Here on the TalkShopBot forum we encourage open dialog, reviews, and even allow constructive criticism of our products. The forum, which we make available to everyone, has pretty much always been an open venue, with active members that don't actually own ShopBots and very little to no censoring of posts.

One of the rules we do have that everyone agrees to before joining, though, is to not advertise a competing business or service on the forum beyond a "single brief introduction". The Admins figured that the New Year was a good time to remind everyone of the relevant section of the Forum rules from 5/18/2006:

Advertising and Promotion

We intend our Forum to be a site for information for ShopBotters. As such, we believe posting information alerting participants to the source for a product or the availability of a new product, after-market product, or competitive product can be useful and helpful. However, such postings will be limited to a single, brief introduction and description with links to the appropriate sites or contact information. As indicated above, extended discussion on the use of other products should be carried out on sites appropriate for those products. We will not accept blatant adverts or repetitious discussions of competitive products. We have no way to validate such information, and do not want to find ourselves in the position of having to constantly monitor and correct product portrayals.