A general rule on self promotion

(Richard Morris) #1

So you probably know that the primary purpose of the Ketogenic Forum is to help people with metabolic diseases find information to reverse their diseases if that is possible. It’s really not a free public square for people to promote their own ventures.

But having said that if you have a blog or pintrest board or some other online resource there is a way for you to let people know about that. Put the link in your profile, and refer people to your profile if they need more information.

As an example of posts that push the limit, there have been a spate recently of food photos that link to the same blog of recipes … If that happens once or twice in a history of otherwise great content from a single poster no one is going to care. If the only posts from one poster are to their own blog, without even mentioning the Ketogenic forums on their site … when then it is apparent they are just using the forum to generate traffic.

Many folk have a blog with recipes (even I have one - it’s in my profile). If we allowed one person to spam the forum with teasers for their blog, then we’d have hundreds.

So in the interest in keeping our content true to it’s agenda, and not becoming just a billboard for other sites - we’re going to stop a precedent forming. Gently at first.

(Richard Morris) #2

BTW if you have a worthy event - send @Carl or I a direct message and if it supports the mission of the Forum of course you can promote it.

(Michael ) #3

If i learned nothing else, Richard has recipe link in his profile. Will dive deeper later :grin:

(*Rusty* Instagram: @Rustyk61) #4

Thank you for explaining this publicly @Richard . I’ve been curious about this for quite some time now. And I tend to just skim over those postings anyway. This will help a lot.

(Tim W) #5

Thank goodness!

I was about to start flagging the spammy posts. You and Carl have created a place for real people to share real experiences while still discussing the science, not an incubator for folks to shill.

Watching folks try the “start a blog, drop posts about it everywhere, rake in billions!” model is getting old. Folks trying to monetize the WOE is getting a little tiring. Then again, I guess every movement eventually goes through this faze (crappy pre-packed atkins food maybe…).

Thanks for providing this space Richard!

Tim

(Richard Morris) #6

That’s what I love about discourse, the community can self moderate with flags.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #7

Please do flag any posts you believe are contrary to the forum’s intent. Sometimes it’s obvious (links to a sales page) but sometimes it can be more subtle. Where things are not blatant, we try to encourage the user to take a different approach, but the community can be a big help by flagging questionable content, since the admins can’t always read every post.

We really appreciate the community’s help in keeping an eye on things. :slight_smile:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

I was wondering if the posts I’ve been observing lately should be moved to the Spam section . . .

(Tim W) #9

Roger Wilco!

I was hesitant as I didn’t want to be overly dogmatic BUT, I won’t be as reluctant from this point.

(Richard Morris) #10

If someone post in the SPAM group then we’ll give them more leeway. People can turn off notification for that group, you can’t post to it with a new account and google can’t index it.

#11

I personally have no blogs or websites of my own, but if another user is linking to a blog post or whatever and it’s on topic and in the context of what the thread is about, I wouldn’t consider it to be spam. It would seem like an unnecessary hurdle to jump over having them asking us to go to their profile page for some arbitrary reason. They should just post the link in the thread.

(Brian) #12

I don’t have anything of my own to point to. But if I have pointed towards someone else’s in an inappropriate way, I do apologize as it wasn’t intentional misbehavior. I do have a favorite or two that post some really awesome recipes that I’ve mentioned a couple of times. I’ll try to be careful about that going forward.

:slight_smile:

(Ron D. Garrett) #13

Thank you. I have a blog but didn’t mention it the forums as a way to help others because I didn’t know if I could or should and didn’t want to run afoul of the rules. To be clear I can mention the forums as a help tool for people who see my progress be it reversal of diabetes or secondarily weight loss? I don’t need to drive traffic to my blog as that is not why I blog. I haven’t even posted about my deal yet because I want some time to pass (before and after) and notate the process to refer to what keto has done and how it’s helped me before I try to sound it out in my blog. I just want to ensure that I can send people who need help to the forums outside of it on my blog if:when they need help.

(Chris) #14

Thank you for clarifying @Richard.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #15

The issue, as I see it, both as a veteran blogger, and as a longtime contributor to many communities, both online and in person, is when you see posts that are essentially content-free, besides a link to the content on their site.

It’s not a question of whether, on an individual level, the content being linked to is of value. It’s more a pattern of posting that seems to be about leveraging the audience here for their own ends.

For someone who regularly engages in discussions and sharing content here, an occasional link to something you’ve posted on your blog is not likely to be a concern, particularly if it’s on topic.

But when you see six, eight, or a dozen posts that are basically just pushing members towards their own site, that’s where it becomes problematic.

(Tim W) #16

Nail on the head. It’s tough to infer intention from the actions of others BUT, if you are simply using these forums to link to another blog/site/etc, what intention are we most likely to infer?

(Ron D. Garrett) #17

I feel you on this. That was not my intent as I will be posting on my blog pointing back to this site and not the other way around. I agree with your assessment.