Strict Anti-Spam Rules: Important for authors and publishers

[Scott]

If you are an author, publisher, webmaster or promoter, you will definitely want to read this whole page before posting at all in these forums. (If you are not an author, publisher, webmaster or promoter but rather are curious about the automatic filters and restrictions on new members, you can probably skip down to number 7.)

In order to make these forums most enjoyable for the members, we have some strict rules to circumvent spam and advertising. It is in your best interests as an author, publisher, webmaster or other promoter to understand these rules and to not violate them. This is because if you violate our rules or otherwise post inappropriate advertising, self-promotion or spam, we will blacklist your website and/or book. I can add a website or book to our blacklist in under a minute and then nobody at all will ever be able to post a link to that website or book again. You will notice links to online book stores like Amazon and BookCloseOuts cannot be posted directly but require the use of special BBCode. This is because it makes it so in under a minute I can disable and permanently block any and all links for a certain book. Additionally, I report spammers to certain third-party databases meaning you would then be automatically flagged as a probable spammer on any other forums you join in the future as well. As you can see, trying to sneak some self-promotion, spam or advertising past us is not only a waste of your effort but actually will backfire on you.

Here are a few specific rules regarding what is and is not acceptable.

1.a If you are the author or publisher of a book, you are not allowed to start a topic about the book or post a link to a webpage about the book or a webpage that sells the book. Incidentally, we appreciate you wanting to use our forums to get the word out about your book, and we have a much better and more effective way for you to do that: You can get your book reviewed by one of our trusted reviewers and then that review will be put up in our high-traffic forums with a link to the place to buy it.

1.b Likewise, you are not allowed to link to or reference your own website. If you are the webmaster, owner, employee or representative of a website, blog or online service, you cannot post about it on these forums. The only way to use these forums to promote your website is by purchasing one of our advertising packages.

1.c As an extension of 1.a and 1.b, you cannot have a URL or website or book promotion in your signature, under the assumption it is your own website or book. If you notice someone has a URL or link or mention of a book in their signature, it was probably put their manually by me as part of a request for a book review or one of our advertising packages.

2. Automatic filters block new members from posting links or creating a member profile. At the time of this post 'new members' are those who have made less than 10 posts or been registered for less than 3 days). You may not attempt to circumvent the automatic link filters that stop new members from posting links. For instance, do not write website.com as website(dot)com or such. This will be found quickly and will cause the website in question to be blacklisted permanently. This mean nobody regardless of how many posts they have will ever be able to post a link to the website again on this forum because it will be automatically blocked. Additionally, doing such things as telling people to 'google your website' or search for a certain phrase will be treated the same as posting a link. It will be deleted and the promoted website and/or book will be blacklisted.

3. You may not manually attach a URL or link signature to the end of posts. In other words, sometimes people put their URL or link at the end of all their posts, not by using the signature field in the User Control Panel, but by actually writing it in on the posts. If you do this, it will be deleted and the URL will be blacklisted. Members can create a signature and enter a website to their profile through the User Control Panel after they have made 25 posts.

4. No irrelevant links or URLs in any posts. This goes with out saying but to be clear I am saying it. If you include a URL or link in a post that is not relevant to the discussion, it will be found quickly, it will be considered spam, it will be deleted and the website will be blacklisted.

5. No affiliate links.

6. As has been said, many features on the forum are restricted until a member reaches certain post count. And post counts are not incremented for posts made by new members in the off-topic section. As of the time of this post, you need to have a post count of 10 to post links or URLs and to modify your profile, and you need to have a post count of 25 to add a signature and to fill-in the website field of the profile. The other moderators and I are privy to the idea of inflating your post count with pointless points. Please understand that if you post a link, add a signature or such as soon as you gain the needed post count, the moderators and I will be suspicious and will review your previous posts to judge your intent. If we think you are simply intending to advertise and purposely inflated your post count to that end, we will delete the advertisement and will likely blacklist the site in question.

