28
votes
Self promotion vs. Original content vs. Own content vs. User created vs. ...?
This question has come up a few times now in the "Unofficial Tildes Chat" Discord server meta/curation channels, but I wanted to open up the discussion to ~tildes at large so we can perhaps finally get a more definitive judgement on it. So here goes:
What are people's thoughts on using the above topic tags in cases where a Tildes user posts something that they themselves have created, have hosted on their own site (or another), and/or could potentially profit from (monetarily or otherwise)?
Should only one of the tags be standardized on, or is there enough of a distinction between some of them for their use to be situational?
Should such tags be required?
Can anyone think of any better tags for such situations than the ones listed?
posting my thoughts here so my opinion can be judged and voted-on separately from the topic
I personally really dislike
self promotion, since there is a somewhat negative and "selfish" connotation to it, especially in online communities, but not all user created content deserves that negativity, IMO.Because of that, the way I have generally been trying to tag such topics is using
self promotiononly when there is a very clear monetary aspect involved (i.e. the user is attempting to sell something, or promote their for-profit project), and usingown contentoruser createdwhen it's just someone sharing a cool/fun/interesting thing they made and there is no clear monetary gain to be had by them in doing so. I preferuser createdoverown contentbut I have waffled a bit on which I have used and when.Yeah, TBH the more I think about it (largely thanks to you expressing your concerns with the tag throughout this topic) the more I think doing away with
self promotionaltogether is probably the healthier/wiser choice for the community as a whole.p.s. Sorry if I came across as unduly harsh or directing my concerns/criticisms towards you or your submissions in our discussion about it below, as that was not my intent. I have enjoyed your posts here and wouldn't want to discourage you from posting any more in any way, regardless of the small and unobtrusive ad you have on your blog. ;)
Yeah, the last thing I want to do is discourage people from posting stuff they made that they feel is worthy of being shared, and tagging their submissions with
self promotionwould likely do exactly that.Same. I love seeing other users' work on here, and having a nice/easy way to view it all can be a huge positive IMO. I am still heavily leaning towards
user createdinstead oforiginal contentfor that though, for all the reasons sprinkled throughout the comments here.Just to be difficult (because that's what I do best!)...
This post and this post are my own content. :)
When someone links to their own blog, instead of making a text post here on Tildes, what are they doing if not promoting their blog?
The word may match the linguistic definition, but doesn't convey any of the correct connection, connotation, or intent associated with the term 'self promotion'.
It's an awful term and it should be dispensed with as soon as feasible. We need to make genuine content creators feel welcome on this platform, and not sully good-faith work with monetary-driven/selfish shots across the bow.
Showing off their fancy site design counts as "self promotion" to me.
I've just realized something:
This is a fuckin' language discussion.
People famously feel strongly when asked to edit their speech to a certain pattern. I've even written about it here on Tildes. It's a political, tribal topic that people feel very attached to.
Sure, I'm okay with editing my speech to a standard I, personally feel confident about. I'll still feel reluctant when someone tells me what pattern to adopt, even if I agreed with it a second ago.
This discussion must be held differently it is to bear any fruit. How? I have no idea – but there has to be a better way than squabbling over distinctions of two similar phrases. Ask a linguist who actually has a degree, or a psychologist.
I've never understood, what's wrong with
oc. It's short, to the point, and most people on the Internet know what it means.Problem is, most is not all. A clearer definition is preferable to a shorter one while it's still concise.
For your understanding's benefit, this is the variable-naming problem.
It takes ten seconds to educate yourself. This is not an onerous request.
It's when you start demanding that everyone speak your language that you build a walled garden, and those never proliferate.
The language analogy sounds kind of like a reductio ad absurdum, to me at least. I think, what @anahata meant is closer to the “going to Tula with your own samovar”. There will always be a period of friction when entering a new community. One is always required to get a grasp of some basic mechanics before engaging. I don't think learning a couple of initialisms is too much to ask.
It isn't too much to ask. I don't think one should be asked to begin with. Internet slang is not vital information.
