Colleen has brought to light several good points. The value of gender advice and the split between male and female puzzlers is being followed in another posting.

For me, the key is what people have to contribute and not there gender. Experience is important, so Wayne has high points in my book for his previous advice and this excellent site.

This brings me to my second point. Some people, including myself I must admit, thought that Colleen was promoting her own eBay auction because she did not identify herself. In other sites, such as Puzzle World, http://johnrausch.com/PuzzleWorld/default.htm (I recommend this site to everyone here), people posting recommendations must provide their full name. The assumption is that there is no reason for people to hide their name and this way people know if the person giving the advice has given good advice before. Further more, a profile that one needs to complete in order to give advice, tells us what the interest of everyone is.

To keep it short, does this approach make sense in this site ?. I'm ok if people promote their own eBay auctions, but I would like to know that info. Personally, I take the advice of Anonymous with a grain of salt.

Oscar Rosen

I have to agree here. It would be good for people to use their usual handle or name rather than be anonymous.

Of course, people are welcome to use whatever name they like here, but it would be favourable I guess.

Also, it's more than fine for everyone to promote they're own ebay auctions here as long as the item is fairly special in some way, and not done too often. The last thing we want is hundreds of notices for $2 tiled cubes or someone to post EVERY auction they do.

We all know where ebay is and what to search on.

So far, no one has abused that which is great.

Oscar makes a good point. It would be just fine if this site required a name. I know at least once I posted a message here and just flat out forgot to fill in the name field. (It was a little embarrassing, frankly.)