Since you've asked Jim ... I lose a lot of respect for folks who delete their posts when others have a different point of view. Your analogy to "taking my ball and going home" is right on the mark.

It's one thing to delete a post that may have contained errors and to replace it with another corrected post, but to deliberately delete every single post a person made in the thread on a particular subject, leads one to believe that they may lack the courage to stand by their own convictions.

Many of the posts contained in the "shill bidder thread" were made in response to other posts made by persons other than the lead-off poster, in reply to a related question posed from someone else.

If folks don't like to read comments to their invited questions from other sources, then perhaps they should not have made the post asking for responses to begin with. Just this one man's candid opinion ... (which was asked for.)

And now I'm going to watch West Wing marathon for the rest of the evening. Good night all!