Low End Talk Community Guidelines

LowEndAdmin

@thekreek -- OSQA is self-moderated so users with enough reputation can edit the post (for the "common good" was its purpose, but it looks like people were abusing it). Now, this forum does not use a reputation system so users can only edit his/her own posts (up to 1 day). "Moderators" would be able to do that, but I'll leave that discussion on moderators' code and conduct, if there is going to be one.

LES

A small single line signature pointing to a real main URL (no shorteners) should be ok for all.

cedric

@LES: I have to disagree - the forums seem much nicer when the word 'sig spamming' or 'sig flashing' isn't a problem. Let's learn each other by the username/person and not by the signature, eh?

Edit: Just browsing through the forums with the signatures left a bad taste in my mouth.

drmike

LEA, please give us an option to turn off PMs.

justinb

cedric said: @LES: I have to disagree - the forums seem much nicer when the word 'sig spamming' or 'sig flashing' isn't a problem. Let's learn each other by the username/person and not by the signature, eh?

LES's sig is an affiliate link site..

drmike

We all know that.

We can't get LEA to make a choice if they're allowed or not. No offense, just being honest.

KuJoe

Are tracking URLs allowed? I setup a tracking link in WHMCS to keep track of how many clicks I get on certain sites (Twitter, Facebook, LET, etc...) but it looks like a referral/affiliate link. I'm curious if there any any issues with such links to begin with?

Rudolph

The "Hide Signatures?" checkbox in preferences doesn't seem to do anything. So I guess this post may be a bug report.

If that worked as I imagine it's supposed to, that would be sufficient IMHO. People who don't want to see sigs could just elect to not see sigs.

LowEndAdmin

My opinion would be

• Single line. No image. Maybe I will need to restrict the number of characters as well (similar to Slashdot's).
• One single link. No affiliation link. No URL shortener. No goatse. No rickroll. Although I guess I can't really control whether you have affiliation link on your own site.
• Tracking link should be okay as long as it is your own site. Otherwise it's just an affiliation link.

justinb

KuJoe said: Are tracking URLs allowed? I setup a tracking link in WHMCS to keep track of how many clicks I get on certain sites (Twitter, Facebook, LET, etc...) but it looks like a referral/affiliate link. I'm curious if there any any issues with such links to begin with?

Tracking links in WHMCS look like link.php?id=.
Referrals are pretty obvious aff.php?aff=

LowEndAdmin said: One single link. No affiliation link. No URL shortener. No goatse. No rickroll. Although I guess I can't really control whether you have affiliation link on your own site.

Can we not allow sites that are exclusively affiliate link packed? Like one or two in a blog post might be okay, or a link to your host, but literally a giant table of affiliate linnks isn't really acceptable IMO

drmike

-1 on the tracking link. There's no real way to tell if it's really an affiliate link or not.

LES

For tracking it is better to use some kind of tracking software! (http://piwik.org/)

KuJoe

I just like how WHMCS tracks clicks and conversion rates. I. Use both Google Analytics and Piwik also though.

justinb

LES said: For tracking it is better to use some kind of tracking software! (http://piwik.org/)

Use Mint. It's muchb etter than piwik.

BeyondAllKnowledge

Chrome doesn't send referrer headers when you do a "Open Link in a New Tab" so tracking software won't work correctly. In those cases, tracking links are better.

(http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1935)