Edit 3 - further refining.

There are some rather… unique interpretations of what a promo post is, along with an important note that some people lurk. Its important though that they participate somewhere to make sure its not a drive-by ad, but its fair to say that there are users in programming, linux, and other communities whose posts would be welcomed by users here.

Its also important to users here that its not just post and disappear.

So I’m adjusting to:

Promotion posts require your active participation in selfhosting or related communities, or the post will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & can be self-hosted in full without payment, your post is exempt from this rule as long as you continue to engage in comments.

EDIT 2 AT THE TOP AGAIN:

It seems there is some confusion around the term “promo posts”, so I’m making another adjustment for clarity. If this is muddying the waters instead, please point that out!

Self-promotion posts advertising their product requires community participation, or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & can be self-hosted in full without payment, your post is exempt from this rule.

I worry a bit that its getting unwieldy, so feel free to suggest options to clean up the language a bit.

EDIT AT THE TOP:

Promotional posts require community participation or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & can be used in full without payment, it will be exempt from this rule.

Intended to clarify on “paywall” - it has to be open source and run in full locally, no one-time or subscription-locked payment for features, to qualify. Donations don’t count as that doesn’t limit use, while something like Kavita (which has non-free features behind a subscription, despite the base being open source) would not have the benefit of exemption. The rule intent hasn’t changed here, just the wording on the exemption limitations.

I’ve gotten through (I believe) all the comments in the meta thread. So I want to establish a few things, first being a better definition on spam.

Spam is not “I don’t like this and its a paid product” or “I don’t like this and they used AI/LLMs”.

Spam would generally be considered:

  • Mass-posting - Posting the exact same post across a bunch of of different communities, rapidly.
  • Repetitive Content (aka karma farming) - repeatedly submitting old popular content. I’ll note that this is completely irrelevant on lemmy, this was more of a reddit issue due to karma.
  • Bot Activity / AI Abuse - Using scripts/bots/gen AI to automate posts and comments.
  • Unsolicited DMs - Mass private messages or chats to users, completely unsolicited

I’d say anything other than that deserves a followup rule, and this definition should go in the sidebar.

Regarding the promotional posts themselves, I think something like the 10% rule makes sense - no more than 10% of the account should be self-promotional material or comments within the community.

I do think it makes sense to include an exception for 100% free/libre open source projects. Partially open projects with a closed (paid) component should be subject to the 10% rule. So what I propose as the rule would be:

Promotional posts require community participation or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & without any paywalls, it will be exempt from this rule.

Questions, comments, clarifications, and harsh criticisms are welcomed in the comments. As a reminder from my intro post, and because of some comments in the other thread, I will mention:

There are people on both sides of the keyboards, so please be respectful of others.

  • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    I find this too prohibitive. Even with the exception this would make me think twice about a promo post and maybe even refrain me from posting at all. For non-except services it is even worse. It may lead to spam posts or users trying to categorize contributions into useful and not useful posts.

    Self hosting does not end for everyone with free services. Some of us are happy to pay for services provided by others and I would really like to read about these here as well. I know this is not the intention of the rule, but it will be its result.

    • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
      101·
      22 hours ago

      I think some people are having trouble understanding what a promotion post is, thus the edit.

      If you are not from that company, you can post about it, have discussions, talk about features in new versions, whatever. If you are from a company trying to promote your own product, that is when the rule applies.

      How does this in any way impact your ability to post about a non-free product?

      • ken@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        3·
        17 hours ago

        Thank you for thoughtful engagement!

        I think that becomes even more problematic. Why is it better that I shill for a company I’m getting kickbacks from (some VPN providers excel at this game) rather than one I’m responsible for? Besides, this just lead to submarining (“viral marketing” is an entire industry!) and people pretending to “have just stumbled across this project, what do you guys think?” or being “just a happy customer”… And to some extent t becomes a game of social status, where well-connected people can just ask their friends to post on their behalf.

        Judge the message and topic, not the messenger (as long as they are human acting in good faith and not “written with help by AI”, obv).

