Rule change: Retailer Access

[proffrink]

Important stuff in bold.

 

All of this is due to come into effect during the week.

 

This latest set of changes is meant to address the many questions that I (and some of the moderation team) get around what kind of usage retailers and businesses can get from these forums. Although our current rules are pretty much fine in my eyes, they do leave a lot of grey-ness around just where, how often and in what way retailers are allowed to create accounts, threads and reply to posts about themselves. Typically we've addressed retailers on a case-by-case basis. Some are good at this and make inroads into resolving issues that their customers have by way of a post reply to a thread about themselves, a couple just post pictures and a few simply lurk the forums to see what you're all saying about them. In every case, however, the guiding principle for this forum stays the same: it's important that regular users are getting something out of these interactions, and in exchange we allow some level of soft advertising through stock updates and public customer support.

 

However, there are times where this oversteps the mark (typically by accident but sometimes not) and these instances are dealt with swiftly. Just this week L3wis managed to identify a retailer posing as a customer in order to draw attention to their business - this is the kind of thing we deal with swiftly, but we do also issue warnings to retailers who are getting a bit spam-y. In any case, this is not ideal for businesses because our current rules are so vague, and it's possible that this could be resulting in less of those productive retailer-to-user interactions from happening as well as leaving a little too much discretion with the moderators as to what's okay to post and what isn't. With that in mind;

 

A clearer definition of the rules around retailers using the forums are going to be implemented

• Retailers will be allowed to post promotional material within their own thread in the Places to Buy subforum only
• Retailers should not post promotional material more frequently than once a week in these threads. This includes:
  • Restocking and new product alerts
  • Sales/promotions
  • Photography of products or services that are watermarked in any way
• Retailers are encouraged to provide assistance and support to users via the forum and can do so directly within these threads as frequently as they wish
• Retailers will be encouraged to interact with users outside of this sub-forum, but - again - may only post explicitly promotional materials in Places to Buy

 

The hope with the above is that keeping all promotional retailer materials in one place will allow individuals to filter it out if they don't like to see it. I will put up a small guide on creating your own 'activity feed' in the next couple of days.

 

Businesses that post images must also comply with this rule change

The same rules will apply to them if they post imagery that includes watermarks. We have a couple of them already, and they will be expected to comply with the 'no more than once a week' rule inside the Places to Buy subforum. Should their images be completely devoid of any promotional material (logos, URLs etc.) they are welcome to post them wherever they like just as though they were a normal user of this forum.

 

As with any rule change we will be lenient for some time on people who get it wrong, so don't worry about us being too anal over the changes immediately. As usual you will receive a couple of warnings before anything happens to your account anyway and we will help lost retailers post in the right section as we always have. Our view on this has always been that these forums are for the players first but we also understand that many players do like to know that their purchasing feedback is being read. We hope this goes some way to showing retailers that there is a place here for you if you're not taking the piss.

[Iceni]

On 06/03/2019 at 12:53, proffrink said:

Retailers are encouraged to provide assistance and support to users via the forum and can do so directly within these threads as frequently as they wish

I think it's important that this is included. I regularly link to some of the more active retailers @ak2m4 been one of the main ones.

Knowing they are allowed to interact and advise on the products they sell, Provided the OP isn't of there own making. Means Business as usual from my standpoint.

It would make life on the forums very difficult if been able to link and seek advice like that was stopped.