I personally wasn’t bothered whether the charity thread was allowed. However, as you stated, the rules prohibiting commercial messages are very clear (I can understand that RP may not want the board swamped with such solicitations) and the mods are charged with implementing the FT guidelines and rules not creating them.

Some of the resentment that we've seen here would perhaps be lessened if this rule was applied consistently. There are some posters that use repetitive “cut and paste” commercial spam to troll and AAntagonize other fora. In addition they repeatedly use their signature to tout commercial messages and weblinks for their current favourite airlines which contravenes another FT rule. Perhaps if these posters with less altruistic motives were taken to task people wouldn’t feel so aggrieved about the charity thread being halted. @:-)