Additional guidance on self-promotional materials, with examples #1926

ravindk89 · 2023-03-27T15:40:56Z

Summary

We get a lot of Slack users who want to promote their own writings.

We do want to encourage users to share, but also don't want channels like #general and #watercooler to become targets for link farming.

This PR adds some guidance to hopefully make it clearer to users for when it's reasonable to post your own content into a channel. Specifically, we want to ensure that there is context to the ongoing conversation for any given bit of self-promo.

With this, posting an article you wrote on the comfort of your new keyboard mount in response to people asking about keyboards is a 🟢 . Dropping that link blindly into #general and walking away is 🔴

📚 Documentation preview 📚: https://writethedocs-www--1926.org.readthedocs.build/

ddbeck

The core thing—being explicit that clicks are a thing of value for the purposes of self-promotion—is good. Some ideas about examples and cautions, in line comments. Thank you!

ddbeck · 2023-03-27T16:23:21Z

docs/slack.rst

+For example, a link to your own Hashnode or Medium article without being related to an ongoing conversation is Self-Promotional.
+Similarly, a post to a virtual meetup or "Office Hours" setting where the purpose is evangelizing your own product(s) is Self-Promotional (even if it's your companies work and not your own!).
+But if there is an ongoing conversation on a topic you've written or created content for, you can offer to post that content and do so if the community expresses interest.
+


A couple of thoughts here:

Do we think people are confused by what counts as self-promotion? That is, we do need to explicitly call out these things as self-promotion? (I haven't had push back from folks—i.e. disagreement that something is self-promotion—but that's just my experience.)

Also, I really like the idea of using examples to help people understand what to do. What do you think of building this out into a little playbook? Something along these lines?

Here are some examples of common self-promotion situations and how to self-promote responsibly:

You've written a blog post that you want to share with the community, but it's not closely related to an ongoing discussion: share it in #community-showcase and tell us why you think it would be interesting to documentarians.

Your employer is hosting an event to promote their product or service (even if it's not the primary purpose of the event): share it in #community-events and tell others your connection to the event.

Someone else has asked a question and you're the author of an article that answers the question: reply by briefly summarizing your article, noting your authorship, and linking to the article.

And maybe…

You're offering cash for gold, selling diet supplements, representing the estate of a recently deceased and heretofore unknown family member, or doing some other activity unrelated to documentation: do not post.

No pushback yet, but I generally think the examples as guidance is nice - it leaves things less nebulous as to why one thing might be OK and another gets :spam:

And i like all of your suggestions :) Will implement shortly.

I love these suggestions! I've had one guy get mad at me and swear up and down that people would recognize who he was and know that he was a valued community member who would never advertise to them...and I'd never heard of him before 😂 Other than that, people tend to be pretty reasonable, and these guidelines spell it out really nicely!

docs/slack.rst

ravindk89 · 2023-04-10T14:37:59Z

@ddbeck @janine-c more edits incoming and an attempt at formatting.

plaindocs

Love this.

docs/slack.rst

plaindocs · 2023-04-29T22:56:23Z

@ravindk89 shall we merge this? Or are we waiting for anything else?

ddbeck

Is too late for me to review this version? I realize I let this sit way too long, so consider this all completely optional.

(I can do my own follow up PR, if you prefer.)

docs/slack.rst

ddbeck · 2023-05-01T11:16:07Z

docs/slack.rst

@@ -259,22 +259,48 @@ In addition to the guidance that applies to all participants, we expect self-pro
  Clearly explain what you are promoting, why it matters to documentarians, and your involvement.
  Be up front about paywalls, registration requirements, referral benefits, or commissions.
  If you're running a survey, say when and how the results will be published.
+


These spaces don't appear elsewhere. Do you want to add them to all the bulleted lists, or none of them? (My kingdom for a Prettier-like formatter for reStructuredText.)