Asking someone to educate themselves on something is not creating a walled garden. That's more than a touch of exaggeration.
...on a subject of no vitality to the course of action whatsoever. That's what's bothering me: encouraging Internet slang, most of the goal for which is group segregation. Language of my tribe is a thing Tildes would do good to avoid.
You're ascribing motive where there absolutely isn't any. It's not a shibboleth. It's basic vocabulary for discussing content on the internet. You're still allowed to participate if you don't know the words, things just won't be as clear for you.
What else are we doing by passively promoting usage of Internet slang? A choice made by neglect is still a choice made.
That's the point of slang: to discourage members of the out-group to join in on conversations of the in-group. It serves to alienate those whom one's own people already consider alien. Sure, you can hang around. Can you be a part of this tribe? Uhhh, no!
It's one of those things that define social structure in humans: the use of common language. It's why you feel camaraderie when you meet someone who is a native speaker of your first language. It's also why it's so easy to feel alienated when someone speaks a different language in your country. (Yes, you may be well above either of those. It's still a thing that guides people. It's worth considering when discussing an online community.)
Besides. What is the negative of a clearer phrasing?
You have not managed to communicate the issue you see with this term and I have failed to ascertain where your objection is, or even that you have one worth making. Like with hungariantoast, I feel that the objection is overblown and exaggerated without any basis in reality. I have to ask whether you seriously, sincerely think that someone on this site won't know what the term original content is. It's not like we're inventing some new term that no one else uses, and then forbidding those who don't know what it is from participating. That's gatekeeping, that's what a shibboleth is. It's something you can easily find on the web with a quick search and then you can participate more fully.
This feels like bikeshedding (to illustrate my point, the first dozen results on DDG go into this in some depth) at this point.
oc, notoriginal content. I don't doubt anyone's expertise in the English language to the point where they can't ascertain what the two words mean in conjunction. I doubt that everyone knows – or is supposed to know – what Internet-isolated abbreviations such asocstand for.There's a baseline of accessible language to maintain where you don't even have to ask Google shit that seems so matter-of-factly to me your failure to grasp it feels almost deliberate.
and also
If you figure the argument isn't worth the discussion, at the very least don't act like it ain't worth taking. "Your position is shit" isn't the sort of attitude that promotes discussion.
And if the next thing you say is "Oh, I didn't say that thing you put in quotes, you said that" – something we've had a bit of experience with during chatting – that would betray a fundamental lack of good faith required for discussions to be productive.
Great. Let's have all the tags in Cantonese.
Oh, it's a tag about people living in Orange County! Got it 😉
When I searched for "oc" via a search engine, I found this page. It would take more than 10 seconds to read through that list.
What do you mean most? I've never heard of it. Is it a Redditism?
Tagging it as "self" seems almost as short?
Update: or how about "self-post" or "mine"?
I first met that abbreviation on 2ch.ru, which got it from 4chan.org, so I assume it's either as old as 4chan.org, or even older. Possibly dating to the times of BBSs. Oh well, Eternal September, I guess.
I don't like
ocbecause it's an abbreviation. There was a television show called "The OC". It's ambiguous - it could mean any number of things."Original Content" or "OC" Purely, because this is already an accepted language for most of the past twenty years and universally recognized at this point.
It seems rather obscure to me. What evidence is there that it's popular?
This has been roughly standard on forums since the early 2000s (earlier?)
It's not universally recognised. My first page of Google hits contain at least three different, incompatible, definitions.
I think the tag "own content" is syntactically and grammatically awkward, but it's what I've been using for content that happens to be hosted on the submitter's site. "OC" and "User Created" work to say the same thing to a degree, but they don't convey ownership and make it clear that it's OP's OC specifically.
"Self promotion" is distinct enough I've been using it separately. The person who keeps shilling their VPN gets tagged self promotion. A musician saying check out my band we just released a new album would fit into this.
I think it comes down to intent. I'm tagging these things based on what I think the submitter's motivation for submitting is. Someone wants to write up a long, well thought out article on their own blog that has no ads, that's user created original content. Compare to VPN person whose motivation is mostly to drive signups, that's self-promotion.
