Others may totally disagree with me, but I just felt I had to express my opinion on something I see as a trend which isn’t useful. I’ve been in Highland Park for 20 years, and have been a satisfied email list member for many years. I really appreciate how easy it is to reach out to the list for recommendations for one type of server or another. Then your inbox fills with messages from wonderful neighbors. This is a really valuable service in my opinion. Recently however, there seems to have been a growing increase in unsolicited recommendations. In my opinion the trend is not so helpful to the list, especially when these unsolicited advertisements are for one specific business. In a world where emails fill our inboxes, and advertisements are everywhere, is this really a useful tool for the community. For any given contractor or service provider, there may be neighbors who have had good or not so good experiences with that person. That’s why web sites with ranking systems have ways of trying to aggregate the feedback int a star ranking or other mechanism to help site visitors select someone. But an email list doesn’t have those types of algorithms and control measures. Even the very best service person can have a bad day or leave a client unhappy. And someone who others have had negative experiences with, may do a great job for someone else. That’s why web sites with rating features can be so useful in finding someone who is a good fit for you. But unsolicited recommendations don’t assist with that process really. They leave a false sense because they are based on a subset of customers and clients. And, when those unsolicited recommendations read almost word for word, the same, then you got to wonder who is actually writing the recommendation. When there is an unsolicited recommendation for someone and a person reads the email- if they had a les than stellar experience with the same service provider, it is a little like having salt poured in the wound. It immediately takes you back to the not good experience. And you have two things you can do. Either delete the message and just process your own feelings, or post and share that your experience with that same service provider wasn’t positive. That doesn’t really accomplish anything good for the list either. So, in the spirit of making the list be the very most useful to everyone, I’d love to encourage those who are seeking recommendations to ask for them, and be glad for all the feedback you can get, and for everyone to not post unsolicited recommendations. Just my opinion, Sincerely, Thomas Waters