Recently, there’s been a bit of an influx of threads serving the purpose of announcing a new video or stream, and with it, some confusion about when, where, and whether it’s appropriate.
Let me preface this by saying that you are absolutely welcome and encouraged to use FEU as a platform to reach a wider audience. However, we’ve also received complaints and flags from multiple users who aren’t interested in that sort of content and would like to more reliably filter it from their feeds. To address both groups, we’ve created a new category, #community:shilling. With the introduction of this new sub-category, creators will be able to showcase their content in a centralized place, where those interested can participate freely.
What should go into Shilling:
The following categories of threads should certainly go into Shilling:
- Threads for the sole purpose of announcing or showcasing new Youtube videos, especially if they are not immediately related to a project or gallery already existing in Projects.
- Threads announcing streams
- Announcements of new communities
- Project discords/discussion sites are exempt from the above, and are welcome to be linked in a regular project thread. Please do not abuse this as a loophole to disguise a general-conversation server as a project server; if you do, the staff may move your thread to Shilling.
- Artists advertising commissions
- Note that galleries and showcases can and should remain in Creative. The above only applies to threads whose main purpose is to advertise and collect commissions.
As a more general rule of thumb, your thread should go into this category if it fulfills at least one of the following:
- It is intended to drive traffic to an external site hosting your content, such as Youtube or Twitch.
- It is intended to solicit or advertise an exchange of money
There will probably be some overlap with #community:lets-play. In such cases, it’s fine to post in either one.
Finally, we’d like to ask you to avoid making an excessive number of threads. We’re going to wait and see how things turn out as the new category settles before deciding on a hard and fast rule on what, exactly, that means. In the meantime, if you are making a new thread more than twice a week, you should instead make one thread, and post all your updates there. This especially applies to stream announcements.