Basically I use @Deimos' guideline from reddit. It's okay to be a redditor with a business, but not a business with a reddit account. I use the "self promotion" tag on the former.
I think you mean "the latter"? (i.e. the business with a reddit account)
Ehh, not really. It's a wishy-washy fine line we're talking about, but if someone's a redditor (insert tildes eponym) who has a business, that implies they're a tilder first, a business second. Their primary purpose for being on this site is to be on this site, interact with it, etc. A business with a tildes account whose only purpose is to market their business doesn't belong on this site, and they wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt and a
self promotiontag, they'd just be reported.The VPN self-promotion example I mentioned is borderline. I'd be inclined to report them outright, but instead tagged them as self-promotion. Here's their post. The linked article was a very basic and straightforward comparison benchmark. The article was clearly self promotion if you know the history of the user, but it stood on its own as a semi-interesting article. This is the ideal use-case for the
self-promotiontag if you ask me. It's there for full disclosure, to identify the motivations behind an article.I guess now that I've said that I'm going to have to try and defend @nkv and why they're a tilder, tildoe, tildoor, tildee, etc rather than a business. I honestly can't, and it's all subjective.
Ah. I didn't realise that you would use
self promotionfor the lesser grade of promoters, and you would report the higher grade of promoters. That makes sense now.As someone who's used
self promotionin the past, I don't care. As long as the tag is agreed-upon as meaning "This is something I've created and want to share with you folks", I'm in. Y'all just give me something.Also...
Link!
https://tildes.net/~tildes/wiki/unofficial_tildes_chats
Well then, I had no idea about this lol I have joined!
I had been utilising
original contentwhen tagging, but will go with whichever is the preferred dominant tag from here on out.I also really dislike "own content". As a native English speaker, it's in that linguistic uncanny valley that non-native speakers sometimes fall into.
That said, we already have a precedent for this, one that I've used here and that seems the obvious choice: original_content. This is what I use and it's what a lot of other people use, including on other sites.
My biggest issue with
original contentis that it's ambiguous and not very clear what the meaning is to someone not already familiar with the term, since almost all pieces of content are "original" in some way or another, and whether a user on this particular site actually created it or not has nothing to do with that. Whereas the primary alternative to that,user created, is a lot less ambiguous and much clearer in meaning IMO.A ten second search engine query and then you know what the term means. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect this kind of thing so that we can use consistent words everywhere.
I've had similar discussions with folks about genres in video games, and I have the same view there. It's worth making the new person search a bit, once.
I have to admit that I'm not seeing any ambiguity. And I seriously, sincerely think that people are assuming people are way dumber than they actually are, especially people who are here. Do you seriously think that people here won't understand what original content is? Really?
It's not "giving in to internet trends" to use a standard term for something. I feel that you're being contrary for its own sake without much justification for your objection.
I've seen the phrase a lot of times before and I didn't even realize I've been misunderstanding it. I just thought it meant something was both new and specifically related to the place it was being linked, not that it was made by the person posting it.
how dare you, my english is perfect
Here is Tildes' current policy.
I really appreciate creative work by other users, and would encourage them to label it in some standardised way (both
own contentandoriginal contentare fine with me, and theOCabbreviation covers both; actually, this is one of the very few features of new Reddit that I do not dislike). However, they may have valid reasons to omit the label.If the content has been created by the user in question, my previous point applies. However, I am not sure about content created by others but hosted on the user's site, as this would often not be in line with the current policy (it would be promotion of the user's site rather than of the user's creative work).
This depends on how exactly the content is presented. If the link leads to the user's site with a
Donatelink in the footer, I have no problem. If the user's site immediately produces a toxic pop-up with a call to donate, or if a call to donate is conspicuously included in the Tildes topic, I do have a problem. There are, of course, cases in between (e.g., a 10-minute video with the last 30 seconds being the author asking for support is still OK with me).P.S.