Lets do none for consistency.

docs/slack.rst

ddbeck · 2023-05-01T11:40:02Z

docs/slack.rst

+Here are some examples of common self-promotion situations, and some guidelines on how to self-promote responsibly:
+
+You've written a blog post (Medium, Hashnode, etc.) that you want to share with the community, but it's not closely related to an ongoing discussion
+  **DO** share it in #community-showcase and tell us why you think it would be interesting or relevant to documentarians


Channel names are **#channel-name** on the rest of the page, so I'd assume we should use the same convention here (this would need correcting throughout this section)

Suggested change

**DO** share it in #community-showcase and tell us why you think it would be interesting or relevant to documentarians

**DO** share it in **#community-showcase** and tell us why you think it would be interesting or relevant to documentarians

Done manually

docs/slack.rst

ravindk89 · 2023-05-01T13:36:06Z

Is too late for me to review this version? I realize I let this sit way too long, so consider this all completely optional.

(I can do my own follow up PR, if you prefer.)

These are good suggestions. I'll implement them today/tomorrow, I have the cycles for it

ravindk89

@ddbeck I have integrated your feedback.

ravindk89 · 2023-07-21T15:13:39Z

docs/slack.rst

@@ -259,22 +259,48 @@ In addition to the guidance that applies to all participants, we expect self-pro
  Clearly explain what you are promoting, why it matters to documentarians, and your involvement.
  Be up front about paywalls, registration requirements, referral benefits, or commissions.
  If you're running a survey, say when and how the results will be published.
+


Lets do none for consistency.

docs/slack.rst

ravindk89 · 2023-07-21T16:09:40Z

docs/slack.rst

+Here are some examples of common self-promotion situations, and some guidelines on how to self-promote responsibly:
+
+You've written a blog post (Medium, Hashnode, etc.) that you want to share with the community, but it's not closely related to an ongoing discussion
+  **DO** share it in #community-showcase and tell us why you think it would be interesting or relevant to documentarians


Done manually

docs/slack.rst

ddbeck

I'm down to just little style and consistency nitpicking. Thank you!

docs/slack.rst

ravindk89 · 2023-07-25T19:44:26Z

All picks have been neatly placed @ddbeck

docs/slack.rst

plaindocs · 2023-07-28T12:06:51Z

Heroic effort from all concerned here. !

ravindk89 · 2023-07-28T13:45:49Z

@plaindocs I can rebase and squash so we don't have the merge commit in there if you'd like

ddbeck suggestion Co-authored-by: Daniel D. Beck <daniel@ddbeck.com> janine-c edits Co-authored-by: Janine Chan <64388808+janine-c@users.noreply.github.com> Apply suggestions from code review Co-authored-by: Daniel D. Beck <daniel@ddbeck.com> ddbeck with the layup Co-authored-by: Daniel D. Beck <daniel@ddbeck.com>

plaindocs · 2023-07-28T15:16:59Z

Up to you @ravindk89 , we're not super picky about those things in this repo. But no reason not to.

ravindk89 · 2023-07-28T15:43:46Z

I'll push up a clean commit in about an hour :)

…

On Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 11:17 AM Sam ***@***.***> wrote: Up to you @ravindk89 <https://github.com/ravindk89> , we're not super picky about those things in this repo. But no reason not to. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1926 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADLI2KX6B7T2LDPYO3KYIZTXSPJXNANCNFSM6AAAAAAWJKCOUI> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

ravindk89 · 2023-07-28T17:05:09Z

@plaindocs I do love a clean commit tree.

plaindocs · 2023-07-29T08:55:22Z

@ravindk89 please merge at will!

ravindk89 added the enhancement label Mar 27, 2023

ravindk89 requested review from ddbeck and janine-c March 27, 2023 15:40

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ravindk89 force-pushed the slack-self-posting branch from 36a5046 to b18493f Compare July 28, 2023 17:04

ravindk89 merged commit 00a5854 into main Jul 29, 2023
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ravindk89 deleted the slack-self-posting branch July 29, 2023 13:23

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Additional guidance on self-promotional materials, with examples #1926

Additional guidance on self-promotional materials, with examples #1926

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	DO share it in #community-showcase and tell us why you think it would be interesting or relevant to documentarians
	DO share it in #community-showcase and tell us why you think it would be interesting or relevant to documentarians

Additional guidance on self-promotional materials, with examples #1926

Additional guidance on self-promotional materials, with examples #1926

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ravindk89 commented Mar 27, 2023 • edited by github-actions bot Loading

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