Greetings, My impression has always been that mention of bulb vendors, including posting of links to the websites and annual catalogs from vendors, has been acceptable as has discussion of the quality/reliability/trustworthiness of commercial operations. The line between mere discussion and advertising is blurry and I think Arnold is trying to keep us on the noncommercial side of it so the benefits we enjoy in terms of forum and list hosting fees are kept to a minimum. What we don't want is traffic on the list/forum to be dominated by commercial communications (ads, announcements concerning sales and other solicitation). Many list members sell bulbs (both commercially and informally) and the list could quickly become nothing but "bulbs for sale" posts if we don't reaffirm this convention from time to time. -|<ipp ________________________________ From: pbs <pbs-bounces@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> on behalf of Arnold Trachtenberg via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> Sent: Saturday, August 2, 2025 2:42 PM To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> Cc: Arnold Trachtenberg <arnold140@verizon.net> Subject: Re: [pbs] email list Hi all This has been our practice in the past. We are scheduled for a Board of Directors meeting in the coming weeks and I will request an agenda item on the commercial issue. Anyone with ideas of how to mange can forward their responses to me at: arnold140@verizon.net Please not to the entire list Thank you Arnold Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS On Saturday, August 2, 2025, 5:20 PM, Robert Lauf via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: The AOS has ads from commercial vendors in their monthly mag and those ads are a significant source of revenue for them. They also publish a separate book or directory of vendors by state, in which I assume vendors need to pay to be included. That doesn't raise any red flags with the IRS. In the past I recall at least once and probably more, when a commercial bulb nursery put an announcement on our list saying their new catalog is available on their web site. That's a bit more "commercial" than one member asking if anyone knows a source of something and another completely disinterested member providing a source they know about. Either seems pretty harmless to me. But we wouldn't want someone literally pasting their catalog onto the list serve. Maybe the Board can think about these things and offer some official guidance as to what is OK and what isn't. Surely our community shouldn't keep members from telling one another where they got interesting plants. Considering all the exposure we give to a vendor through a group order, all this seems mild in comparison, at least to me. Bob Zone 7 waiting for rain to move in _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…> Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com//…<https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…> Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…