Nandland FPGA - Was SPAM but now in AAC Design News

Thread Starter

JohnInTX

Joined Jun 26, 2012
4,787
A few days ago I jumped on and we eventually agreed that this Russell Merrick post about his FPGA trainer was commercial advertising and deleted it as SPAM. Now its here on the orange pages in Design News by the Editorial Team. Is he a paid advertiser?

Would I be correct in assuming that even if he's in the editorial pages he still can't advertise in the forum?
Would a forum link to the Design News section still be considered SPAM?

It would be nice to get some clarification so that normal mod activity doesn't hack off a sponsor.

What do you think?
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
You were correct, we do not allow commercial adverts in the forums.

The mods have no input elsewhere on the site, it is basically gone commercial, the Terms of Service are still in effect.

This my change in the future, but this is how I will be operating until informed otherwise by Jrap or Bertus (the other admins have no authority in my eyes at this time).
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
That's my take as well -- but I wouldn't be surprised if that point is being missed by new contributors to the commercial side, so they probably think the forum pages are a natural place to do some marketing (and they probably don't think of it as marketing to begin with).

I agree that our direction needs to from jrap and bertus (until told otherwise). To be fair, the other admin staff seem to be doing a good job of staying out of our bailiwick.
 

jrap

Joined Jun 25, 2006
1,125
Nandland is not a paid advertiser, and you were 100% correct to delete his post. Jen wrote that design news article a few weeks ago (AAC has no affiliation with any of the 3 boards mentioned in that piece) - I can only assume he saw the article, signed-up and wrote that post.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
Nandland is not a paid advertiser, and you were 100% correct to delete his post. Jen wrote that design news article a few weeks ago (AAC has no affiliation with any of the 3 boards mentioned in that piece) - I can only assume he saw the article, signed-up and wrote that post.
So, just to seek out some additional clarification, would the correct response have been any different if they HAD been paid advertiser? I'm guessing the answer is, "No," if for no other reason than we have no idea who is and isn't such an advertiser.
 

jrap

Joined Jun 25, 2006
1,125
@WBahn - Correct. None of our advertisers will be creating promotional threads like the one Nandland created. I don't even think any of them have accounts here to be honest.

On a somewhat related subject, we did have a phone call with the SystemVision guys this week because of their recent forum postings. I actually think their tool is quite useful from an educational standpoint. I'm working to support the embedding of their tool on the forum (they are not an advertiser, nor are they paying for this), as well as embedding support for (Upverter and Circuits.io (I am omitting CircuitLab because they do not offer a free plan). This would work similar to the youtube embed (when you post a link to youtube it automatically <iframe>'s the video).

The mods have no input elsewhere on the site, it is basically gone commercial,
Everyone here's opinion of the site and it's direction are very important to me. When you say 'gone commercial' do you mean because we sell advertising? Do you feel we are doing something wrong? The content on our /projects /news and /technical-articles sections are not influenced by advertisers. We have about 50 freelance writers that we have found via the forum, reddit, adafruit & our write for us page. They can generally write about whatever they want, and link to whomever. I'm really proud of what we've accomplished with our new content (after our rocky beginning).
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
I don't think you or anyone else has done anything wrong. By "gone commercial" I mean the site is now expected to pay for itself, which is definitely OK with me. The only hazard I can see is if we start guiding the forums towards a commercial agenda, and I am not implying this is currently the case. If you and your partners make money off this site all the better. Somehow I don't see that happening, but I do not have a head for business.
 
Top