RULES and CONSISTENCY

I want to know what the rules are regarding 'advertising' or 'touting' of reviews on this site.

FOIB's rules wrote:

3.Any advertising of your own reviews is a no go.

Rachel allows people to plug their own reviews under the excuse of getting feedback (in fact, encourages it), but any mention of doing something similar under the Ciao or Dooyoo forums is deemed against the rules.

Seeing as Dooyoo have already stated that touting for reads is OK unless there are extenuating circumstances and Ciao don't care what happens off-site and Helium frown upon people doing it on their own message
board, is there still a place for a "no advertising" rule?

On Opinionators, there is a similar rule, but it's more to do with encouraging people to join in rather than anything to do with either of the sites or members simply turning up to spam their reviews.

I would like to see this rule applied consistently in an all-or-nothing fashion across all the review site forums.

What do other members think?

In an effort to explain recent changes in site policy, Helium is unlike Ciao and Dooyoo both of which sites offer feedback areas in the way of ratings and comments. On Helium no one knows who has rated and there is presently no system of feedback. The reason for opening this up was that, after agreement with Helium themselves, we decided to have a forum devoted to feedback where members could post links, and where other members could read and comment, and try and help them to develope their writing skills. This is a temporary measure until Helium implement some system themselves. Can members abuse it ? Anything can be abused, though when they leave links, there is no obligation to read the articles unless you want to leave some kind of feedback.

I see Duke's point - rules is rules and all that.
Personally not being a member of helium and never following any links in the forum, it doesn't affect me but I think it could risk a 'thin end of the wedge' problem if we allow it in one platform's threads and not in the others.

I don't like plugging reviews on sites that are not directly linked.

I come to these sites (here and optors) cause I have got to know people and like to banter with them. This can be about the sites or not, but I don't like touting being built into that.

So I vote no.

As Helium members directly gain by reads to their reviews by members or non-members, linking on this site is providing them with income which goes way beyond plugging a review here for Ciao or Dooyoo and getting some non-member reads. However, even something as innocuous as pointing people towards your Ciao and Dooyoo reviews is (rightly) frowned upon.

If such feedback is required, why couldn't some mechanism be provided on the Helium site itself (Writers Workshop, anyone?) where plenty more feedback could be gained by members? I'm sure there are plenty of methods around for achieving this without having people link to their own work, thus avoiding Helium's own "no advertising" policy.

Despite Dooyoo not having a problem with 'touting' and Ciao not caring about what happens off-site, I think it is right that the blanket rule of 'any advertising' is upheld and I think such a rule still has a place here. It's an integrity thing as well as a consistency thing.

This forum is for ever evolving, and I have considered the points that you raise. In order to please everyone and be consistent with the rules of the forum, I have decided that if members do genuinely want feedback on their Helium items, instead of posting links, they open a thread and paste the article concerned. That way, they have the feedback, and there are no financial implications. I hope that this will be satisfactory to all concerned.

I assume that in line with this latest ruling that all existing links will be deleted.

And don't try and please everyone. You can't.

I have locked the thread with the links for the time being, since there are answers there that people may want. However, it will be removed in due course. Of course I cannot please everyone. I am aware of this. I can, however, try.

GURUGURU mawaru GURUGURU mawaru...

Well, as a Helium member, that sort of stinks. But as long as I can get feedback one way or another, I guess that will have to do.

Rules are rules.

I knew that this would blow up one day. I guess the links to helium reviews can be seen as touting for reads as it results directly in a hit on their site, but as Rach said there is no commentary system for feedback there. The idea of just posting the whole article is a sensible middle ground as the member can get feed back without it generating a hit on the Helium site.

I think the bigger point to this, as I see it is perspective, or more to the point...who cares. All this "rules are rules" is just petty mindedness and smacks of inverted oneupmanship. So what if someone is using a Helium thread to get a 1cent read, so what if they manage to generate 10 cents through this process. If people don't like the idea of illicit member reads, then don't go into that thread and don't open that like, how hard is that.

