Advertising, publicity & promotion.

[admin]

Stargazerslounge is a non-profit freely available online community where amateur astronomers can meet, socialise and share knowledge with like-minded people. It is not a marketplace and is not somewhere to harvest members for another forum.

Almost daily we remove posts and threads placed by members who join only to advertise, publicise and promote their company, product, service, website or event. Without moderation the forum would quickly become a random mess of affiliate posts and commercial noise. We won't allow this to happen. We also suspect a small number of SGL members are placing what are essentially advertisements and promotion on behalf of a manufacturer, retailer or forum. We encourage product reviews and opinion but please respect our wishes and the SGL community by posting only genuine and unbiased content.

From our CoC:

Advertising
We want to avoid spam generated by promotion teams, public-relations campaigns or any other traffic-hungry webmasters. So please note that our forums aren’t the place to advertise your own site or forums or sites with similar content to ours. Stargazers Lounge staff don’t visit your site and spam it with adverts, so we expect the same courtesy in return. You are welcome to link your personal (non-commercial) site in your signature.

Retailers or manufacturers are not permitted to post / promote their company or products in any way without the express approval of the Admin team.

Any forum member who seems to have created their account solely to promote another site will be banned.

[admin]

Retailers or manufacturers are not permitted to post / promote their company or products in any way without the express approval of the Admin team.

We have heard some retailers or traders are sending unsolicited PMs promoting their company or service. PMs at SGL are private so we cannot tell when this is happening but when we receive complaints we do take action. 

Retailers and traders: SGL is not a marketplace so please respect our wishes and do not use the forum for marketing and promotion. 

Thankyou 

[admin]

We have received complaints regarding a number of thinly disguised advertisements for a new mount posted on our forums. We encourage discussion from genuine members on all brands of mounts but we do not allow manufacturers, their distributers or anyone connected to them to hijack the forum for advertising and promotion (even our sponsor must post almost exclusively in a separate sponsor section).

SGL is an independent non profit forum run by volunteers for its members. It is not a marketplace. 

Genuine discussion is welcome, advertising and promotion is not 

[admin]

This is why we do not allow marketing and promotion at SGL! 

We currently have three members hijacking threads to promote products. We think at least one is connected to a manufacturer. We also have a retailer who is repeatedly complaining when they do!  

Two of them have a reputation for arguing (they support competing products) between themselves and other members with opposing views. Apparently they have already received final warnings on another forum. They will not be allowed to do the same here at SGL. 

Stargazerslounge is a non-profit freely available forum where amateur astronomers can meet, socialise and share knowledge with like-minded people. It is not a marketplace and it is not a platform for opinionated people to pick fights! 

Our moderators will remove any members who they feel are guilty of the above 

[admin]

Bump 

[admin]

We really appreciate when members submit reviews but please ensure they are neutral and objective. A review that is gushing and ends with an invite to contact the retailer is suspect and reviews written while angry are rarely more than a rant. The best reviews are calm, neutral and objective and include both positives and negatives. 

Astronomy can be an expensive hobby and newcomers often look to the SGL community for trustworthy advice so please let's not let them down 

[Steve]

We have been receiving reports from members who have noticed some YouTubers using SGL to promote their YouTube channels. 

Strictly speaking, we do not permit this, but we will often look the other way if the YouTuber has been part of the SGL community for some time and most of their posts are not advertising or promotion. The decision to look the other way is at the discretion of the mod/admin team. 

However, if a member joins only to promote their YouTube channel, we will remove the posts and close their membership.