New Self Promotion Policy - July 16, 2010

[Sage]

Thanks, Circium. Just wanted to be sure.

[Equilibrium]

I like signatures exactly the way they are. They're simple.... a link to a photo album... a link to a blog.... a favorite quote and the best is.... nothing jumping out at us in bright blinking neon giving our eyeballs a work out. I like it that the avatars are tasteful and just the right size so they're not an assault on sorry old eyeballs too.

[WG Admin]

Originally Posted by Sage

Circium, I often do what you did yesterday in the post above - make a link of a place or thing you're speaking of. This makes it very convenient for the reader to take a closer look at what you are speaking of, without the bother of having to google it. This practice is very helpful and I think, considerate. I hope WG is not going to make members fear doing this.

There’s some confusion. Let’s take care of it. Sage is correct. Making a link of a place or thing a member is speaking of is helpful and considerate as long as the member isn’t making links to their own blog or website. That’s self promotion. It sends mixed messages to visitors when registered members accidentally link to personal blogs and websites anywhere in the body of a post. Links to members’ blogs and websites have to be contained to signature lines.

Members need to know some people register simply to promote themselves. We know these people are never going to be contributing members, no matter how interesting or informative their websites might look to us or our members, or how mollifying or disarming their posts/replies are when they include references or links to their own websites and blogs.

These are smart people. They agreed to our terms when they registered. They read our rules. They know how to cut & paste and how to use an upload manager for photos. They are not confused or overlooking anything when they link to photos/comments/albums in their blogs. They do their best to sound innocent, friendly, and conciliatory when confronted but smart does not equal ethical.

There are millions of bloggers out there. Many are respectful interacting at discussion forums. It’s the bloggers that don’t give a damn about our members taking up too much of our time and it's just plain aggravating dealing with these people.

Staff- post a sampling from this week’s bad eggs will you.

[Staff]

A classic:

I am sorry my messages were taken this way. I will watch what I post in the future. What may seem like self-promotion is a result of my company being exclusive in the market. In other forums, I would have to ask other people to post messages for me and it became very tedious. After a while I decided to leave those forums.
Thank you for the heads up,
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These are recent:

I thought I’d stick around and learn about this native plant stuff but now I know what kind of people u are so why bother, except for my friends supporting me selling my xxxx at wordpress.com, for the others, you miss judged me.
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WG STAFF - it was a suggestion. My website is on topic and you are an ass to delete my only thread. I'll be reporting your indiscretions to the admin. You should not have moderator rights. You clearly don't know how to use them.
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i don't appreciate my first post being deleted. all i was doing was asking users if they had tried out xxxx at blogspot.com and my post gets deleted? i'd like an explanation please.
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How am I supposed to let people know I have my own website if you don't let me post it?
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To whom it may concern!
I do not understand why my posts about bokashi don’t show when in fact it was my choice to write about it and it was MY decision to post my experiences that could have benefitted people on this board. Just want to say...THANKS A LOT even though I was only trying to help people sharing my site!
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Alright, I am completely sick of being censored for stupid reasons.

#1 - You should not censor for things like blogs. My blogs aren’t as stupid as most blogs in here and it wasn't a copy/paste job, but it had a bad word or too so what.

[TheLorax]

I believe we all know solicitations to visit personal blogs or websites contribute little and have no place at a discussion forum. They disrupt the flow of your threads frequently stifling discussion.

A number of members and guests do contact us especially when they believe we are playing favorites by allowing self-promotion for some but not others. This could not be farther from the truth. The reality is with full time jobs, we do not have the time to read every post submitted. It is not humanly possible to intercept all indiscretions or first party spam before it appears to guests and your fellow forum members. When site management misses a post containing self-promotion, exhaustive dialog ensues smoothing the ruffled feathers of community members who are respectful of the no self-promotion rule.

Self-promotion, whether unintentional or intentional, frequently results in mud slinging and hurt feelings from all sides. These are two of many reasons Wildlife Gardeners has a highly visible no self-promotion policy. Existing members can help us avoid sending mixed messages to visitors by limiting self-promotion to signature lines and personal profiles and by reporting posts containing references and links to personal websites and blogs. A report a post icon () is available for all posts and all private messages. We must rely on each other to help keep first party spammers and those with less than honorable intentions out of our forums.

[Cirsium]

Those examples from Staff are just a sampling of what we deal with 'behind the scenes'. Dealing with that kind of stuff is one of the things that takes up a lot of our time. And it's why we have decided to stick to a strict no self promotion policy.

This is one of those classic hole in the dam type of situations. Let one self promotion post appear in the forums and we are soon flooded with that kind of stuff. We are committed to a high quality experience for our members in our forums. We are also committed to reducing the administrative workload required to maintain that quality. Adherence to the strict no self promotion policy is one of the ways to do that. We are working on others. We will soon be implementing a similar measure to control the activity there and to reduce the administrative workload required to maintain our Green Products and Services Area.

We know that most of our members have not participated in running a website and haven't been exposed to the kind of challenges that it presents. Keep in mind that a website is exposed to everyone on the internet - the good, the bad, etc. We do not get to choose who comes to our website, but we have to deal with them when they come. Anytime that we can use 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' we need to do it.

Currently we allow a link to personal blogs, photo hosting sites, etc., in a member's signature as long as the content is consistent with our mission statement. The requirement of 50 posts prior to using a signature seems to be a sufficient ounce of prevention. Signatures are the limit for self promotion in our forums.