Hi 74, although Iam not a mod anymore, I will give you some answers to your questions.

First the links part. I agree with you 100% that a forum needs to be open for anything to be discussed. I need to know as much as anyone what parts/services etc are out there as much as everyone else (as an example I only found your site a little while back and Morty's, even more recent). I have always believed the is a flaw in a forum being owned buy a business, as it limits certain information we can have access to. That being said it also has benefits to, like having paid IT people servicing it and making sure it ranks high in search, engines, thus giving us a broader exposure to many people.
But back to the links part. As said I always have believed the is a flaw in that we are limited to certain info. The linking to other forums has always been in my opinion of great benefit to users and to the owner, as it would bring more people in not only here but into other forums to, which would help grow the sport. Now not having links or businesses allowed on here causes me concern also, in that anyone new that does not know the PB scene that comes here as this site appears to rank high in searches, would get the impression that the is not much business support or community, and may move on thinking that this sport is very small.
Now all of this was enforced on us, but we have been chipping away and heres where we are at,
1. The siggy thing was enforce by the admin, but as you can see its allowed back, as long as its not linking directly to another business. Me and rover were against the removal of the siggys, but had to go along with it, although I never removed any, and in fact remember PM you that I wouldn't remove yours but explained that someone mite if you left it the way it was. You respectfully answered and changed it, which I appreciate. I think that in this sport sponsorship etc is a big part and I thought it insulting to have to ask anyone to remove it so I didn't. Rover also felt the same way and although you cant see it the are things going on behind the scenes and rover managed to get them allowed back, as you can see in many peoples Sig's again.
2. Now for the club, forum, race team site links. As I have stated I new they should be allowed and after a discussion with someone, that had a good point I was able to approach admin using my points and the one this person gave me. Now I made a post sometime back explaining this in more detail, and yes you can link to these things and have been able to for some time. Even a certain site that you know of was allowed and defended by me when someone complained about it,(it even has its own thread in the Australian Minimoto Series section that was willingly left there, that was started buy the owner....he must of forgot this though )even before this change came in. Now it is unfortunate that you didn't see that post explaining this, but feel free at the moment to post your links, unless or until any new mods see the opposite and stop this.
3. Now for the business linking. I understand exactly were the owner and admin are coming from buy not allowing links to other business site as they are protecting their customers IE sponsoring businesses, but as I have stated I see this as a flaw in a business owned forum. That been said this forum appears to be where most users are and we have to live with this not been allowed. But once again as me and rover didn't agree we have talked many a time on how to over come this and come up with a workable solution. The best we came up with was informing people like Lisci as you would now I think that we welcome his posts about parts and development, just don't add a price or availability. Now we did this off our own backs and didn't even inform the admin, and it appears we are getting away with it. Now this is the best we can come up with, and I even posted about this in another thread saying we are trying to come up with a solution, but you cant shoot us for not being able to find one, as its a tricky thing to try and find a workable solution that both party's would be happy with.

So as I hope you can see things were getting worked on, and somethings have changed for the benefit of all, we just didn't jump up and down about it saying look what we are doing, we just did it quietly behind the scenes. Case in point...that time I had to pm you about something that you would probably get a ban for. Now although the pm to you was short to let you know that I will support you, you didn't see the big letter that I had to write in the admin section, to explain why you will not get banned. Now I did this quietly behind the scenes to, because you didn't need to know what was happening with phone calls and writing the letter, but Iam quite happy to copy and paste it to you, to show you things were getting worked on/ happening behind the scenes, but as said we didn't jump up and down saying look at us.
I should also tell you that although at times and more so in the begining of the change of admin, we had to toe the line the was very good reason for this, but it is better said in person than on here. And I do hope to catch up one day and have a friendly ride/race with you.

Anyway I hope Ive explained things properly for you, and am always happy to talk to decent people like yourself, whether we share the same opinions or not. But just remember Iam not a mod so anything I have told you above could change but lets hope it doesn't.
Cheers Ronin

P.S.TYD>>> The only problem with what you are sayingTYD is that although they are not selling the same parts as the current sponsors, the Admin would look at it as though they could be selling the same parts as future sponsors who wouldn't then sponser. Not saying I don't want to see these and other guys inform us of stuff as I have said above, but its just the realities of business