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Clarifying "Code of Conduct" - "Self Promotion" Clause

Symbioquine

Solar Enthusiast
Joined
Jul 6, 2021
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422
Not a "complaint" exactly, but this section is the closest to a "Meta" forum section I could find...

WRT: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/official-forum-code-of-conduct-and-terms-of-service.2216/

I'd like help understanding the following clause better;

Advertising is not allowed. Affiliate links, self promotion, spam etc, will result in a permanent ban and your IP address will be listed. It is ok to post basic links to products you like, but if we find that you are a shill, you will be banned. The only exception to this rule is the "corporate section" where advertising and self-promotion (but no affiliate links) is allowed.

I read this as a injunction against self-interested or profit-motivated posting - though one could argue that it is a Reddit-style rule against any kind of self-linking.

Specifically, I'm curious whether links to on-topic, informative, and helpful content cannot be posted by the content's author - even if that author is giving the content away and not attempting to otherwise benefit/profit from it?

As an example, I would like to start a thread referencing my blog post (https://symbioquine.net/2020-09-02-epever-scc-clocks-running-fast) since I think it would be of interest to folks on this forum and could generate useful discussion, but I don't want to run afoul of the forum Code of Conduct.

Looking forward to clarification here - thanks in advance!
 
If the link goes to a company you have any control over, post in corporate section.

If it does not go to a company you have any control or share in, then make sure it does not have any affiliate junk on the end of the URL and you should be good.

If you have a stake in something you are posting, disclose it.

Good luck on your project!

If you are linking your github repo, then there is no risk at all due to no financial aspect. Post all the repositories you feel like!?

clarity: i’m just a visitor but this is how i understand things to be.
 
If the link goes to a company you have any control over, post in corporate section.

Yeah, I guess my inclination would be to make a distinction about whether the link goes to a company or not. In the case of my example blog post, it is something I control, but it is not "a company" and is totally free and noncommercial.

If you have a stake in something you are posting, disclose it.

Yeah, this is generally good advice - will do!

If it does not go to a company you have any control or share in, then make sure it does not have any affiliate junk on the end of the URL and you should be good.

That seems a bit broad... Should should everyone who has stock in Amazon or Alibaba refrain from sharing links to those sites?

Good luck on your project!

Thanks - cheers!
 
In the case of my example blog post, it is something I control, but it is not "a company" and is totally free and noncommercial.
There have been a couple people promoting their YouTube videos as solutions to questions and other somewhat helpful ways. I think they were allowed until they became incessant and obviously just self promotion.

if you have something interesting, amusing, innovative and/or relevant, even in your own blog, I would be interested to hearing about it (or gladly ignore, once or twice).
 
That seems a bit broad... Should should everyone who has stock in Amazon or Alibaba refrain from sharing links to those sites?
I would reckon that linking to a product on amazon with no affiliate link is no problem even if someone holds shares of the company. Linking to your own open source project that is not commercial in nature should be completely ok AFAICT.

I think if the nature of it is not commercial, and it's an open source thing, then it's totally safe to post.

There are lots of people here posting their code that interfaces with BMS using microcontrollers, it's ok as long as it's in balance and not being reposted in multiple forums etc...

I hope you'll post your project, so I can learn about it :) I'm working on some open source solar related stuff that's not ready to be seen yet; seeing other people's projects here is a major source of enthusiasm and inspiration for me.
 
Also, I just checked out the blog post you linked.

Thank you for sharing!

Interesting that the clock on EPEVER runs fast. This offset would eventually accumulate and cause time of day based utility functions on the EPEVER device to malfunction and operate at the wrong time relative to True Time.

SUPER COOL that you investigated NTP to sync it!

Nice! Thanks for sharing the post and the code and comments inside are great.

Cheers.
 
Sorry if it's weird to post about the thing here, but I do think timekeeping is extremely cool and interesting topic. So many devices today have crystals and oscillators inside and they change their frequency based on temperature, and even barometric pressure from what I've heard.. SO COOL that you're taking this into consideration.

This excerpt, which I hope it's ok I am pasting for reference.. it's just very impressive.
Where most people have their microwave blinking 12:00 all day, you have your controllers cooperating better than the locomotives traveling through a million and a half time zones back in the day. This graph is so impressive!!!
It's like an inverse y2k. Time staying in order. Anyways, I digress. Timekeeping is cool.
1630644109391.png

I've done some hobby stuff with GPS as a time source for coarse time (Year/Month/Day/Hour/Minute/Second) and fine time (microseconds and less) with raspberry pi and arduino. It's truly amazing what precision can be achieved with commodity hardware these days.

Anyways,

Cool blog and thanks again for sharing.
 
I am researching solar and I do SEO for a solar company. When is it appropriate to link <REDACTED> to a post and in what sections?
providing relevant educational material as a link, in a thread where people are talking about a specific topic, probably no problem.

if you work for <COMPANY>, randomly linking to the main page might result in a ban, as some may construe it as advertisement.

please note : i'm not a moderator

edit: removed company name and email to further discourage name dropping and linking random businesses. bots will index this post and by removing the name of the organization further reduces the effectiveness of the spam.

love this forum.
 
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these links might help



the corporate corner sub forum was recently removed.

kind regards
 
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