A number of brand new accounts have popped up shilling their paid for applications.
Is this within the rules? Is the community happy with this? Could mods clarify this in the rules?
Either allowing advertising, or banning it entirely.
my point is - there is a difference between an open source homegrown project that might be useful, vs closed source paid for projects from brand new accounts
some replies are misunderstanding, somehow.
I am against
brand new accounts who:
- first post is a brand new project
- project is closed source
- project will cost money
- is asking for free testing
- the post is literally an advertisement
if they are obviously bot or dedicated marketing accounts, then no I dont think they should be here.
However, I’m not 100% opposed to closed source/paid software being discussed here, but it should clearly marked as such, with a flair that people can filter out if they so choose.
If someone posts asking about whether there are any alternatives to a paid closed source program, that’s a totally valid conversation, and if it turns out there is no FOSS alternative, then we have to talk about paid closed alternatives, find the one that offers the best value and vet for trustworthiness.
The rules say nothing about selling a paid service, but maybe “no spam” should be updated with some clarity on self promotion, so perhaps you can self promote your FOSS service with the appropriate flair, but if you are selling a paid closed service it shouldn’t be allowed?
discussing a product is not the same as someone literally advertising their paid for product.
are you ok with advertising on this community?
I would like the rules to make clear what is acceptable.
self promotion of a FOSS project is acceptable in my opinion, as long as it is clearly titled as self promotion and isn’t done in a spamming way (such as carpet bombing multiple communities with bot posts). I’d also say that donation-seeking in those posts should be kept to the creators own web pages, not in the posts themselves too.
there is a pretty easy line to draw for what is blatant advertising and what is genuine discussion of a paid service. that’s not that hard to moderate, especially when accounts are new, and carpet bombing the same posts to multiple communities, that is clearly spam.