Delicate question, and I appreciate the fact that Lee is asking the community to help create the rules.

Here are my thoughts.

The advertisers that help generate income, pay for Lee and Gary-Alan's time, bandwidth, etc. should certainly have the right to post occasional "spammy" messages IF they genuinely have something to say. If they're rehashing the same old stuff, then it should be limited to some reasonable period, perhaps based on sponsorship level, like twice a week for top-level sponsors, once a week for lower level sponsors and so forth (Or daily and twice a week, I dunno what's reasonable here.)

But the regular contributors who offer substantive advice and help are every bit as important -- if not more important -- than the advertisers. They provide nearly all of the value and "stickiness" that keeps members coming back to the board. If no offered helpful advice, we'd have a board full of spammers and people asking questions with no one giving answers. No helpful info, no viewers... no viewers, no advertisers... no advertisers, no revenue.

So the regular contributors (whatever someone defines "regular" to be) should be able to post occasional plugs for their programs, new sites, etc., as long as the ratio of (genuine contribution to the community)spammy posts) is reasonable. And frankly, if the posts aren't spammy, but perhaps genuinely asking for help/suggestions, or talking about something genuinely new in a program, (not "today's new gallery") I don't usually find them objectionable.

On the (non-adult) board that I own, which is similar in post count to GWW but with more regular contributors, we have sort of a loose consensus arrangement where any moderator can remove or move an objectionable post to the admin area, and if s/he has any question about the decision, s/he emails the other moderators for an opinion. 98 times out of 100, the moderators all agree on the actions taken. When they disagree, there's a discuss and usually somebody yields. In very rare cases, I've exercised the right as the "active" owner of the board to make the final decision. That setup works very well for a community that is typically a lot more volatile than this one and typically has a fair number of outright spammers and trolls.

The GWW community is, in my book, exceptionally well behaved, and for the most part, I doubt that much in the way of formal regulation is required. What I really *would* like to see is more flexibilty so that mods/admin can warn, suspend, and then, if change is not forthcoming, ban posters who are disruptive (you all know who I'm referring to) if they don't "get with the program." To me, the poster(s) we've had who post constant dumbass statements, post off topic continually, hijack threads, or are simply posting to hear themselves speak are a far, far greater distraction/annoyance than a few program owners making occasional statement about their programs.

I guess in the end, I vote for minimal formal regulation and a pretty wlde degree of latitude for the mods/admins.