We are working on some community rules to offer up for you all to comment on. The goal will be to find out how you all want E-R.org managed and set some guidelines so members and moderators know what is allowed and what is not.
I would like to ask you all how you want members with commercial interest in ER to be handled. We will have clauses about SPAMMING so they cannot post links to their sites/products but I wanted to table a couple topics regarding this to get your input.
Some of these members might have some quality info to share and offer some valuable insight into their specific area of expertise. One thought is that we will not be able to stop these business people from joining and posting so let's make a forum where they can post their products, links, etc. We do this on some other sites and it works out pretty well. This allows them a place to post commercial oriented posts and keeps them out of our other areas. Many members (or guest) might actually find these posts to be of considerable value.
In a way it's kind of like not being able to prevent a dog from going to the bathroom so we make a place for him to go. If he keeps crapping all over the rest of the house then we have to get rid of the dog.
Another thing to consider is the posting habits of a member. If a member has contributed greatly to discussions and on occasion posts a link to his/her site, I see no problem with that. It's a member who joins and is obviously posting just to get the link in their signature in front of everyone that I have issues with.
If we had a forum for commercial oriented posts and a new member joined and posted about insurance policies in this forum, it could just be ignored. I could setup the home page so these posts would not show up there. That way someone would have to go into that forum to see the discussions and they would stay out of our other forums.
What I would like know is how you all feel about this. Do you think people with commercial interests can be of value to our discussions? If so, what should our policies towards these people be? Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how to deal with them?
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
I would like to ask you all how you want members with commercial interest in ER to be handled. We will have clauses about SPAMMING so they cannot post links to their sites/products but I wanted to table a couple topics regarding this to get your input.
Some of these members might have some quality info to share and offer some valuable insight into their specific area of expertise. One thought is that we will not be able to stop these business people from joining and posting so let's make a forum where they can post their products, links, etc. We do this on some other sites and it works out pretty well. This allows them a place to post commercial oriented posts and keeps them out of our other areas. Many members (or guest) might actually find these posts to be of considerable value.
In a way it's kind of like not being able to prevent a dog from going to the bathroom so we make a place for him to go. If he keeps crapping all over the rest of the house then we have to get rid of the dog.
Another thing to consider is the posting habits of a member. If a member has contributed greatly to discussions and on occasion posts a link to his/her site, I see no problem with that. It's a member who joins and is obviously posting just to get the link in their signature in front of everyone that I have issues with.
If we had a forum for commercial oriented posts and a new member joined and posted about insurance policies in this forum, it could just be ignored. I could setup the home page so these posts would not show up there. That way someone would have to go into that forum to see the discussions and they would stay out of our other forums.
What I would like know is how you all feel about this. Do you think people with commercial interests can be of value to our discussions? If so, what should our policies towards these people be? Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how to deal with them?
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
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