What happened to discrepancy?, the posting of links Options

[Spirited Away]

Why I'm here.

The Community Guideline states:
ADVERTISING
Starting a topic for the sole purpose of advertising is not allowed. You may not solicit via Private Message. Signatures may only contain references and links to personal pages, such as your blogs and profiles; references and links to anything that is not personal, such as websites and forums are not allowed.

"Strictly" following the rules would mean any link posted in debate or news means spam/advertising. Yet it is argued by another member, E-Man, that such links are "allowed because it is [a] source [that] is not advertising or promoting a certain cause or company. You are simply citing where you got your facts or story from." However, that is deviating from the community guideline rule itself, and not "strictly" following.

According the definition agreed by iRock cB, if a link is posted so that it would provide information for a cause, it would be okay. So why is the topic "save the la mesa" censored even after I explained that it could be means for providing information?

I remember clearly that Jusun meant for staff to be lenient in the lounge, but what happened to that proposed leniency by the leader of this community?

[*Zatanna*]

I'm coming into this so late, but did read through the thread. I'll skip to this -

Going back to what Fae said, should we limit advertising JUST to links that persuade someone to make a purchase? Are there other things that could be considered advertising?

I'm not insullting anyone's intelligence by posting these definitions as I'm sure you all know what the meaning of the word advertising means, but for a visual, I'm going to use a few definitions.

1. to announce or praise (a product, service, etc.) in some public medium of communication in order to induce people to buy or use it: to advertise a new brand of toothpaste.
2. to give information to the public about; announce publicly in a newspaper, on radio or television
3. to call attention to, in a boastful or ostentatious manner

I would definitely remove a link to and close the thread of anything that would be encompassed by #1. It is blatently (in my opinion) against the Community Guidelines as now written:

ADVERTISING
Starting a topic for the sole purpose of advertising is not allowed. You may not solicit via Private Message. Signatures may only contain references and links to personal pages, such as your blogs and profiles; references and links to anything that is not personal, such as websites and forums are not allowed.

Having said that, according to these particular rules, #2 and #3 could potentially fall into the same catagory, even though one could feasibly start an informational thread without any intention of selling or advertisting, per se.

Some examples of threads I would, in my best judgement, remove links from and close:
http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=152277
http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=152277
http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=152378

Those seem fairly obvious though, right? Well, I think so at least.

Some example of threads I would, in my best judgement, not remove links from, but keep open in case the thread starter really wanted some discussion on a subject, but didn't know any better (as far as linking to a site that might sell something):
http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=152495
Now unfortunately, link has been removed but please take my word for it that a link to a game selling site was there. However, since it's a topic I thought people might have input on, it was left open but the link was removed. TOTAL judgement call though.

One more iffy:
http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=152386
Ok, so it seems like it could have been pretty informational, but unfortunately since the poster had exactly 2 posts and both contained information regarding the links that were provided, the links were removed and threads closed. The topic starter never returned either.

I probably didn't use the best examples. My point though is that perhaps too much is left to be decided and the rule(s) are not explicit enough (which I think has already been brought up).

I think blatent advertising is a no brainer, and should have links removed and topics closed. In my opinion, I think anyone who starts a thread for the sole purpose of pimping their site should have links removed and topics closed. However, if someone is posting a link but is at least appearing to want some discussion, either don't remove the link or retain that link somehow (maybe but it in your personal notepad? does anyone actually use those?) but definitely do not close the thread. If after a few days (or a couple days) no one is responding or the thread starter doesn't return, go ahead and close it. Often, the adbots have 1 or 2 posts and you can pretty much tell that they're posting for one purpose and one purpose only.

I think I'm rambling. Yes, I am definitely rambling.