This is my first post here. I’m happy I found this place, I’m all in favor fighting ignorance. You’ve been doing it since 1973 and hope I helped a bit by borning that year. As I read somewhere, ignorance makes 10 times more damage than evilness.
Now, for those of you who like caricatures:
I’ve been working on a collection of great historical figures.
I’m looking for some quality feedback about the drawings and some advice about some options of a possible business. So, I prepared a brief presentation of the ideia, with some few direct questions about it.
[deleted link]
I’ld be most appreciated if you leave me your advice.
We prefer that people not join this message board as a way of driving traffic to their own websites and blogs. If you’d like to hang around for a while, participate in our conversations, and become an active member, you’d be very welcome to do so – but joining just to post that link, sorry, can’t allow it.
But I will share a refection with you:
If I discussed here about the new Nokia or the taste of Coca-Cola I guess that would be acceptable. They don’t need links, they are accessible, still there it may have commercial benificts.
If I talk about something unknown, it will remain unknown, because the contact information is forbidden.
I guess this advantage of the big businesses is natural, but somehow unfair.
Other thing:
If I made part of this community you would accept my link, but then the opinion I seek would not be impartial, because I would be a know person here. Of course this is my point of view and is not your problem, but it makes sense anyway. My friends and family are not voting in this, for instance.
One last thought:
I don’t see why members of this forum need to be protected from my “dangerous” link. It doesn’t draw traffic by it’s own unless people click it. And they might prefer to choose themselves.
If I were noisy and pressing, or decontextualized I would accept it better, but that was not the case.
Invoking the rules so promptly it is a bad practice for such a minor case, I must say. The love for being strict about the rules has nothing to do with fighting ignorance.
The Straight Dope has spent years accumulating a wide following of members. You have not. By joining the community as an equal, you gain the good will of every one else and we become curious about you and what you have to offer. If you simply drop a link and go away forever, then you’re simply stealing all the hard work that the Straight Dope has spent in collecting its members. Why do you deserve our attention any more than any of the other thousands or of people and businesses who would love to advertise their products to the people here, without having to pay anything for it?
Paying the price of open dialogue and camaraderie is quite light, I’d say.
Sage Rat, I quite respect your view and in someway I share it.
But shouldn’t that choice to give attention result from the free will of the members and not from just one? I say again, I wasn’t noisy or insistent.
So if I dropped a link and went away forever, you say I would be stealing. That’s a hard one. So people attention has an owner, is that it? That’s really sad.
I guess after this, I will definetly go away forever, you can rest happy because you deleted a link. It is really not that much important, I’m not of course discussing this matter to try nothing about the link, I just think there was some lack of tolerance and not much respect for people’s freedom of choice.
Your link isn’t dangerous; it was just a form of communication that we don’t particularly want here (someone comes in who has contributed nothing to this site but wants something out of us).
Cat Whisperer, I understand that. I accept that view, of course.
I just don’t think as the best idea to delete things over that. Someone may not think exacly like you.
That’s not the point. This board has rules. If you don’t like them, there are lots of other boards out there, or you can start your own.
We are not here to be your personal sounding board. You haven’t contributed anything here, yet you’re asking people to do something for you. When you learned that you won’t be getting your way, you start complaining about the way things are done here. That is more than a little off-putting.
If someone works for years in one idea of its own, using its best talent and shows his own work, where he putted all the effort; if someone does this trying to build something valuable and not for the sake of the money, needed just to be able to continue and not as the main goal; if these things are shown without pressing or mistreating no one; when someone does this, as I do, I am GIVING and not TAKING. That’s how I see it.
I understand a link is a link, and for you they are all the same.
But as I explained above, they are not the same. And it is my responsability to struggle, for the sake of all my dedication and hard work, to show those differences. Of course who applies rules blindly will never understand this.
When someone gives himself the right to choose what others may and may not see, it may seem it is GIVING protection, but sometimes is just TAKING their freedom.
There are the rules and there is the judgment of who applies them, and that’s what I’m discussing.
I guess you rather live in a society without judges, a computer could give the sentences.
Wrong. You have no right to post anything here. No one outside of the Admins/mods can claim any such right. Anything posted here is allowed to remain only so long as the people that actually run this place see fit to allow it to remain. No “freedom” is being taken from you.
Think of a message board like a wall. The person that owns the wall may allow people to write certain things on his wall, but not other things. That’s his right, as the owner of the wall/provider of the forum.
There are plenty of places you can show off your artwork. This ain’t one of them.
Frederico, there are several "rules’ threads at the top of every forum. It’s a lot to read through and, unfortunately, you also have to deal with eager-beaver junior mods running around lecturing you.
I accept your view, but I don’t see things like that.
If the owner of the wall has special privileges and that amount of power over people’s writings, he should use it carefully so people feel free.
Jesus Christ, I didn’t realize there was an initiation process to seek opinions in this apparently tight-knit community of exclusive friends. I thought we were just a bunch strangers posting words on the internet.
Edit
Hell, I wanted to see them, which is why I clicked on this thread. I guess I don’t get to until his post count reaches 1,000.
I see your point, but you weren’t posting the link to share your work with us out of the goodness of your heart; you were asking for our opinions and feedback, and to be honest, your appeal does sound like you were aiming at some marketing.
You’re talking about censorship, but censorship doesn’t really apply in a private forum. The owners are free to allow anything and disallow anything they want.
Many people here have posted links to their websites. But in each case that I know of, these are established members who have been around a while. What this means is that they have made an effort to become part of the community and have contributed to it. One person I can think of is a painter, and she has posted links to her works. Another person posts links to his blog, which describes his medical condition, and to a cause he supports. The latter person received permission from the administration before posting his links. The former person’s website is non-commercial.
I found your site on another board, and it seems to be mainly for selling your artwork. That’s what’s against the Rules. I do like the few samples I see there, and I do see that you have a poll for people to comment on your work. But it still looks like a commercial site.
I am not a moderator, so I don’t know how they would respond if you posted a link to one of your drawings and asked for opinions on it. Other people do that here. How is one to know if the discussion is honest, or if you’re just trying to sell something? Perhaps you should participate in some other threads, particularly non-art-related ones, so as to establish yourself here. As someone who seems to be ‘foreign’, you may provide an alternative insight to any number of issues on this U.S.-centric board.