It's a difficult one, isn't it? There is, very understandably, a reluctance to criticise anything provided for free. And after all, what I might consider to be junk might be extremely useful to someone else. Just as we all have opinions about what is good art, so we all have opinions about what is good free stuff. I certainly don't have a problem with anyone making a few pennies out of their free uploads.

Having said all that.... like all good things, it can be abused. I've found myself growing increasingly irritated with the person we are mostly talking about, precisely because there is so much of it and it gets in the way of material from others. The ideal would be the ability for each member to maintain a list of people and/or categories of stuff they didn't want to see, but the programming effort involved might be considerable. Then anyone could upload as much as they liked, but I wouldn't ever see it if I didn't want to.

The balance for rendo is not to discourage free stuff providers (free stuff is important to this site, I think) while at the same time not allowing some providers to alienate others. I'm not a merchant BTW, but I have uploaded some free stuff. If that balance is not maintained other free stuff providers might decide not to upload their free items here, on the grounds that those items will a) vanish from the front page very quickly and b) the number of members scanning the free stuff will diminsh as its usefulness is reduced. If that happened, it would defeat the whole point of a free stuff area.

Steve