Implemented Should soft lead gen/soft sales be added to the rules?

GoldenGlovez said:

2: An automated weekly thread e.g "Showoff Saturday" where members who only want to share intermittent updates can post what they've been working on.

Click to expand...

This is a nice suggestion.

I haven’t voted yet but I’m leaning towards yes. I see there are rules on what is considered selling, but soft selling and promotion is always a grey area that needs to be considered because it is ripe for abuse potential from bad actors.

Obviously there’s some weird drama in this thread and I’m not sure what’s going on with that. But looking at this suggestion for what it is, it’s definitely something I think the staff should take into consideration. I’m not sure exactly where the line should be drawn, however, so that’s something that would need to be figured out.

Actually thought maybe I was wrong, but nope:

Section with the most threads - The Saloon.. and coming in at 2nd place the good old Suggestions section (god love those mods).

@GoldenGlovez with some wisdom as always, good points and especially the last part: "At the end of the day, many here share a common goal of financial and workplace independence. We should be building each other up, not tearing each other down."

I'm logging off for a bit as stated earlier because I have a habit of getting sucked into silly drama especially when it involves myself and some trivial bullshit, which is the reverse of what I wanted or intended.. the kind I'm speaking out against here, I should know better by now.

Taking this all too seriously.

The point is should soft sell be allowed.

While yes @t0mmy all you done was share a link to games. Kudos it's innocent and great. That's fine.

It opens up a wider debate on what should and shouldn't be shared..

It's personal because the subject is you (unfortunately)

Yes it's fun and yes there is a rule in place. But the precedence has been set agree or not that as long as you place a game link, self promoting or link sharing your own service is OK.

Is the forum quiet and small numbers? Yes

It's innocent now.

What happens is say we got 50k new users tomorrow. It's OK to share a ppc, seo, some panel or crypto thing because it has a game?

Thats the debate you opened up.

It's totally nothing personal. It's a shame it's been taken that way.

But thats what happens on a forum depending on people's mood they read things in a right or wrong way.

Yes your intentions were share some fun. But personally I think it has wider long lasting complications.

This is at 6 upvotes so far.

Just to clarify something as well, the rules in the TOS apply to every member regardless of status.

Now, I'm going to post the current ruleset on sales and promotions outside of the Trading Post.
As it currently stands, this rule does not properly cover soft selling. However, if this rule is to be amended, we'd need to define what soft selling is. The definition needs to be universal as it's preferable not to add in a bunch of confusing rules with our own definitions that members will struggle to keep up with. It also can't be so strict that everyone feels like they're walking or posting on eggshells

I do agree with the members who say this is something that needs to be dealt with now should we have anyone who actually tries circumventing the rules.

If rule 3.1 is to be amended, one thing I want to take into consideration is the Journeys section. After all, others start IM journeys in that section with products and services that may appeal to members here. Someone could easily look at that and say it's soft-selling. Another example is one I dealt with often on the other forum where someone would ask for design advice for their IM site and others would report it as soft-selling. Granted, in several of those cases, the thread starter was trying to get traffic to their website, but I think it's generally better to give others the benefit of the doubt instead of cracking down on everyone with assumptions.

I haven't forgotten about this, I just need some time before I make any adjustments to the rules on promoting to include soft selling due to the reasons above.

This one was difficult to address, but I've adjusted the rules to include a few more examples of what isn't allowed and what moderators will do when they come across promotional material.

I decided it was better to keep it fairly vague, otherwise we'll run into issue where the rule starts trying to address every little thing someone could possible do to get around it.

Basically, how @Steve handled @t0mmy's thread by adjusting the link to go directly to the games is exactly how the moderators should handle anything that's not as clear. Essentially, if it seems borderline to the community, we'll try our best to make it compliant before jumping to conclusions. In other words, it's a case-by-case basis.

3. Sales & Promotion​

3.1 Selling and Promoting Outside of the Trading Post​

Explanation:
Selling or promoting products, services, or platforms is only permitted within the Trading Post section of the forum, unless:

• You mention your approved listing on your profile.
• You advertise in your signature as a Sapphire, Platinum, or Founding member.

For the purposes of these terms, “selling” refers to offering, soliciting, or attempting to offer products or services for monetary compensation, barter, or other value, either directly or indirectly. “Promoting” refers to the act of advertising, endorsing, or drawing attention to a product, service, brand, business, or external platform in a manner that implies or encourages commercial interest.

Examples of selling or promoting include (but are not limited to):

• Posting threads or comments offering services, products, or tools for sale, rent, or exchange.
• Publicly requesting users to DM, message, or contact you to learn more about a product or service.
• Embedding sales copy, marketing language, or call-to-action phrases in discussion threads (e.g., "DM me for a great deal", "I can help you with that - contact me for more information").
• Promoting affiliate links, referral programs, or monetized URLs outside of approved signature spaces, threads, or profile fields.
• Linking to websites, channels, or landing pages whose primary purpose is to generate sales, leads, or traffic to a commercial service, even if no direct sale occurs on the forum itself.
• Using discussion threads, entertainment content, free resources, personal projects, or similar content as a vehicle to funnel users toward monetised pages, sales processes, advertisements, affiliate offers, or lead generation systems.
• Repeatedly linking to personal projects, websites, games, tools, channels, or services where the promotional or commercial intent outweighs the discussion value provided to the community.
• Creating misleading, low-value, or insincere discussion topics primarily intended to generate attention or traffic for an external platform.

Discussions or casual mentions of tools, services, or platforms are permitted when clearly non-commercial in nature (e.g., personal experiences, non-affiliate recommendations, or contextually relevant mentions), provided they do not violate any other forum rules.

Members unsure whether a post may constitute selling or promoting should contact the moderation team before posting. Violations may result in notice points, thread removal, or account restrictions.

Moderation Action: Members who violate this rule may see their content removed and may be issued a notice. Attempts to circumvent these rules through indirect, disguised, or misleading promotional behaviour may still be treated as promotion at staff discretion.
Moderation decisions will take into account overall context, posting patterns, intent, and community value. Legitimate discussion, project journals, feedback requests, case studies, and non-commercial sharing are generally permitted where the primary purpose of the post is discussion rather than promotion.

Click to expand...

I'll have to go through rule 3.1 later and make it more concise.