15
votes
What is Tildes' position on official company representatives?
(I'm not one.)
If/when Tildes grows to the point where individual games have robust communities, will company reps be allowed? Any idea of the rules surrounding that kind of presence?
My experience of company reps has been that they can be a real benefit to the community (e.g. GloriousGeorge for Corsair on Reddit). As a result, my personal opinion is that they should be allowed as long as they are identified by a flair or something.
I think it should also be clear that community managers are guests of the community, and that if the community changes it's mind on allowing them, they will have to leave.
Reddit once had a 10% rule. You can only link to, talk about, promote etc your own content as 10% of your activity on Reddit. When they did away with that to try and pull in the corporate presence, the quality of the site plummeted.
I really don't want that here. I would support a blanket ban on any and all corporate presence whatsoever, with 1 major exception - an ability for a community (via mods) and poster (flag on the post aka NSFW) to mutually 'opt in' (not out) to having corporate responses allowed on a post. That way if there is a post which it would make sense to get corporate responses, like bug reporting, problem with shipping or account banning or whatever, they can participate.
But aside from that there really, REALLY shouldn't be any spruiking or advertising by puppets on here. No posting of own youtube channels to try and drive up traffic, no posting of blog posts or estores, no long comment chains with a product pitch at the end. It destroys the purpose of the community.
This is something I'm pretty conflicted about, and I'm even the person that wrote "It's perfectly fine to be a redditor with a website, it's not okay to be a website with a reddit account." on the self-promotion page (don't believe the rumors, it wasn't Confucius).
Even the 10% rule was never great, it was just kind of an easy, unambiguous way to tell people "you're promoting your own stuff too much." In the end, there are good situations for corporate/official/etc. accounts to be involved with a community, and I don't know if there's a simple way to separate them.
I think it's mostly about intent, which is of course a pretty difficult thing to try to judge. If they're participating because they legitimately want to share something with the community (and respond to questions and such), and the community likes it, I think that's a good thing. But if it's someone that just sees the community as a source for traffic and all of their interaction is just dumping their stuff in and never looking at it otherwise, that's not useful.
You can't say things like "no posting of own youtube channels to try and drive up traffic, no posting of blog posts", that's just never going to work. There are (or will be) a lot of people here that write their own blog posts and such, and they'll want to share them with the community, and I don't think that's something that we should prevent. But it is important to try to distinguish between people that take part in the community and ones that are just trying to take advantage of it.
In one of the subreddits I moderate, we had someone join with a username of a well-known magazine related to the sub's topic. [Red Flag #1]
Every one of their submissions was to an article on their website. [Red Flag #2]
Although good conversations were had on the topics that were submitted and the user participated in the discussions, the subscribers constantly flagged the submissions as spam. [Red Flag #3]
As a result, the mod team set up a conversation with the magazine account holder. It became clear that that their actual intent was to drive traffic to their site and acquire new subscriptions - i.e. they were advertising.
Had our subscriber base not constantly flagged the posts as spam, we probably would have allowed the posts because the content was relevant and the account holder(s) were active community members providing solid advice. Because a large number of our community members saw it as spam though, we ultimately decided that they would either need to purchase ads on reddit or submit text posts to create discussions instead of linking back to their site.
In this case, how our community members felt about the content was more important than the content itself.
All of my communities that I moderate on reddit ascribe to "It's perfectly fine to be a redditor with a website, it's not okay to be a website with a reddit account" and follow the 9:1 ratio because, as you mentioned, it's not subjective. You have to contribute to the community in ways that don't personally benefit you before you're allowed to start sharing your own stuff.
Even though that was removed, our communities still enforce it and I think it works dandy.
You can't draw the line at monetary compensation because they might offer "free" whatever but they are harvesting contact information, using ad revenue, etc. and making money off of that.
Through the years, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is trying to peddle their own brand or products versus actually contributing to the community. The downside is that it takes real people reviewing things and making decisions.
And those decisions need to be made in a transparent manner.
Having corporate responses being opt in to allow would essentially be a blanket ban though, since most posters probably wouldn't notice it, and with such limited participation available I don't think the companies would have any incentive to have a presence in the first place. I think corporate accounts can be really well-managed, there are some really good reps on /r/boardgames for instance that are actively involved in the community outside of posts relating to their games. Most of those started as personal accounts that get special flair, maybe that's something to consider?
I don't have any problem with self-promotion if it's something that the person has made and is giving away for free (e.g. hey folks I made this \art\music\software etc). However, most internet marketing companies view link aggregators as free marketing. They will try to game this site by any means necessary. I would rather not see any reps on here, official or otherwise. I certainly wouldn't want to see any company representatives moderating groups on here.
I disagree with this. Before reddit took away that rule, I saw several people who engaged in communities in good faith while also posting their own content get in trouble with arbitrary applications of the 10% rule. Between voting and moderation, there are plenty of tools to deal with people spamming their own content. A person posting mostly their own content can be a well liked and valuable member of a community, and a blanket ban gets in the way of positive situations like this.
I think there's a distinction missing between advertising accounts and company representatives in the responses here.
I don't think advertising specific accounts should be allowed. However, community manager types I think should be okay, especially in the specific ~ areas that are applicable. Ones that are already about specific games, products, etc. I agree with Sqew that they should be clear tagging for who they are though.
I lean pretty strongly against allowing them. We are bombarded with more than enough advertising. If a company truly has something good and original to contribute, I guess let the votes decide, but for promotional specifics, I think it should be banned or at least restricted to its own group or something.
I think having policies that accommodate for corporate interaction within the community should be up for consideration. Rules should account for benevolent behavior just as much as it does for malevolent.
They should have the responsibility of disclosing their identity within every post they make, with exception to comment chains that have descended from a post where identity has already been established, and is no longer necessary.
Raffles should not be tolerated. Inciting participation or mentioning a website or web page out of the interest of garnering involvement with a give away should not be allowed.
Redirection towards social media should not be tolerated.
A companies presence should serve no other purpose besides the representation of self. Attempts to distinguish, romanticize, or glorify its self should not be tolerated.
The expectation of compassion applies to us just as much as it does to them. Authenticity, validity, and competence are not antonymous with employment. There are people putting hard work behind companies and what they produce. Their insight on that work is something an entire community can benefit from harboring.
So I may have just done a faux pas right off the bat? I just posted in an introduction thread (just joined), talked about my vlog, posted a link. I'm trying to make a treasure hunt. Not specifically for this site, or for any money, but because I think it's fun. But it's also my channel and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want more followers. I don't make any money on it, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to be able to some day.
Is posting my project "inciting participation"?