7. Other automatic restrictions based on post count: Please note, in addition to the automatics limitations already mentioned, new members--those with less than 10 posts--are also blocked from posting in the 'buy, sell and trade' section, are blocked from voting in polls, and have a limited access to the PM system. In regards to the latter, you can send PMs as a new member but they may be blocked if the automatic filter detects words or phrases common in spam postings. Please understand this is to protect our members against spam in PMs and is needed because the moderators and I--to protect your privacy--cannot manually moderate PMs before they are sent. Once you have made some more posts and been registered for a few days, your PMs will not be checked by the filter and you will have full access to the PM system. Much like the PM filter, while you are still a new member, the filter may automatically flag your post. It flags about one in three hundred posts/PMs, most of which are spam but many on the other hand are false positives. Unlike a PM however, a flagged post will not be blocked completely but rather held for moderation. We will review the post and approve or disapprove it quickly. Again, this automatic check is only performed for 'new members' and will not occur once you have made some more posts and been registered for a few days.

8. If you have less than 25 posts or have been registered less than 1 week, you may not make a post about a book with an Amazon sales rank worse than 100,000 in books. This is because we assume you are either the author, publisher or paid promoter of the book if you start saying good things about some low-selling or independent book, and the first rule in this list strictly prohibits anyone from ever posting about their own book.

If you want to advertise on this site that's great. Please PM me for advertising options and rates.

Thanks!
Scott

[StephenKingman]

^ Well said, Scott, I think with all the above features we are well able to prevent and control spammers and trolls.

[Fran]

Excellent Scott .... I think that's very clear & concise. Your work is much appreciated.

[Kenn_Baker]

Scott,
I am a brand new member...um, I think 39 minutes old last time i saw it. I wanted to let you know, all of these filters work well. I was actually just starting a discussion and mentioned a website without having read this. Though it was a little frustrating, I know as a member i will appreciate it working for me.

[BJMorgan]

So happy to see you take spamming by authors seriously. I'm a new author myself and of course trying to 'get the word' out that I have a book published - so many book forums get authors copy/pasting into every forum they can find. Counter-productive IMHO - those who shout the loudest have least to shout about ??

Anyway, thanks for accepting me as a member and I've taken advantage of your book review offer and uploaded a PDF for your reviewers to read. Crossing fingers you like it

[themajorlives]

Hi, just tried to make my first post (a reply to a topic in the reviews of specific book section) and it came up with the 'do not post links etc' warning. This would be fine except my post doesn't contain any kind of URL or link. So I can't understand what happened. If my posts are being moderated due to being a new member, that's also fine, it's just there was no mention of this in the warning message. If you can shed any light on this it would be greatly appreciated.

[Scott]

Themajorlives, it is possible that you wrote something that was falsely detected as a URL. For instance, if you wrote com then that alone would likely be considered a link. If you want you can email the blocked post to me and I can figure out what is being flagged and if it is a false positive I can edit the automatic link detector accordingly. Thanks!

[pawpoint]

Scott,
Is my signature ok? I really enjoy the book club and love posting on it. I know that the sig is nofollow so is it ok to mention the URL that I come from?

[Leonardo Noto]

I wish that I'd read this before I posted my introduction, because I think that I inadvertently am already on the "badlist." My apologies.

Leonardo Noto

[Lincoln2012]

I too, just read this list! I was "pm" ing someone and then all of a sudden I wasn't allowed to message them anymore. How can I get this undone? Thanks and apologies

[Marg]

Now that I know the ground rules I'm anxious to get started with my first post. I, for one, appreciate the boundaries we are all asked to observe as it will make for a better discussion on the substance of books.
Margaret Kell Virany

[Arbilisastar]

Hello my name is Paul Higgins and I am a new author and I just became a member...

[jeweling]

gotcha,the profile page say if made 5 post than can set the profile page.
and I have made 5 post but the "posts" shows only zero

[Scott]

Posts in the off-topic section do not count towards post count for new members. This is clearly stated in the description of the off-topic section.

[caufee]

Would like to see posts listed by date. There are so many posts, but most of them are from last year or even older. How do we seek out the newest post people are reading and posting too?