sigh, already one of my least favorite things

Athos · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 446 Location: San Francisco

so i guess it was no surprise when getcrafty relaunched, that we'd get the usual assortment of traffic increase... three people posted inside of two hours for the sole purpose of self-promotion. the first one i thought was cute, probably because i forgot how annoying it is to be spammed. is it in our TOS not to do this? can we include on the FAQ a quide guide to etiquette?

Mathias · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 102 Location: Virginia

I know I'm fairly new, so please pardon me if I'm seeming a little out of the loop... If we have a forum specifically for self-promotion, is it not appropriate to highlight yourself there? I guess I just assumed that the Girls Gone Crafty forum was an outlet for just such a thing...

Maybe a better (?) idea would be to create a sticky in that forum for the sole purposes of highlighting yourself. That way all of the self-promo would be limited to one specific thread? That way, if folks don't want to deal with the name-dropping, they can simply avoid that particular thread.

I know it can be little irritating, though, when folks pop in and drop their stuff without really otherwise contributing to the community...

I hope I've not offended anyone!

Katrin · Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 11:00 am Post subject:

I think you're fine, Mathias (forgive me; it's early and I can't quite remember the spelling of your first name). You're obviously a real person asking us to check out a real crafty endeavor of your own (and a cool one at that).

Blatant spammers like that iron-on letters ad are a different story. But that's the only one of those I've seen since the boards moved - your post and Flying Fish's were perfectly appropriate and in the right place.

(And y'know, if an actual person had joined the conversation, made some effort to be conversational and friendly, and then said "Oh by the way, I have this company that makes iron-on letters; check 'em out if you want"—I'd be all for that. Note to spammers: Don't try to pretend to do that just for the sake of advertising. We can tell the difference.)

Snufkin · Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 1:59 pm Post subject:

flyingfish · Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 24 Location: Milwaukee, WI.

just thought i'd pop back in here to let you know i am aware of the discussion going on....

i would also like to clarify what people are referring to as "community" do you mean the online message board craft community or just the crafter community in general- because a lot of folks still are not online....

lizzymahoney · Joined: 13 Apr 2004 Posts: 804

We're talking about the get crafty community. That's where the spam issue is, that's where we are.

People who are not online don't spam.

Crafters who are online but join this list for the express purpose of a hit and run ad are spamming.

Crafters who have engaged in some topics but mostly lurk until they have something they want to promote are usually okay. We'd be less suspicious if the post count was more than one, or if the poster commented on something read here and added a BTW mention of his/her product or commercial site.

Many crafters who post here do some business online. Putting the contact info in the signature file is fine.

That's my 37 cents.

CraftyChicaAZ · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 686 Location: phx, az

If they are cheesy spammers, I just ignore them.

But, Flying Fish, I LOVE your site - it's so cute. I hope you stick around and post some more on the other boards too! I can tell you are a very creative and fun person, I think we'd all love to get to know you better. Great job on the site!
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