Recommendations for products, when someone has blogged asking for recommendations, are fine. Topics like that can bring out a number of good people willing to help each other out.

As to the other items mentioned, we try to allow as much freedom on the blogs as we can, while staying true to our terms of service. There are people engaged in professions which make them highly knowledgable on particular topics; computers, music, etc. As long as they are posting in a general sense and not including advertisements for their business within their posts, we are currently allowing the posts to stand. If it becomes a problem in the future, we will review our policy then.

Posts that clearly are advertising products or services, including posts that feature business logos in the header, are not allowed. In those cases the person posting is notified by email that their post is being pulled for violating our terms and services and the post is deleted.

I hope this helps explain where we are coming from.

I would also like to know the diffrence.. There has been several blogs on here trying to sell things. For example there is one on here titled wedding music 1 and 2 and notice it is being done a disc jockey. Also there have been several people on here trying to sell dogs and some type of printing machine.

Yeah, I would think if someone had a good experience with a business it would be OK to share it on this forum. We've had a substantial amount of comments against some stores locally, merchandise, food and hardware, without any reaction. I know I would like to hear local recommendations having only been here for 3 years. It's still up to the individual consumer to decide what to do, use, visit, etc. . .

Good point Blaze.  Seems to me both should be acceptable, as long as the folks who are responding are relating their personal experiences and of course following the ROE, as opposed to business owners who are trying to advertise.  Unless there is a dedicated section of the website for such matters, it would be nice to be able to use the blogs as a community bulletin board. 

Editor, What's the difference between recommending a fence installer and a restaurant? There has been several blogs where people recommend restaurants and that has been allowed. Here is one example http://www.tehachapinews.co.... What's the difference?

Please remember that our terms of service do not allow for commercial use. This is often a difficult distinction and we understand the desire to request referrals to local businesses or various services from others in the community. However, please remember that we also have a responsibility to those advertisers who support the Tehachapi News.