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.

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    7·
    15 hours ago

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

    I would just keep it simple: “Self promotion for your product is allowed, but this is not an advertising platform. Be sensible and participate to community. Abuse will result in post removal.”

    I don’t think it really helps to place any arbitary limit as it might just result on spamming low-effort comments so that your “quota” stays under the 10% rule and also posting about your fantastic FOSS project daily could be equally annoying. That 10% rule could be useful when deciding if something should be removed and obviously free projects should have more relaxed “limits”, but in general what counts as abuse can be decided by community feedback.

    • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
      4·
      13 hours ago

      That would be effectively the same as no rule at all, so I’m going to have to say that is not an option given the recent meta thread.

      The issue is not repeat posts from specific posters, or even repeats - they just aren’t happening. What is happening, and caused the thread, were posts that were basically looking for beta/qa testers for their closed source app.

      So “Please don’t be spammy” is not enough. What the majority asked for was strong limits or an outright ban.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        12 hours ago

        I disagree that it would be the same than no rule at all, in my opinion that gives a pretty clear position on what’s allowed and what’s not without setting any strict limits so there’s some room for interpretation for community/mods to act.

        Maybe rephrasing a bit helps: “This community is not an advertising platform. Self promotion is allowed only from active members of this community. Excessive promotion will result on post removals and/or ban from the community.”

        What I’m afraid is that if there’s a strict rule then someone will argue that “only 9,87% of my posts are promotion, I don’t deserve a ban” even the rest of their content has little to no value for the conversation. And, since it’ll be a rule for the community, I personally think it should apply as it’s written, so it should have some kind of option to weed out smartasses trying to game the system in place.

        But I’m not likely to promote anything around here, so for me it doesn’t really matter, just trowing out my thoughts about the matter.

        • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
          2·
          8 hours ago

          I disagree that it would be the same than no rule at all

          None of the posts that people have been complaining about were repeat posts.

          It absolutely would be no different than no rule at all.

          Self promotion is allowed only from active members of this community.

          Now define active - how I did it was set a participation goal. How are you defining it here to make it a fair rule to be applied?

          What I’m afraid is that if there’s a strict rule then someone will argue that “only 9,87% of my posts are promotion, I don’t deserve a ban”

          If someone is commenting and posting regularly enough to get a percentage like that, no one would even need to do the math to see participation for it to be an approvable post. And there is no ban here, just post removal.

          Its about the people (or maybe bots) posting about a product in 9 posts, and 9 out of 10 comments, not the person who has a promo post in 11 out of 100 posts.

          so it should have some kind of option to weed out smartasses trying to game the system in place.

          Spammy comments get yoinked or (if made elsewhere) noted as not actually participating with the self promo post removal.

        • JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.netEnglish
          4·
          11 hours ago

          Would spamming low effort comments to fill a quota then fall under the spam bit, not necessarily self promotion bit? It would be quite obvious and from what was written in the post, moderators have more hand-wavy freedom to decide what is spam.

          I have no dog in this fight either since all of my projects are open hardware so nobody cares anyway because it would cost money to build it and test it out 😂

          • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
            2·
            8 hours ago

            Would spamming low effort comments to fill a quota then fall under the spam bit, not necessarily self promotion bit?

            Yup! Especially if they get reported for suddenly blasting out low effort comments which would put them on “mod radar” as it were.

            I have no dog in this fight either since all of my projects are open hardware so nobody cares anyway because it would cost money to build it and test it out 😂

            I dunno, plenty of us do stupid things with our money to try out something we want…

          • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            10 hours ago

            Would spamming low effort comments to fill a quota then fall under the spam bit, not necessarily self promotion bit?

            Possibly, but there’s equally gray area that what counts as low effort spamming and what actually contributes to the conversation. For example I’ve replied to comments “I’m using X to do Y” with “I’m using X too and I’m happy with it” to give an opinion to possible solutions. That kind of comments are easy enough to throw out and, if the “10% rule” is interpreted strictly, it isn’t really obvious if they should be considered as “improving your ratio” or as a part of actual conversation.