what happened to sstrooper's video reports?

banned/disallowed I'm assuming? Or did he take his ball and go home? Is it because there were are ads at the beginning of his videos?

If so, so what? For it we were getting accurate information about the snow at the pass on almost a daily basis. Seeing a minute of video tells you a whole lot about what it is like up there, and sometimes he even scratch around in the snow pack on camera.

Of course I could just go to his website but it is much easier to be able to visit just one place, and in general he wasn't doing much different than many poster were with their textual descriptions.

Not that I have any influence over how you site managers do your thing, but if you disallowed these reports (and maybe that's not the case) I think it was a poor choice.

The sponsorship/ads in the videos were the problem, and have resulted in deleted posts in the past. It's a pretty clear violation of TOS, though I've never noticed it until it was brought to my attention by other users via PM.

I've been in touch with him about it and we'll see where it goes when I hear back.

again it's your shooting match, but if you do talk to him consider the spirit of the policy, not the letter. In general he's bringing useful info and if he needs a few sponsors to help it happen so be it.

If you think the ads are getting in the way of or dominating the message then I guess that's a problem ...

thanks for listening -- moderating must be a PITA sometimes -- too many gray areas for the rules to always work just so.

I hear you, believe me. I've known SS for a while and he's a great guy, and his conditions reports are fantastic. I hope we can come to an agreement re: not including the commercial content.

My two cents: SStrooper's posts add far more to the community than they might take away by short ads at the beginning of his videos. I know what to expect from his posts, and if I don't want to see an ad, I don't click on the video link. In general, what he has to say in text form is already useful to building a more complete picture of what's going on between 3k and 4k at Hyak.

(SStrooper - if TAY turns out to be too restrictive, the folks in the freshiezone at Cascadeclimbers might be more receptive to slightly-commercial content.)

It's reasonable to expect commercial businesses to pay for sponsorships and advertising on this site, and TAY does offer commercial accounts to those who wish to promote their products or services.

While the ensuite advertising might not bother most people, imagine what the paid commercial advertisers must think? "TAY makes me pay, while others are allowed to post commercial material for the price ( free ) of a registered account."

TAY should *definitely* remove commercial posts that don't come through paid accounts.