This an interesting thread. How can RCU help a newcomer to the forum judge the quality of the advice given. We have done something for the market place with the ratings system. I guess we could think about rating people who give advice. I am involved in another forum in an unrelated area and we do have such a system, it is based on the number of times a forum member is thanked by another member. Unfortunately it tends to be the prolific givers of advice who have high ratings even if their advice can be suspect at times.

One thing we have done is make members who have commercial interests in hobby declare this in their sig line.