Soliciting & Promoting Guidelines

The Community Rules already specify that you may not spam anywhere on this website and may not solicit in the forums.

• No spam. No repetitive posts, no unsolicited commercial messages, no unsolicited solicitations, no unsolicited promotions, etc.
• No soliciting in the forums. No commercial posts, no solicitations for donations or money, no promoting websites, etc.
• The only exception is if a forum specifically allows commercial posts, soliciting, and/or promotions.

To further clarify what is allowed and not allowed, we have created these guidelines.

Definitions & Clarifications

Opt In

• If people are following you, they are considered to be opted into the messages you send.
• If people gave you consent to send them messsages, they are considered to be opted in.

Opt Out

• They can unfollow you and even block you at any time for any reason, which would be considered opting out.
• If they never followed you or currently are not following you, they are considered opted out.
• If people revoke permission to send them messages, they are considered opted out.

Brand

This can be the name of your organization, name of your website, name of your company, a pen name, an alias, or any other name that is not the one on your drivers license or passport.

If you are using your real name as a personal brand, for the purposes of promoting something, it is considered a brand.

Soliciting and Promotion

Defined as asking for something, including, but not limited to:

• Asking people to visit a website.
• Asking people to download an app.
• Asking people to spend money.
• Asking people to donate money.
• Asking people to attend a meeting.
• Asking people to join your cause or organization.
• Asking people to support a political party or to vote for a candidate.
• Asking people to convert to your religion or trying to convince people to become an atheist.
• Asking people to provide you personal contact information, like an email or phone number, in exchange for something.

It also includes:

• Any type of lead generation.
• A job offer or business opportunity.
• Trying to convince people to do something.

Soliciting and promotion does not need to be commercial in nature, and includes non-profits, religion, and political causes.

You do not have to be promoting your own stuff. Even if you are promoting someone else's stuff, that still counts as promotion.

Etiquette & Best Practices

The Power of Attraction

There is a saying. People do business with people they know, like, and trust. Spamming people with ads or asking people for stuff without building a relationship first does not work very well and pushes people away. Be a good person that people want to work with, collaborate with, and/or do business with. Be someone they can trust when making recommendations and when promoting stuff. If you do that, you will start attracting people who want to be supportive of you.

Provide Value First

The best way to get interest in whatever you are promoting is to post great content. Provide value to people.

A certain percentage of people will visit your profile because they like what you say. And if and when you do promote something to your followers, people will be more likely to pay attention. If you are not providing value to your followers and the community, they are unlikely to support anything you promote.

Awareness without Promoting

If you have a brand, having that as part of your display name, handle (channel@example.com), and/or domain name will provide awareness without needing to solicit or promote within the post itself.

If you consistently provide value, people are going to notice and want to find out more about you.

Required Behavior

• You may only send promotions and solicitations to people who opt in.
• You must respect people's wishes and not send unsolicited messages.

Allowed Behavior

• You may solicit your followers. They have opted into receiving messages from you, and have the option of unfollowing you.
• You may post content on your channel (via web pages, wiki, articles, etc.) that are solicitations and promotions.
• You may ask someone to collaborate with you via a personal message.
• You may repeat or boost posts that you think that your followers would find interesting.

Prohibited Behavior

You many not engage in any behavior that results in sending people unsolicited promotions, including, but not limited to:

• Mentioning people who have not asked for your information.
• Replying to other people's posts with off topic and unsolicited promotional messages.
• Sending direct messages to people who have not asked for your information.
• Posting in forums or discussion boards where solicitations are not welcome.
• Collecting personal information, such as emails or phone numbers, and using that to send unsolicited messages.
• Use bots or AI to send unsolicited messages of any type to anyone.
• If someone blocks you, you may not circumvent that block by using another channel that is not blocked.

In addition, you may not:

• Use deceptive tactics in any way or any form.
• Use your account for primarily sending direct messages.
• Use your account primarily for search engine optimization (SEO).
• You may not promote things that are illegal in our jurisdiction and/or in your jurisdiction.

Nuances

Repeats and Boosts

If someone else repeats or boosts your post to their followers, then it is not considered an unsolicited message since the person repeating or boosting is only sending it to their followers. If someone does not want to receive repeats or boosts from someone, they have the option of unfollowing them, or in the case of some software, filtering out repeats and boosts. As long as your original post was only sent to your followers, you are in compliance with these guildelines if someone repeats or boosts your post.

Responsibility of Followers

Since people have control over who they follow and who they do not follow, and typically have the ability to block you, they are responsible for managing their own contact list. A person cannot claim that your message was unsolicited if they were following you at the time it was sent. This only applies to posts to your followers and does not apply to direct messages or mentions.

Contribution Required

We are looking for people who provide value to the community and contribute to others. If your sole purpose is to promote something without providing any value to your followers, then this community may not be for you.

A good indicator that you are not providing value is few real people are following you, and most of your post are promotions.

We reserve the right to delete accounts and channels that do not provide value to the community and to others.

Applicability

These rules and guidelines apply to anyone whose posts end up on our servers, regardless of whether you have a local account with us or not. These rules apply to any content that lands on our servers.

For remote users, while we may not be able to delete the original posts on your server, we can delete it on our servers. Repeated or severe violations may result in being banned or blocked.

Enforcement and Preventative Measures

We may use a variety of tactics to enforce these rules, including deleting posts, blocking channels, blocking domains, blocking email addresses, and banning users. If we operate more than one website, we may take these actions on every website we operate.

We also may mark your links (URLS) as rel="nofollow" or rel="ugc" to indicate that your links are user generated content (UGC). This may negatively affect your search engine rankings.

Complaints

If people are complaining about you, then that is a big red flag. Since people must opt in to receive messages from you, then why are they still receiving your messages if you are not sending unsolicited messages?

We will be fair in our investigation, but note that we do take complaints seriously. Malicious complaints will be ignored, however.

Spirit of the Rules

These are guidelines, and you are expected to follow the spirit of the rules, which is to not annoy people with unsolicited messages. If you are annoying people with your messages, you are probably violating the spirit of the rules.

As mentioned in the Community Rules, you may not circumvent the rules based on a technicality.

Decisions of the Administrator are final.

Our Soliciting and Promotions Guidelines are based on FWAA Soliciting and Promotions Guidelines Version 2.0 and may have been modified and customized for our community. Examples that you can copy and modify are located on the Federated Website & App Alliance website.