Yes, I have indeed read Should rehash news blogs that don't link their news source be allowed on Plime and the forum comments following it.

I am not debating your issues with blogs that purport to report the news without revealing their sources. I agree with you on that. I do not agree with you on this:

"An ad-covered blog has what amounts to non-content (i.e. a few short paragraphs of text that doesn't say anything that interesting at all and were obviously only posted here to earn the poster traffic/ad revenue)."

How do you determine what's interesting for everyone else? Where do you think you are, Slashdot? Also, what do you consider ad-covered? Have any of you ever heard of Adblock or Adblock Plus?

This sentence, "I think personal character should prevent people linking to their own stuff.", is obviously made by a person with no experience in professional writing. When an author writes a book, who do you think the first one to promote it is? The author, of course. How else is it going to be published?

Search engines can take weeks to properly index any website, even longer for new blogs. There's no shame in getting their information out in front of as many eyes as possible. If the information is poor, user moderation will take care of it quickly. Whether their purpose for linking the information is for self-gain is irrelevant. Are you trying to tell me that you don't gain anything from participating on Plime? If you are, you're lying.

Some of you seem to think that Plime is a news aggregator. It is not. It's a social website of which news is only one facet. Opinion pieces will and should be linked, along with other types of content. This is why Plime was designed with user moderation in mind.

While you have a right to your opinions about any of this is not debatable. Your opinions, however, do not give you the right to determine what's suitable for Plime. Whether you know it or not, blogging IS replacing traditional news services and it's happening rather quickly. The fact that blog owners, authors, and supporters are putting advertising on their websites should have absolutely no bearing on whether a posting is a suitable topic.

I feel insulted by the action of a mere one or two users. My post, Do You Like Spam?, concerning email forwards is indeed more relevant today than it was five years ago. More than 80 percent of email is spam (statistics have already been published elsewhere). The spammers get email addresses from people who do NOT know the facts that I provided. I'm sorry that I could not stretch the post to make it look like there was more substance.