from any way of the recommendations on the forums, and nor do any of the trustees. If anything the charity loses out as the suppliers don't have to pay through the usual google adverts to get publicity.

So to level the playing field we've got one of two options; heavily restrict the use of supplier recommendations, or allow every ebay trader, retailer etc to use the site as a place to post free ads in forum threads (including the more discreet "where can I buy..." spam). There's no way the second one is going to happen, so we're going with option one.

As I've said above, we'll allow the occasional post of a recommendation for a supplier, but if it looks anything like one supplier is getting too much publicity on the site then we won't hesitate in deleting all references. If you need to make a recommendation, wherever possible, please be vague enough to not specify a single supplier.

As said before, everything in moderation. We'd certainly never allow every post to include a recommendation, and it appears that even the amount we had before was too much for some. However, we don't expect there to never be any more recommendations, so I'd simply ask that we keep it to an absolute minimum and fair for everyone. That said, if a recommendation for one supplier is soon jumped on by lots of other suppliers who post (or it looks like others are posting on their behalf) to also recommend them, then the thread will probably be binned.

As for the charity situation. Wild About Britain is a registered charity, which provides us with some benefits, but it also means that we're subject to many extra laws, rules, regulations, public accountability and scrutiny by the Charity Commission. This means that we can't always run the site in the same as we maybe would if it belonged to us personally. It means that we can't support commercial activity where the charity doesn't gain anything in return, so obviously adverts and sponsorship are OK.

First and foremost we have to protect the interests of the charity and then we have to ensure that we're serving the true beneficiarie; and that doesn't extend to helping out suppliers who can potentially make a lot of money out of the site and in no way contribute anything in return.

Stu