Has anyone else notice the increase in blatant advertising on the forum. Look at the Family Reunion in New England thread to see what I mean. The second to last poster has posted 5 times hawking the same family campground and the last poster doesn't even try to disguise their advertisement.

I personally only want fellow Fodorites responding if I post a question - I want honest feedback from people who have actually stayed at a resort or eaten at a restaurant. I've gotten great recommendations from this site and don't want to see it diluted.

I've been hanging around here for several years, and I'm not aware that there is a recent increase. It comes and goes. Usually you can tell when it is advertising. Click on the poster's name and if you see if it is a first time post and they registered here just to tell us about "the perfect B&B" they just discovered, you can be pretty sure it's advertising. The Europe board gets a little more of that than here.

I love it when everybody realizes it's an ad and starts posting things like "that dump? We couldn't get rid of the cockroaches fast enough and there weren't enough buckets for all the ceiling leaks". I agree, why should we put up with blatant advertising when it is supposed to be honest reader recommendations.

Another Spam clue, especially in cases like Familycamper, is when they resurrect posts that are over a year old.

I didn't consider so much as spam, as it was addressed to the original poster, "Cindy". If I travel and also sell a travel related product that someone inquires about, is it really so bad to promote myself? No one would consider it a sin of someone else endorsed my product, would they?

The advertising I dislike is when the spammer/scammer starts an entire new thread to hawk their product, such as recent threads about lost luggage, of which a few of us added cost-free methods of identifying our bags, rather than purchase "high quality graphics" from the hawker. One message type that I've noticed lately are the personal messages: "To JoeSchmo Question about EastPodunk" .... why not just ask about East Podunk; Joe will probably reply if he sees it.

ads are definitely on the increase here as Fodors said two weeks ago. It's not an illusion. All about money.

My favorites are the personal guides for Russia on the europe boards. they strew rumors about how dangerous russia is on your own - and then offer to help you "for free" - except anything beyond the first e-mail gets charged for. they too resurrect a lot of old threads.