Difference between informing and promoting?

In this post, twickster removes the kickstarter link and kills the thread. I know I’ve found out about kickstarters I’m interested in through The Game Room, and have gone on to help fund them. At what point does a post move from informing people of a kickstarter campaign, to actively promoting that campaign? And if this is against the rules, I guess the threads in The Game Room where we alert interested users to sales should also be forbidden. Quite frankly, if that is true, it makes the board just that much less useful.

We often allow mention of such things as this – however, people have to request iin advance and clear it with us. Which did not happen in this case. That’s why it got removed.

That’s silly. It’s not self promotion. Are we not allowed to discuss upcoming movies either? How about the PBS fundraiser? Pre-orders for games?

You raise a good point. Let the mods discuss this and we’ll get back to you.

Kickstarter is a direct solicitation for money.

The annoying thing about this is that if ultrafilter had asked us we would most likely have said Yes.

So is a movie trailer.

The annoying thing about it is that he needs to ask.

The letter of the law that twickster quoted in the post the OP linked to doesn’t make any distinction between promoting something that you, yourself are involved in vs. something that you have no personal stake in—but it seems to me that the intention of the rule is primarily, if not solely, to prevent promotion of one’s own causes.

So I don’t see why something like what ultrafilter did should be forbidden.

And yet… if I were to start a thread about every Kickstarter project that I’ve contributed to or considered worthwhile, and if many other Dopers did the same thing, I could imagine it cluttering up the boards and getting annoying.

Hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt it was the “rule” that was a deterrent.

If you want to solicit participation in something from the Teeming Millions, especially something that requires a financial investment, you should ask management first.

We approve most requests, it’s not a strenuous process.

No financial investment is required.

I don’t understand this. As you said yourself, this likely would have been approved. Provided that’s the case, why does anyone need to submit similar approvals for Kickstarters? It’s all the same; why does each thread need to be approved separately?

From the registration agreement:

Cool; that literally addresses nothing of what I said.

It answered the question exactly. Because they want to vet it before they put it up. It doesn’t matter that they usually say it’s okay anymore than it matters that I would probably be okay with you taking some post I made and posting it elsewhere. I still want to be asked, and so do they.

And, yes, the entire point of publishing a kickstarter is to ask people to contribute financially to it. Stop being disingenuous. You don’t post a kickstarter as your OP because you want someone to just look at how well the website is designed.

Do threads like this one require permission ?

I would think not. There’s a big difference between that and a solicitation thread that I can see. That thread is more like “Hey, everybody! Walmart’s got a 50% off sale next week only! If you normally buy stuff there, next week is a good time to get them!”

It’s someone pointing to where they shop regularly, and other people on the board do, too, and telling everyone there’s a sale going on.

The thread the OP posted may also be a similar thing, hence the point of the OP of this thread. I agree the OP’s thread was more like the one you pointed to, than like a solicitation thread, so I’d vote (if it were up to a vote) that the OP’s thread shouldn’t have been closed.

I agree. I think ultrafilter thought of what he was doing as informing rather than soliciting. What’s really under discussion here is the question posed in the thread title: what’s the difference?

This has been a little while but iirc he did ask us for permission in advance and we granted it. He should have stated so in his posting but he didn’t, we usually ask that too.

Of course memory is a funny thing … but I think I vaguely recall this.

You should always ask us if you’re unsure of something – “better to ask permission than beg forgiveness.”

The problem is, on the other side, do you really want to see GD spammed with “So-and-so is running for office against evil career politician such-and-such. If you care about truth, justice and the American way, you can donate to keep the country free at notadouchebag.com

What’s the difference between that and the kickstarter thread?

You got the phrase backwards.

The quote is “Better to beg forgiveness than ask for permission.” It’s often seen in movies where someone (possibly with a chimp as his sidekick) is considering stealing a tank or something similar.

:smiley:

I can’t think of a way to interpret this that doesn’t technically mean we must ask for permission to post a link to anything outside of the Dope, since I think it can be taken as read that a website’s existence is a de facto promotion of that website.