Having been on other forums where eBay linking has been banned, I find it really annoying coming on here to find that all the auctions I've been watching for days have been linked up on here a few hours before the end. The other forums argument is that its free advertising that clutters up the board. When you use "show unread posts" it does, if you're not looking for something you don't want to see pages of ads. They also added the posts drive up the server costs, and on a free forum, noone likes that.
We all know how to search, why is it necessary?