In an effort to be proactive on the Hosting Forums being shut down issue a small group of us are attempting to define some guidelines for moderating them should they be brought back online.
Please chime in if you have feedback to add to this topic. Bullets are quotes separated by contributor, followed by a consolidated 'Official Guidelines'.
- Honesty - If you provide hosting services, tell us so in your comment.
- Spam - Continually posting the same message or adding comments that do not add anything to the conversation will be considered spam.
- Affiliate links - If you are using an affiliate link, identify it as such. Hiding an affiliate link in a 'tinyurl' or similar service is not allowed.
- What about being actually helpful in your comments, not just selling
- Once clear guidelines are in place a 3 strikes and your out mentality. 3 egregious posts and that email is banned from d.o. Sure, people can just create a new account, but this will get old for them quickly.
- Immediate removal of any post or comment that is simply advertising, or repetition of a previous point + advertising. e.g. http://drupal.org/node/195949 - This could be accompanied with a sales pitch to buy advertising, and/or a 'strike' against that user.
- This may be complex to enforce, but 'No value judegements without supporting /technical/ criteria'. That is to say, 'Dreamhost is bad' is not enough. 'Dreamhost is bad cause they didn't return my phone call' is not helpful. 'Dreamhost is bad because they do not support php5' is acceptable. This is a technical forum, not a complaint session.
Official Guidelines:
- Immediate removal of any post or comment that is advertising only
- Repetition of identical posts or comments is SPAM and both will be removed
- Hiding affiliate links in a URL rewriting service such as tinyurl is deceptive, and posts can/should be removed"
Please help us more closely define this list.