I realize he meant no harm, however SPAM is SPAM.
Gravell....I hear what you are saying and by definition, spam is spam, however I think intent has to be considered a bit too. I don't necessarily excuse what jose did, but as I said above, I don't condem it that much either.
There are several people on this forum who either have or do promote their services one way or another. I don't need to mention them by name, anyone who reads the threads on a regular basis knows them.
When Drew said (some weeks ago) that he didn't have a problem with a link being in someone's signature line, I accept that as sort of a bottom line on the spam definition. It certainly isn't as obnoxious or obvious as having the link in each and every post; it doesn't jump out at us as obviously.
Another poster hardly does any promoting any more as he did in the earlier days.
Perhaps more importantly (to me at least) the folks being highlighted in this post ALSO have meaningful things to say about the auction buying (and goods selling) experience. THIS may be "fine-lining" what SPAM is, but that's my point.
There may be some leeway in looking at SPAM.
Regular readers here know I will knock and label spam when I see it, but I'm open to looking at what truly is spam as well.
On a somewhat related note, this forum is very lenient on thread hijacking. I've belonged to forums where if a poster started going in a different direction in a thread, some of the moderators came down hard on that poster. I think the leniency here is much better but like you (gravell) I would have a hard time with the lines being loosened too much on spam.
Long response, but hope some "meat" in it for all of us.