Given the privacy and other issues with Discord, I would suggest that any discussion of this type should be opened in ~tildes.
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I don't think anything definitive policy-wise should be decided on an unofficial chat that not everyone is a part of, which is why I posted this here.
I assume that “involved in the community” in the current policy refers to the Tildes community, and not to the community of the user's site.
So here I develop my idea: if a Tildes user who operates an own platform sees something Tildes-worthy posted by another user of that user's platform, then I would recommend sending that poster an invite to Tildes rather than posting a Tildes topic more or less equivalent to “Hey, look at that interesting stuff someone posted on my site,” which is basically “treat[ing] Tildes as a source of an audience.”
—this is what I mean by “this would often not be in the line with the current policy.”
On my big screen, I needed to scroll nearly two screen heights to get to the donation part, and that part was not specially formatted in any way (as opposed to some bold or even bold italic
h2link at the beginning of the post—in other words, it was really not conspicuous). Moreover, according to the topic log, theself promotiontag was added by the topic starter at the time of posting.In other words: if a user is asking for donations, then at the very minimum it should be explicitly stated in the tags—IMHO.
Good point. It's called "self-promotion" in the site rules.
Hacker News uses "Show HN", abbreviated to "show" in the UI. Maybe a "show Tildes" or "show and tell" tag would work?
Have to agree with the others,
own contentreally does not flow well.self-promotionorocis fine, depending on what the content is (eg. art submission vs promoting own website). I do think disclosure in some form is important though.With the exception of
originalf content, which has a positive connotation,selftags generally have the effect of devaluing what is being shared. It's the rhetorical equivalent of saying "I am probably putting forth this content because I want to divulge it, not because I believe it is worthy of your attention". Like confessing a crime, but one should only confess things that make them guilty.Such tags will make the thread draw less attention than others. I don't think that is fair. Content posted by an author should be evaluated just like the others: by title and content itself.
So I believe this proposal would harm Tildes' content curation process, and I disagree with it.
Did this discussion reach any conclusion? Have we decided which tag(s) to apply when a Tilder posts their own website/page/channel here?
Well, though kind of hard to judge based on the small amount of votes and comments so far, the general consensus does seem to be against using
self promotionunless the submission is a case where the user is clearly attempting to profit off the content (which is what I was using it for already).... so I intend to just stick with that. And otherwise it seems to be somewhat split betweenoriginal contentanduser created, though leaning slightly towardsuser createdperhaps. The terms being synonymous would probably be the ideal, but seeing as we don't have that ability yet, one or the other probably needs to be picked as the standard. I would be curious what @Deimos thinks of them before any decision is reached one way or the other though.I was somewhat staying out of it, but my personal vote would be no tag at all.
I feel like this subject of how to distinguish people submitting their own content gets brought up all the time in different communities, but I think it's not nearly as important as a lot of people act like it is. Excessive self-promotion absolutely can cause issues, but mostly, people submitting their own stuff is totally fine and should be encouraged, not discouraged. I think trying to make sure it's all tagged just makes people scrutinize everything even more, and increases some of the negative aspects more than the positive ones. The cases that are actual problems are usually pretty egregious and can be noticed without needing a tag or anything for it.
Outside of the semantic arguments about how exactly to label (which is a lot of this thread), I think there are a ton of edge cases that often end up in arguments. When is someone associated "enough" with something that it deserves the tag? When are they posting things with that tag "too much"? People getting mad because the tag feels like a negative mark on their post when they were just legitimately trying to share something, etc.
In general, I just think this type of tag has very few positive uses or benefits, but causes a lot of strife and confusion.
Fair enough, that works for me, and definitely makes everyone's lives here easier. Thanks for answering and sorry for dragging you into this. ;)
Although, while not super important, I do still feel there is some value in having a tag to let people know the content was user created, to make that easier to seek out for people. Not out of some malicious purpose, but just because, at least in my case, I often find myself curious what others in a community have created themselves so it's nice to have a way for that to be easily recognizable and viewed.
