I am curious as to the policy on Commercial Software beta's on this forum. I have seen commercial beta's announced on several occasions and the thread/s have continued for long periods . . . even after the software was released in commercial form.

I noticed this thread was closed within minutes by MrKyoo:

New SHAPE Services' project - GPSed - is in beta

I was interested in the software and reading about forum members experiences would have been useful but apparently that is not allowed?!

This question is directed at Tom Guess primarily . . . "Is there a policy on Commercial announcements for BB forums?"

I am just a private member and I have no connection with the developer or anyone else on the forum . . . I just found the moderator's behaviour unusual!

You'll have to ask MrKyoo why he closed that thread, it's more typical that software betas are allowed (and encouraged, I suppose) since the developers actively come to the forums seeking user input to make their products the best for the users. There may be mitigating circumstances with that particular thread that only he would know about.

The reason that thread was closed was because SHAPE Services had posted 2 or 3 other identical threads about GPSed.

We actually welcome 3rd party developers here at BBF. Our forum sponsors are allowed to post what they want in their respective sponsor threads and then another same-topic thread in the General forum, if they desire and occasionally post new threads with updates, etc.

For developers that aren't sponsors we allow one thread with an announcement of an app and then subsequent support for that app in the same thread.

Hope this clears this up...

FYI, Shape Services is a sponser of the forums. I do have an issue with how Shape 'advertises' on the forums. They tend to flood the different sub-forums with the same informatin. We banned a few of their accounts, before they became sponsers, for using shills. I think they have earned a little extra attention from the moderators.

Shape Services has a dedicated sub-forum as do other sponsers. They are free to post as much as they want over and over in that forum.

Thanks to both of you for clearing that up . . .