        Besides of those issues, my personal preference would be to keep the focus on self-hosting. So talk of hardware or shipped software might be on-topic but not service providers. There are plenty of places to discuss cloud-hosting, VPNs, which PaaS is best, or whatnot.

        And I would actually be much more interested in seeing a post from a founder talking about things their company is doing relevant to self-hosters, vs yet another post of “which provider is best right now and what do you use?” or “Company X currently has a sale/launched product Y”.

        While it might filter out some good stuff, I would be all for a ban of any promotion of commercial or proprietary products and services alltogether but allow for self-hostable and in particular FLOSS stuff (where I guess some carve-out or clever formulation could be made to allow for commercial but self-hostable software - either stance on that one seems fine to me).

        • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
          11·
          16 hours ago

          Why is it better that I shill for a company I’m getting kickbacks from (some VPN providers excel at this game) rather than one I’m responsible for?

          I’m sorry, I don’t understand the issue here.

          They would be held to the same rule, and both examples you give are the same. If you work for a company or own the company you are still making a self- promotional post for a company, and the rule applies.

          Judge the message and topic, not the messenger (as long as they are human acting in good faith and not “written with help by AI”, obv).

          Same statement here - if the message is a self-promo post, that is the type of post the rule applies to. This is quite literally what’s being described.

          And I would actually be much more interested in seeing a post from a founder talking about things their company is doing relevant to self-hosters, vs yet another post of “which provider is best right now and what do you use?” or “Company X currently has a sale/launched product Y”.

          You seem to be vastly in the minority.

          I’ll point out that this:

          things their company is doing relevant to self-hosters

          Does not happen in the first place. They make a post about their software, and generally get downvoted hard, the comments become very harsh, and within a fee days we had a meta thread about it.

          While it might filter out some good stuff, I would be all for a ban of any promotion of commercial or proprietary products and services alltogether but allow for self-hostable and in particular FLOSS stuff (where I guess some carve-out or clever formulation could be made to allow for commercial but self-hostable software - either stance on that one seems fine to me).

          So a more restrictive rule?

          This is practically a jump to the complete opposite of what you just said.

          I’m sorry, I’m trying to understand where the disconnect is here, and I’m really struggling to see it.

          • ken@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            2·
            15 hours ago

            If you work for a company or own the company you are still making a self- promotional post for a company, and the rule applies.

            So if the exact same post is posted by a friend instead it’s suddenly accepted? Why is self-promo meaningfully less desired than third-party-promo if they have similar results?

            You seem to be vastly in the minority.

            Might be! That one’s framed as just personal preference and not policy suggestion because I don’t think “allow all things I like and ban everything I don’t” makes for good governance ;)

            So a more restrictive rule?

            More restrictive in one sense (what content and what’s ok to “promote” for) but more allowing in another (you can talk about something even if you are involved or associated).

            • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
              11·
              11 hours ago

              So if the exact same post is posted by a friend instead it’s suddenly accepted?

              If that friend is actively participating in the fediverse and not coming in just to post constantly about a product… Then yes, which the employee/owner/whatever could also just do.

              Seems like pretty far into edge case territory though.

              Why is self-promo meaningfully less desired than third-party-promo if they have similar results?

              Because that post ties to that person on the fediverse, not someone just coming in to blast marketing materials then disappear. Its less about the promo part and more about a way to manage / prevent a constant influx of spammy self promotion hit and runs.

              Might be! That one’s framed as just personal preference and not policy suggestion because I don’t think “allow all things I like and ban everything I don’t” makes for good governance ;)

              If its what the community is interested in, its exactly the governance model that fits IMO.

              And just like this rule, if the community preference changes, then so would the rule.

              More restrictive in one sense (what content and what’s ok to “promote” for) but more allowing in another (you can talk about something even if you are involved or associated).

              Except that would already be allowed under the current rule, the only change is that non-free wouldn’t be eligible for posting at all.

        • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
          21·
          16 hours ago

          That would be wildly unnecessary for non-promo posts, and pretty weird for promo posts to be by someone who doesn’t work there.

          No