Spot on - ban these bollox 'How Much is it worth threads' they serve no useful purpose and the potential vendor always knows a bike's worth, the threads are just safe places to generate interest in a sale without any commitment to sell required.
They are shite.
I am new here but I do moderate a very active forum on a completely different subject and part of that moderation is allowing users to do what they like and what brings them to the forum without over moderating them. There are types of threads on my forum that I do not care for but that get forum members participating in the forum and rack up post after post each day. I may not care for them but I do not have to participate in them or even click on the thread, so who am I to lock or remove these threads that others are obviously enjoying participating in.
This goes for lighthearted name calling as well. When you get a group of people together with a common interest you will always find that they have more things in conflict than they have in common and in every group there will be those who do not care for other members of the group, typically both the arguers are liked by the others in the group but simply can not tolerate one another - let it be, it is a small comic relief no one else takes seriously, if they get out of hand then the collective opinion enforced by the moderator needs to step in and pull the children apart so that others can continue with the forum. A forum should be just that, a place for the public to meet and discuss things of interest to them openly, and a moderator should be just that, one who presides over an assembly, meeting, or discussion.
In the case of my forum I created a section titled “Church and State” and appointed two members I found to be very level headed to moderate it as I could not stand going there. Since then it has remained a popular part of the forum with many members and only occasionally erupts into “Girl fights” with lots of open handed slaps, hair pulling and handbag swinging, when that happens I step in and put the screamers on a weeks ban and lock the thread. This has happened only twice in 4 years.
Personally I find valuation threads interesting. When you have a group of people with a mutual interest they typically have a greater knowledge of the subject than the average plonker, they are never willing to pay as much as will be paid in an open market but their input is always informative and interesting. Just as film critics are good at being technically critical but never have the slightest idea which films will do well when they hit the box office.
Some interesting ideas about this particular bike have been offered; Keep it and ride it as it is. Restore it to the original Penthouse configuration. Auction it off. And the owner found that if need be he has at least two solid offers within days of mentioning that it might be for sale. He got exactly what he was looking for, the rest of us got a good conversation about history and the value of collecting versus use and several people had a laugh judging from the post count and views.
They say that the Paralever is an engineering solution to a problem that never existed. I think that over moderating is a totalitarian solution to a problem that never existed. You don’t like a type of thread, don’t click it, if you stumble upon it, remember not to step in it again, if others are playing in it, no one says you need to jump in.