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Low End Talk Community Guidelines
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Low End Talk Community Guidelines

AsimAsim Member
edited July 2011 in General

Last time in OSQA (the v2) we were discussing general community guidelines for keeping it a healthy, open place for the community and still keeping it away from trolls and spam-bots.

So lets discuss and suggest community guidelines

  1. We can discuss issues here in LET but update the LEB wiki for quick reference
  2. Anti-affiliate/referral links (thanks to @KuJoe)
  3. Unwanted or irrelevant links posted by a user in a discussion, which could have been prevented by posting the single line command as answer OR which is not relevant as an answer.
Thanked by 1dray
«1

Comments

  • cedriccedric Member

    Offers can be posted here, but within a set of rules as discussed in the announcement LEA posted

  • AsimAsim Member

    So you are saying providers can post their offers to this community with or without sending it to LEA? will it not be the same as spamming? just saying

  • cedriccedric Member

    From what LEA described they can post in the offers forum if they meet the requirements

  • AsimAsim Member

    Ah, yes. You are right :) so that means instant offers from providers :D

  • AsimAsim Member

    updated original post to reflect the same. Thanks @cedric

  • Yes. I think it would free me up a bit. I can then hand pick the interesting ones to dissect and post on the blog. It would be "spammy" in the same way as WHT offers forums, but I think we'll just need to put rules around the Offers forum to minimize the spams, i.e. unwanted offers.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    I'm anti-affiliate/referral links.

  • cedriccedric Member

    Agreed with @KuJoe

  • RayshiRayshi Member

    Ya same.

  • AsimAsim Member

    Thank you @KuJoe, clause 2 has been added

  • cedriccedric Member
    edited July 2011

    Describe unwanted: If one were to ask about making a debian template minimal, could I post http://info.cedricd.org/minimal-debian for example?

  • AsimAsim Member

    Well unwanted is the same as uncalled-for (unnecessary). SO if you are posting a link that has nothing to do with the answer and you are just sharing it for the sake to generating traffic to your website then thats spammy and not OK.

    Consider this, if someone asks about installing nginx on debian, its a single command and we can post it in the thread without issues BUT If someone wants to know how to setup LNMP then we cannot or may not be able to put all the steps in a single reply so we CAN link to helpful links where the info is located.

    My point is, the great "I am leaving because of @drmike" thread was there because of lack of guidelines for the normal users and that the user in question was posting links as answer where it was not even relevant. So just an idea, what you say? Lets discuss

  • Links (even to your own site) should be allowed as long as it's relavent to the topic, but if it's not relavent don't post it

  • marrcomarrco Member

    i'd prefer no links to own site. LET should not be a place to advertise our great services. So links to ie. library.linode should be fine, but please no self links. Or we start a war about that. And judging about relevancy of an active member link is not easy.

    So my idea is no links to own site, and never links with an affiliate/referral.

  • cedriccedric Member

    What about links to sites with no ads? Pretty much every informational 'page' I have is run out of pocket and not reliant on advertising on the page

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    I don't like the "no links to own site" rule mainly because I run a blog that I usually refer to for a lot of tutorials I write regarding servers, linux, and cPanel. While it does generate a very small income for me (last month it generated $0.09! LoL.) I don't feel I post the links as spam since they are only directly related to the topic at hand.

  • Indeed I won't be able to link to LowEndBox if the poster cannot link to his own site :) However I think macrrco's intention is -- it is too hard to judge whether a link is genuine.

    • A link to own site is okay?
    • A link to own site with display ads is okay?
    • A link to own site with affiliate links is okay?
    • A link to own site that redirects to an affiliate link is okay?
    • A link to own site, which is a hosting provider -- would that be okay?

    Where do we draw the line? Even Google with all their PhDs can't get rip of all the spam links, what are the chances of us mere mortals?

    Sorry I haven't answered the question. There is certainly more to be discussed.

  • "A link to own site that redirects to an affiliate link is okay"
    If its simply something that redirects from say lowendbox.com/host.com to host.com/aff.php?id=765i763214 then how is it any different from just directly linking host.com/aff.php?id=765i763214?

  • AsimAsim Member

    I believe an affiliate links only calls for advertisement or spamming (with a small percentage of people who actually have those affiliate links on their blog and also tell the audience it is an affiliate link that will benefit the original author)

  • dmmcintyre3dmmcintyre3 Member
    edited July 2011

    My reccomendation:
    No aff links at all here and any links (even to your own site) must be beneficial to the discussion.

    Example: If LEA links to http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/wordpress-cheap-vps-lowendscript/ in 2 posts, one asking how to set up wordpress on a new VPS and the other asking how to set up a game server, the first one is OK and the second one is not.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    Agree with @dmmcintye3

    I'm thinking the linking to own site "rule" should not be a rule at all IMO. As LEA said there is to fine a line and nothing is clear-cut in terms of whether it's spam or not and would require manual review by a moderator (will LET have them?) to determine whether it is allowed or not. An all or nothing rule should not apply here because it will hinder legit users just as much as spammers.

  • drmikedrmike Member
    edited July 2011

    Just to throw in, I would like to see a no redirection links rule as well. The library blocks most of them here and they can also be used to hide affiliate links. The first one being important to me, the second one important to everybody.

    I don't have a problem with links to one's site. Heck, I've done it before. I have a problem when it's ever single post over and over again, relevant or not.

    For reference, I don;t have a problem with @cedric link up there.

    edit: I do also have a problem when the link is to a site that's nothing but affiliate links. A perfect example, to use an outside one, are those "review" sites for shared hosting that are nothing but the links straight out of CJ with some cough reviews up there.

  • fanfan Veteran

    No affilation links can really make a fair environment, I did saw someone recommending some providers which is not good but gives a high amount of affilation money. But I think have links back to user's own blog or something alike in their public profile should be free to do. :)

  • drmikedrmike Member

    The public profiles are fine.

    I don't like the link back to one's blog though. Seen too many sites run into problems when folks start thinking that they can do their own hand written sigs. Then you start seeing the "I agree" posts with a couple of SEO links at the bottom.

    I don't mind a link when they're warranted though.

  • marrcomarrco Member

    i agree with drmike !


    visit my a-ref="www.my-low-end.blog" cheap vps review /a website

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    Manual sigs FTL! I think those should be banned. If Vanilla doesn't support signatures then just make a rule of no sigs at all.

  • @KuJoe -- Vanilla actually supports signature (via plugin). I am just not sure whether to turn it on. Having a signature helps the community members to know who's who (especially when we have hosting providers amongst us such as you, who would represent ServerDragon). At the same time, unpoliced signatures would promote spams.

  • miTgiBmiTgiB Member

    The format of this new forum is sort of small, so a smaller sig might see some really creative things done with it, say two or three lines with two or three colors, no pricing allowed, no affiliate links. No text over X size, I dunno, just rambling some ideas.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @LowEndAdmin Does Vanilla support titles? TBH I think it would be better to have titles for identifying users rather than signatures. Personally, unless you're advertising in your signature I don't really see the point of them since 99.9% of the time they are redundant because it's just people signing their post with their name which most of the time matches their username.

  • Since we are talking about the guidelines for the forum, one point that nobody has mention its the rules for editing other people posts?

    Will it be legit, if so under what rules?

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