Well, my vote doesn't necessarily need to be the deciding one (and that's part of why I was staying out of it). There are various other users—@mycketforvirrad probably most prominently—who are putting a lot more effort into tagging topics consistently than me.
I agree there are positive pieces to it too, I just think it's hard to get those without the negative ones that tend to be tied up in it as well. I'm not sure exactly how to articulate it, but I feel like instead of it being "here's something I made that I want to share" it often ends up closer to "you are required to disclose any personal ties or benefits from your posts".
Gotcha. 👍 Though IMO your opinion on even these "community" issues still should, and does, matter... so it's nice to know it. :P
That's kind of why I was trying to push for
User Createdsince it's as non-judgemental a term as I/we could come up with, and doesn't have the baggage thatSelf PromotionandOriginal Contentdo.How do we determine whether someone is attempting to profit from their post? If they run a YouTube channel, which gets partly funded by ads, each click adds revenue. Does posting one's own YouTube video here count as profiting from one's post? What about blog pages that serve ads? Does that count as profiting?
I honestly don't care about
original contentversususer created. They're practically the same thing.I do care about the difference between
original content/user createdandself promotion. How do I know when to apply, and when not to apply, these tags?In short: what is considered self-promotion?
As with most things when it comes to moderation/curation, IMO this ultimately comes down to just trying your best to use common sense and sound judgement.
If it is a branded channel and/or monetized/sponsored video, I would say so, yes. If it's just someone sharing something they made and YouTube just happens to be the video host they chose, probably not.
Also yes, IMO. And @hungariantoast provided quite a few real world examples on Tildes and his particular judgement calls on them, which I largely agree with, but if you have any other specific ones you would like to go over, I can try to give you my thoughts/advice on those as well to help clear things up.
This comes down to intent, though. There's no practical difference between someone promoting their ad-supported YouTube channel, and someone just happening to post a video on YouTube with ads supporting it.
This discussion seems to be coming down to the consensus that
spamself-promotion is not considered a problem on Tildes. People are allowed, even encouraged, to share their own content here. That's different to Reddit.For my own sanity, I'll just stop caring about these user/own/self tags. I'll leave it to the rest of you. That reduces problems all round. :)
For me, the purpose of applying a self promotion tag is a matter of honest disclosure to the community, not being passive aggressive about anything. If it's good content I can still appreciate it regardless, but even so, I like to know the difference since that often dictates how I treat something. E.g. A user posting their drawings purely for the purposes of sharing or getting feedback, I will likely be far more generous to and less critical of than one who is clearly trying to profit from it in some obvious/obnoxious way.
It also helps make the distinction between spam and genuine content easier to spot. E.g. A user who only ever posts imgur albums with their art is much less likely to be considered spamming than one who only ever posts items from their Etsy storefront.
p.s. And just to be clear, I don't have any issues with people trying to make a living from their work or promoting it on the site (so long as it's not the only thing they do here), but IMO they (and we as a site) should be honest and upfront about when that is the case.
Sure, but ideally not the person posting it, since when something does profit the person posting it, IMO it can sometimes call into question their motivations and purpose on the site. E.g. if the NYT or some other newspaper was all a user ever posted and they never engaged in the comments, or elsewhere in the community, that would be a red flag which moderators (and admins) use to weed out bad actors. And before you say that sounds unrealistic:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/06/13/reddit-bans-the-atlantic-businessweek-in-anti-spam-crusade/
The amount you make is irrelevant IMO, it should still be disclosed that you are attempting to do so. And that low traffic issue will hopefully not always be the case. If Tildes gets even 1/100th the size of reddit you can bet your ass there will be people on here trying to take full advantage of the views they can get, by any means necessary. And that can often have horrible consequences for the quality of submissions and comments on a social media site if such people are left completely unchecked, which properly labeling content should help with.
Thanks for the update.
Is it okay to tag this post with
self promotion? The user has been on Tildes for nearly 3 months, made only 4 posts - and 2 of those posts are to their own website.Being an active user is irrelevant when determining when someone is promoting their own wares. We would expect someone who's promoting their wares to be active. A lack of activity means a lack of promotion.
