📣 New policy on 'self promotion'

Absolutely!
I guess that’s something inherent with the blender community. Most of us are super open to ideas, super open to adaptation, advice, and improvement. :blush:

But I’m one of those people who posts once a week due to my weekly artwork endeavor, understandably I am open to this idea as it doesn’t harm me.
The only way I can see people getting around this is by linking their previous artwork that has the self-promo on it, which still gives engagement but can be seen as destructive. I am super interested in how people will adapt to this

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Agreed that spam and spam-like activity is at a troublesome level now.

I think these rules are too vague and too broad. Vague, broad, or supernumerous rules lead to more trouble than what they were intended to solve. Wish I had suggestions for better rules but this needs much more work before if it is to be implemented.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Maybe some rules can help with this, maybe not, or it’s the wrong cure.

If you do make rules about this then consider member profiles.

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We’ll see how it goes and refine as needed. I’m optimistic that over time we’ll be able to optimize this and arrive at the perfect result :slight_smile:

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So if I post an addon and will receive a feedback, questions about it, I won’t be able to engage in conversation?

Paradoxically, this might encourage less aggressive self-promoters to increase their activity to more closely encroach on this new limit. It’s like the psychological effect achieved when setting the initial asking price during bartering. Just a thought.

As already said:

So if you have a good amount of community engagement beyond self promotions, this will be fine, you can post replies to your add-on without problems. If you only have self promotion posts, then you might be more limited

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Most aggressive self promoters are already well over the limit and have been for many months, according to our data

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Aye Aye Agree!

Fred/K.S

Maybe I’m misunderstanding because it’s been misused in the past, but I thought that was the entire purpose of that category. What should we be posting in Released Scripts and Themes?

Does sketchfab count? Or not because it’s also a 3d viewer?

Yes,you’re correct, addons are what should be posted there. This isn’t saying self promotion is bad- just that we’d like to limit the formerly limitless amount of it

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This could be quite troublesome for someone who maintains multiple addons.

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Could be, that’s true :slight_smile: As stayed, exceptions can be made on a case by case basis for people with good rates of community engagement, I would imagine that would be one of those cases depending on the person

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Ah, I think I understand now.

One more question:

Is it okay for me to continue sharing those gumroad links to my free project files in my nodevember projects?

  • It’s directly relevant to the topic, and I’m linking directly to it, not linking to my main account and asking people to search through it
  • It’s free, so I’m not promoting a paid product
  • I’m interacting with the community, replying to comments, giving notes on my process, and adding breakdowns to my post
  • It’s not the center of attention, it’s just a side thing for those who’d like to see my entire process and tinker with it
  • Nodevember is a prompt every two days so there’s no way I’m going to be able to stay strictly within the limit
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I’m going to DM you, addressing specific cases is probably better that way to avoid clutter here :slight_smile:

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If you need specific examples, just look at #support:tutorials-tips-and-tricks. Pay attention to the avatars and number of replies. There will be a few that should quickly jump out. You can see they have little to no engagement and drive-by post their videos, sometimes multiple days in a row. If you want to go deeper, look at the activity of those posters, they don’t interact with the forums at all, except to promote their videos.

There’s not a lot of engagement in the form of replies with that particular category in general, mostly people posting videos. Perhaps it should be displayed by thumbnail images like #artwork:animations? It would certainly make it easier to browse through quickly.

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We have a rigorous system in place for detecting and tracking self promotions :slight_smile:

One of the addon creators who has been exceptionally helpful and active, who engages with the community to solve their workflow issues and incorporates many of this feedback, now posted that they will refrain from posting more than once a week due to the new rules. I think it is very counterproductive seeing as there really was a vibrant subcommunity around the addon. The creator barely linked to a download topic, since we all know where its at (and not to mention its free with possible donations).

Wouldn’t it be of interest to Blenderartists to give these creators a badge (e.g. like moderators or regulars get one) so they can continue doing what we all come to the forums for? I mean, just give those people a seal of approval and some gratitude will ya? The people I am referring to are far from the ones who misbehave, but they are punished/ discouraged from forum engagement as a result now…

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So then what’s the point of the rules? An announcement that the non-compliant users’ posts will be moderated? If the effect now seems to be that good people are feeling restricted by them, that can’t be the intention of the rules now, can it?

This is an excellent concern that I’m not qualified to answer. I’m going to pass the mike to @bartv here :slight_smile: that is say, this goes beyond the team of what’s already been said, and I’ve been exclusively repeating or rephrasing what’s been said here. I’m not in a position to offer interpretations, that’s definitely site owner territory

And vocal people are usually just a fraction of all the people who will read or be affected by the rules and stop or refrain from posting at all. General intention of the rule is IMO great, but it’s carpet bombing approach to the problem. The other problem of this rule is already highlighted in the thread: exceptions are already discussed and allowed. Not a great policy if at the beginning it needs exceptions from it, right?

To be honest, I don’t have constructive idea how to better address the issue though…

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