Joseph,

Thank you for sharing these sentiments. Agreed. In the case of your
examples, 'stealth marketing' is the same as spam, and should be dealt
with as such. The danger in fighting against it too much, however, is
that it can add a sour taste to the receptiveness of AFW members, such
that they treat many (valid) business-oriented posts with similar
skepticism.

BigCAWine, the individual who started this thread, he posted two
additional times with follow-ups, and seems pretty legit to me -- in
any case, it seems there would be far easier ways to try and drive a
branding campaign than if this was truly a stealth approach.

Some people immediately concluded he was spamming - but then, that just
goes hand in hand with the "guilty until proven innocent" nature with
which the same people approach many members of this list. In the end,
it's 50 or so posts about a seemingly innocent topic. Quite a lot of
noise, arguing over if it's spam or not, if you ask me.

(I can already guess the retort from some people he 'Well! If he's
not a stealth marketer, then he obviously must be a troll for making us
all argue amongst ourselves over whether he's a spammer or not!')

If everyone just chilled out a bit, enjoyed a glass of their favorite
{fill in the blank} wine, and realized what wealth we all have being
able to collectively enjoy this subject across oceans and continents
with fellow friends, we'd probably all be a lot happier here, and would
probably turn AFW into such a friendly place that no spammer would ever
dare step foot inside.

Cheers,

David