The SmartBear community news journals aren't soliciting ads necessarily but simply to summarize activity on the community here... the philosophy behind it is that this is a bit more than just a help forum but an actual community of folks with common goals of software testing and quality, specifically using the SmartBear tools. To that end, being kept in the loop as to the activity across the community forums is actual kind of nice.... it indicates trends in conversations, where activity is happening, interesting topics, etc.
But I understand the annoyance to some extent... I guess an "opt-in/opt-out" would probably be nice... personally, I'd opt-in... but that's my opinion.
I do agree that an opt-in/opt out feature would be nice. I just highly dislike the use of private messaging to communicate this to users.