Most of those shares are by the author, which reinforces the opinion that they're promoting their own blog
The post here on Tildes promotes the blog itself. It drives traffic to, and increases readership for, the blog.
I'm not seeing anything here to contradict the idea of someone promoting their own wares. I'm not saying it's malicious. But it is self promotion, as far as I can see.
What are the criteria for "self promotion" if it's not about promoting one's own blog/website/channel/whatever?
Here's one question I've never had answered sufficiently. If you want to share your opinion and your thoughts, why not just write them in a text-post here on Tildes? Why put them on another website, so people have to go to your website to read your thoughts?
Anyway, this isn't about you personally (which is why I didn't tag you). I'm trying to ascertain some general principles to understand what is and is not considered self-promotion here on Tildes. In my eyes, you're promoting your own blog. However, other people seem to disagree. So, I'm trying to understand what is considered self-promotion here, so I know when (and when not) to apply the
self promotiontag.The Tildes markdown system is a step above reddit's already in terms of what you can do with it, but this site is not a blog platform or even remotely close being able to compete with a one (or a custom site) in terms of features, which limits the freedom with which one can creatively express oneself here, and limits how effectively/conveniently one can convey their message to others. E.g. These (IMO) amazing recent posts wouldn't have been possible to do entirely on Tildes without hosting a ton of assets on third party sites and being a PITA to read as a result.
https://ciechanow.ski/gears/
https://dev.to/richharris/a-new-technique-for-making-responsive-javascript-free-charts-gmp
And that's not even getting into the stickier issues that typically come from posting/hosting your content on third-party sites, e.g. there is no guarantee Tildes will be here tomorrow, six months, or six years from now, but my own blog hosted on my own site/server will be, so long as I continue to pay for it, maintain it, and have good backup policies to ensure I don't lose any data should something happen.
Dammit. Written text is so hard to communicate subtle points in!
I don't want to understand the technical differences between hosting content on one's own site and hosting content on Tildes.
If someone wants to talk about widgets on Tildes, why do they do it by writing a blog post about widgets and posting that blog to Tildes, rather than just making a post about widgets on Tildes directly?
I answered that... and even gave examples to back it up.
And the reason I mentioned the technical differences is because those are directly responsible for the limitations I mentioned above. And as to why people would rather post on a platform with less limitations and more control, I should think that would be rather self-evident.
Actually, I'm hoping someone can explain when posting one's own blog/site/video/whatever is not considered self-promotion. I get the vibe here that people are against the tag
self promotionfor most posts involving a user's own blog/site/video/whatever. Fine. I'm happy to abide by the group's agreed standards.However, there also seems to be a vibe that there are some cases which should be tagged
self promotion. I would therefore like to understand the difference between "user created" and "self promotion". Where's the dividing line? How do I know when to apply the taguser createdand when to apply the tagself promotion? Because I don't see the difference: to me, they're all self-promotion. I need someone to explain it to me.I'm in camp "You Choose."
I like
own contentbecause it's a bit linguistically jarring (as a native English speaker) and stands out compared touser created. I also agree with the sentiments regardingself promotionbeing related to for-profit, whereas the former two are not-for-profit. However, I don't see an issue with someone usingself-promotionfor not-for-profit things either. That's a choice on the poster.An exclusive news article or an opinion piece or a YouTube video are all
original content, just as much as a Tilder's personal blog. They're all original in some way or another, whether the Tilder found it or made it themself.A text post is a Tilder's
own contentand this post is alsouser created. These descriptors don't sufficiently differentiate off-site content from on-site content.I'm using
self promotionin the absence of something more appropriate: the Tilder is promoting their own blog/channel/website/whatever. Especially for text-based content, there's no reason they couldn't write a text post on Tildes, instead of linking to an off-site blog. The only reason for linking the blog/whatever is to promote it to more readers.I agree a label is useful in this circumstance, and it should be standardised. I've just never known what that standard is for Tildes.