Document rules on self-promotion & spam

Definitely spam- has the user been warned? If so, should they be banned?

(irony alert)
I don't see this as spam right out of the gate. Especially when there is a language barrier we should give the benefit of the doubt.

Let's contact them first letting them know the post isn't 100% appropriate and explaining how they could improve it to be more appropriate. Alex, want to draft something?

Are there any published posting guidelines that we can point to? I did a quick search and couldn't locate anything...

Not afaik aside from dcoc.

I don't see it as spam at all. It's about a Drupal-built site. (The most I would do is move it to the Showcase forum, but it works for me in General Discussion.)

This thread is a good illustration of why it's really important to have rules to define what we mean by SPAM, as it's way too easy to misinterpret a lack of language skills or experience with other cultures (and specifically our own) as a sign of bad behavior. In this case, if we had a working definition of SPAM, we could tell the user to change their post in X or Y ways to make it seem more interesting/relevant to the community. Also, I guess Greg's irony alert was on target, as on second thought I don't know how much we really want to police the forums. But, that is mainly because I never found the forums on d.o. to be helpful in the least (g.d.o., IRC, and the issue queues are what I use), which has nothing to do with SPAM and everything to do with the fact that the engaged community doesn't really seem to use the forums.

Can you really "define" spam though? That seems like a very impossible task.

If we can't define it, then we shouldn't be thinking about banning people for it.

Oh come one now. There are things that cannot be defined, but we can come to a consensus that it is spam: sniff test.

That's philosophically true, but for practical purposes it's not something you can build a policy around, and thus is not something we should be banning people for. I certainly think I have a pretty good spam-sniffing-schnoz, but I'm now pretty sure I "mis-smelled" this one. The only way to deal with the natural variation in personal perception is to create standards that help us figure out when we're really smelling spam, or when it's really a roast pig that's been sitting out for a few weeks (ok, enough mixed metaphors for me for the day!).

Spam: Linking to external sites that serves zero purpose in promoting drupal.org, the Drupal software, or the Drupal community at large.

That's philosophically true, but for practical purposes it's not something you can build a policy around, and thus is not something we should be banning people for

Isn't the policy to have multiple people openly discuss whether something should be deleted? That seems to be practically working well enough here.

While I share the common technologist inclination to codify everything, that doesn't seem like a great solution here. Millions of dollars have been invested in codifying a definition of "SPAM" while millions more have been spent finding clever exceptions to those rules. The SPAM in my inbox is no less SPAM for not matching formal definitions. Ultimately it comes down to subjective human judgment, which actually works very well.

While I share the common technologist inclination to codify everything, that doesn't seem like a great solution here. Millions of dollars have been invested in codifying a definition of "SPAM" while millions more have been spent finding clever exceptions to those rules.

The problem is that there are already disagreements and no clear way to deal with them. At least if there's a rule to point to then new people who aren't as versed in online community dynamics don't get attacked or banned for 'bad behavior'. This isn't about technologists, it's about community. When you have 100 people, or maybe even 10,000 people, it's easy enough to manage everything through basic consensus building, but as a community grows it absolutely needs well defined boundaries for behavior.

Also, if you look at the thread here the motivation isn't coming from making rules but rather in creating some standard text that we can use to send to people as a gentle 'warning'. If I'm going to send that message I want to be able to point to some actual rule that the person is breaking. I tried to see if I could tie it to the DCOC or Forum Rules but neither seem to have something that's relevant enough, so...

I'm changing the title of this issue to reflect the turn in the conversation.

When you have 100 people, or maybe even 10,000 people, it's easy enough to manage everything through basic consensus building, but as a community grows it absolutely needs well defined boundaries for behavior.

I emphatically disagree with this sentiment.

The webmasters team has functioned just fine through a 5-fold increase in the community over the past 5 years by sticking to one simple rule: use common sense, and discuss + get consensus before taking punitive actions on any borderline cases. That's exactly what this issue is.

Quoting from myself at another issue where this has come up:

"The only thing I've ever seen out of codifying some sort of rules/guidelines around community conduct (in any community, online or off) is the same negative people who routinely engage in 'bad' behaviours going out of their way to find loopholes so they can continue to engage in 'bad' behaviours that are not explicitly covered by the rules. It then becomes a cat and mouse game of trying to expand the rules to cover all possible 'bad' behaviours, and inevitably the web of rules becomes so vast and convoluted that one of the generally 'good' people slip-up, and that gives the negative person the platform to go, "HA! That person is 'bad' and should therefore have punitive measures taken against them or else your community is biased!" No, thanks. I have not even the tiniest shred of interest going down that road."

I have no reason to believe that our basic "stick to common sense, and if you're not sure, ask" rule can't get us through another 5-fold increase unless there's tremendous evidence to the contrary.

Yep, I completely agree. We can improve our spam handling methods (adding a flag that users can toggle, and a view for 'potential spam content'), but it still comes down to common sense.

Also, if you look at the thread here the motivation isn't coming from making rules but rather in creating some standard text that we can use to send to people as a gentle 'warning'. If I'm going to send that message I want to be able to point to some actual rule that the person is breaking. I tried to see if I could tie it to the DCOC or Forum Rules but neither seem to have something that's relevant enough, so...

It seems to me you didn't find any relevant rule or community norm being violated because there is no violation here. I agree with silverwing that the post is fine for the forum topic. If there's some consensus that a warning is appropriate, I agree there should first be stated guidelines. But I suspect the "no Drupal-related self-promotion without prior local community participation" rule (or whatever the rule is supposed to be) isn't stated because it's not really a rule at all, just a personal preference.

@webchick- so, were you opposed to the DCoC? To the forum rules? I'm not sure I understand why there's such trouble with the idea of defining what we expect from the community, but there are already two places where we could put something. And, as with the DCoC, it doesn't have to be defined in terms of 'negative' behaviors we're trying to keep off of d.o., but rather in terms of the 'positive' behaviors we do want to see.

@Dave- the problem with 'common sense' is that it's far too rare a quality.

@srenyon- this isn't just about this specific case, and having a rule in place wouldn't have prevented me from thinking that post was spam, so please stop conflating these two issues. (Also, I'm not personally against self-promotion on d.o., I am nothing if not a shameless self-promoter). If there's no rule that prevents people from posting self-promotional posts on d.o. then that's fine, and what I wanted to know. So then this can serve as some for of documentation: self-promotion is allowed on Drupal.org.

please stop conflating these two issues

Sorry, I didn't realize there were 2 distinct issues here. I suggest making that clearer by keeping distinct issues in distinct issue nodes.

@srenyon- thanks for the incredibly helpful note- and feel free to create a separate issue if you feel the need (sorry if I gave the impression that I was preventing you from doing so, but your conflation must be the result of that confusion). Anything else you'd like to add?

Yes, I was against the DCoC, but the community's consensus was that we needed one. It's written in such a way that it explains the community's over-arching philosophy and doesn't try and get into the level of "policing" or "do/don't"ing individual behaviours, so I didn't do much to push back on it.

Here, we're attempting to codify this, and I see this going down the completely wrong road. You imply that by us not putting a rule somewhere about self-promotion, we are somehow saying a blanket "self-promotion is allowed." That's completely not what's being said here.

Instead, we are saying, "Be considerate. Be respectful. Be collaborative." The actual boundaries of those things are determined on a case-by-case basis by the webmasters team, as they always have been, and as they are in this issue.

Fair enough- I come from a family of lawyers, so I definitely understand that my need for rules is my own issue. Anyway, the consensus seems to be that the DCoC is sufficient. I obviously disagree, but not enough to keep this thread going- closing this as 'works as designed'.