Its not like we are talking about peoples lives nor even their livlihoods, its not brain surgery it has almost non-income factor, yet people are falling out over a few pennies here and there. think my automatic response is get a life and go and worry about something worthy of your time, not that Helium writer X has made enough to buy a stock cube from posting a thread here yet Ciao writer Y wasnt allowed to mention their website in a review.

The real world isnt perfect so why do we expect a private and non-profit website dedicated to a handful of non-profit writers to be. I know others may feel that i'm taking my usual liberal approach and others feel strongly about such major issues but in the words of Aristotle "get over yourself"

Well, obviously I care within the microcosm of this website. If Rachel is going to post the rules that she expects people to follow, then it should stands that she follows them herself.

Having had a PM from Rachel asking me to report such rules breaches after she deleted a Dooyoo thread on the basis of that very rule, it would have been remiss of me not to bring the subject to the membership.

The rules apply to the entire site. Irrespective of whether I click the links or not, they're still there. This isn't a matter of "falling out" with any of those people, just a matter of consistency on the part of the site owner and some confusion as to why Helium don't offer a feedback service of their own.

Not being a party to the finer points, this thread was posted in the generalist of senses, so I hope you don't think it was specifically aimed at you 'clava-man (new superhero name?) I guess consistancy is never a bad thing and if Helium had their own feedback proceedure then this wouldnt be so much of an issue.

The changes in the posting of helium feedback threads should address that anyway so hopefully the matter is now resolved. I agree that there is nothing wrong with caring about the workings of the forum but i worry that sometimes we can all get bogged down in the finer detail and forget why it is we are here in the first place, again a very general statement.

I plan to write a review about rules which can be found at

Just because Helium doesn't allow feedback, doesn't mean that the RWF has to become an alternative feedback mechanism. If it's needed, then having something like this as a fallback just gives excuses for them not to fix the problem.

I can see the 'get a life' point of view as well BUT if we start saying it's OK to bend the rules for the Helium section of the site, then it's likely to spread to other areas sooner or later. I actually appreciate the way that the RWF doesn't get into the details of particular reviews.

I noticed another board has been set up for Helium members to use for feedback.

Despite having its own forum, it seems to me that Helium's not offering the members what it wants.

And what K says above is 100% true.

I think changes are coming We shall just have to wait and see but if people make groups is this any different from Blog advertising. Personally I think the site lacks feedback that it desperately needs.

There are changes to the forum and changes to the main site though.

Forum changes could (and probably should) be made within a day or so, but aren't for some strange reason.

Helium could have had their own feedback forum on the site within hours, thus keeping members on the site and interest levels high. Forcing members to go somewhere else for information is bad enough, but getting them to sign up for other websites for features they should be offering themselves is a no no as far as I am concerned. That applies to Ciao and Dooyoo, too.

yep, I agree...

(and I still cannot get past the same category for rates, even though I churned another couple over!!!)

CFM makes a good point - this forum exists to plug the gaps that each of the sites ought to have worked out for themselves ages ago. If Ciao and dooyoo actually USED their community pages to communicate with users, the RWF would be unnecessary. We join to know more about what's going on at the sites - i.e. why we can't get in, why all our dosh disappeared and stuff like that. The rest - the chit chat and banter - we could get in many other places.

koshkha wrote:

The rest - the chit chat and banter - we could get in many other places.

But you wouldn't get me, though.

Every cloud has a silver lining, Bernard.

koshkha wrote:

CFM makes a good point - this forum exists to plug the gaps that each of the sites ought to have worked out for themselves ages ago. If Ciao and dooyoo actually USED their community pages to communicate with users, the RWF would be unnecessary. We join to know more about what's going on at the sites - i.e. why we can't get in, why all our dosh disappeared and stuff like that. The rest - the chit chat and banter - we could get in many other places.

Well, going slightly OT, Jared should hopefully be sorting out the Dooyoo Community Page fairly soon. If not, I've already offered him a dedicated thread on Optors for a central, updatable community news area.

Ha !! Great minds think alike. I did too.