Thought I would chime in here, seems like a good time, and to take a break from my Cinevent opus which has been more time consuming than I first envisioned, but I feel well worth it.
Generally, I think this debate/argument should not even take place, its that silly. Here's why...
First and foremost, what is the point or rush to talk about a poster that is still for sale via a live auction? Why? Is it that pressing, to talk about it ASAP instead of in a few days? So we can have a conversation like this I guess:
Original post- "Check this poster out, how crazy is this! (insert link)"
First response- "Yeah, that's crazy."
Second response-"I think its a fair price so far."
Third response- "I don't, I wouldn't pay half that for a Star Wars cake."
And so forth. How riveting. Ultimately, its not even necessary in the first place. Wanna talk about a poster? Great! Wait till it ends, like the thread title lays out to begin with. This seems like common sense to me.
I second Dale, and what I was thinking over the past few days as I was reading this was its about courtesy, plain and simple.
Rich, this is a forum for a hobby, in this case posters. Its not some social issues or political platform to sound off...so the whole censorship thing is a bit silly and over-dramatic in this case. That soapbox has nothing to do with this or this forum, IMO.
Ari, with your laid back "whatever" attitude, I am sure we could share many evenings on the porch with a few drinks and laughing over stories, poster related and not...we seem to have the same general demeanor, my friend. But in this case, I think you are missing it completely. It's not "just paper, bid or not", its people perhaps paying too much and perhaps losing out on poster that they might not have out of the group who was initially privy to that particular auction.
One person deciding an auction can be 'outed' because it hits a magical number is inane on every level...poster budgets are all over, and not one person and his/her respective budget is more important than the other in terms of courtesy and all deserve the same respect as the next.
Let's respect others in the sense that linking to live auctions could potentially cost people money and posters, and simply not do it. Seems like the neighborly thing to do. My two cents...or three.