Friday 27 March 2009

Banned from boards for advertising?

I am meeting a surprising problem with getting this survey through to gamer communities. I just had my account at gamespot banned due to advertising. I created a post asking people to participate in this survey, and added a link. When I looked back into the forum, my account was banned for advertising.

I have to admit that I thought the rules about advertising had to do with people actually making money from a product. This is not-for-profit research, I am doing the job the Norwegian state is paying me for, but I am not selling the results anywhere. If I publish them, the publishers don't pay a dime. Academic writing only pays when you write fat textbooks that everybody need to have on their reading lists, or you edit very well selling anthologies. For the rest, nothing but glory.

For future reference, if others think I am selling a product or selling this research:

This is non-profit research. The participants are self-selected, and anonymous. While I understand that rules need to apply in order to keep boards spam-free, please consider that I am not selling or soliciting, I am not trying to trap the unwary, and I am quite upfront about what the information is to be used for.

3 comments:

  1. Looks like you have to take the slow way around this. asking the space for permission.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, absolutely. SLOW is the operational word on that though. Also, they don't let on who should be asked, and when they do, the responses are lacking. I am finding boards that permit my posts though, and getting some very nice and useful responses. I'd still love a more varied group of respondents.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Boards moderators are essentially children trapped in the body of an adult. They allow commercial advertising if the advertiser is a friend of a moderator. Otherwise they say "refer to the rules" ( which they and their friendly posters are allowed to ignore )

    ReplyDelete

All comments are moderated, so it may take some time before they show up on the weblog.