I loved the way Mongo and Bill and others gave us homeowners help on GW. You guys have always been the heart of the forums, helping others for no compensation and being very kind in the process. Here on Houzz, contractors have been known to put up informational articles, then when you ask a specific question, they want a credit card number to discuss your project with you. They want to consult from a continent away, sell you the drain, and you have no way of knowing if they know what they are talking about. It feels sleazy to me. That is why I always returned to the Bathroom forum on THS at GW to ask the technical questions. Informed homeowners and the real pros were generous and helpful. That is the beauty of the web. I trust that you folks will not steer me wrong, because you are not selling me anything. Once you get me started in the right direction, I can speak with some knowledge to the people here in real life and they will treat me with more respect, too. You professionals at THS at GW give us confidence in our ability to hire good pros, as well as do-it-yourself knowledge. You are priceless. Thank you.

Repeated shilling by thinly veiled accounts recommending products will eventually get those shill accounts removed if you keep flogging them every. single. time. Barcelona/Manhattan Design’s, and quite a few others, finally got that message. Yes, it’s a bit of work, because they are like a Medusa and cutting one snake just regrows another. If you Follow a shill or a Spammer, that makes a great wake up game over coffee. It’s all there in your feed to find and sink their battleships. Houzz won’t delete their account though, because it plumps their statistics. If a Pro has a link to their blog, or posts their blog in a post or a reply, and not a genuine response, that is most certainly SPAM. And worth tagging as such. The worst are the newbie Pros who just search for posts talking about teapot cozies and pull all of those up to post an enthusiast generic link to their custom teapot cozy site. Then disappear forever. Pros who come into a discussion about teapot cozies, and explain how a custom one is measured and made, and explain design considerations of teapot cozies, then show pictures of how they create those teapot cozies, and some spectacular custom ones they have done, aren’t spamming. They aren’t spamming even if the discussion isn’t about custom teapot cozies, but off the shelf ones, and the poster is frustrated by the choices in off the shelf models. Illustrating and educating a discussion point with your work is a great way to communicate a point. Barging in and suggesting that you have the solution to their problem if only they’d buy their product, or use their discount code to buy a product, or write them a review for being nice to them on the forum, that is soliciting, and unethical.

Amongst my friends it was always common, indeed, expected that you come with something. I was invited to a gathering where I was (seriously) offered only animal crackers, and another one where I was given ONE mushroom. I haven’t been invited to a lot of meals where someone was at chef level “curating” a meal. I’m vegetarian, so I offer to bring stuff as otherwise I might not eat (I’ve also got a lot of food senstivities and it’s embarassing putting that burden on others). My mom was once berated for bringing a dessert that was too showboaty to a family dinner (dumb, it was really good). The most awkward for me was a birthday for my son where a gluten free family was invited but made no commitment to come, then they showed up with ANOTHER cake that they served in place of the cake I served, it was humilating and stressfull, and yes it did taint that relationship. My inlaws were coming over to xmas one year and we discussed the turkey issue, I usually make one as I feel obligated as the host, they offered to bring one themselves and I said OK. Well they showed up with a utility turkey, missing a leg and 1/4 of the breast and a bale of wonder bread crusts for the stuffing. I could have killed someone that night as I had to serve this monster turkey to a lot of people.

Is it possible that Houzz could add to the forum header instead of "Antique Roses" it could read "Antique Roses - roses that existed before 1867"? And the "Roses" forum header could read "Roses - all roses". This might make it more clear to participants. Dingo, we should talk about these old roses you grow, as we are close in zone! Jeri is invaluable to the rose communities, we love reading her posts! Please come back!