Meeting up with members even where there is no sale

I repeat: It is INSULTING that personal contact is blocked.

I have made many friends on DPReview, two of them in New York State, we plan to meet and take photos together, I stay at one's home.

Here, I have had to sneak like a thief to meet 4 friends close enough to meet at my or their place, listen to music, mess with each other's turntables, buying advice, share meals, go to record stores together, take joint trips to visit Steve and Ray at VAS.

There is great fellowship to be gained, blocking that for historic reasons borders on cruel!

Make a thread and sometimes you’ll get locals to contact you.

@elliottbnewcombjr it used to bother me but the fact is, this a business. If the web site's background color turned black tomorrow, and you couldn't read a thing, they wouldn't lose a penny, the forum is not generating income. 

Permitting sharing of personal contact info could be misconstrued in certain contexts as promoting it, and that could in turn generate liability for a website.

I can understand the website surveillance watching out for this and not allowing it. What I don’t care for is that you don’t know which members are potentially tasked with administrative oversight of private communication infractions. I once used the word “number” in a private message regarding speaker drivers, and the software interpreted in a way that put the whole convo “under review” as a possible violation, tattooed in red font from that point forward. Eew.

Point being, while their system probably won’t change such an overarching policy, it could still stand some technical improvements for operation within said design. 😁

Many forums have a PM page for private messaging between members for exactly that purpose. Or simply for dialogue with restricted viewing.