Etiquette for sharing content?

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Hey everyone!

I have a question about sharing content on this forum.

I understand it is against the guidelines to share promotional content. But what about when the content specifically addresses questions or topics asked by the OP?

If I know of a video or article that’s helpful I share it and it’s never been a problem. But sometimes the only content I know that touches on exactly the question being asked happens to be my own article or video.

I’ve been slapped on the wrist before for linking to my own content so now I just don’t.

I don’t understand how my free content is “promotional” in the first place to be honest. It’s free and I’m not selling anything or make any money off my content creation at all.

I’m on this forum to help people. I publish content to help people.

It feels weird to me when I can share other people’s content to help improve the quality of an answer but if it’s my own it’s considered “promotional” especially when it would be so helpful to the OP to go read my article or watch my YouTube video.

Is there no way to share my own content on this forum without getting banned? Or is there an etiquette to follow to ensure I don’t get flagged as spam when sharing my own stuff?

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  • If you post an article to help answer someone else’s questions, that’s great.

  • If you post an article to share your content unprompted, that’s promoting your content, and that’s against the rules.

  • If you have questions about a software project and post a repository link and some questions, that’s great.

  • If you post software to share your work, that’s promoting your work, and that’s against the rules.

The purpose of this forum is to help people to learn to code. We do not allow promoting your own work because those sorts of posts would very quickly clutter the forum and get in the way of answering questions and helping people learn to write code.

Basically - Helping people is good. Trying to use freeCodeCamp to boost your audience is not ok.

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if you post in a 4yo topic as one of your first posts, and link to your own content in every post, it is seen as suspicious activity

if you give consistently helpful answers, and you also add when appropriate a “if you want to go deep I have written in more details about it here”, that’s contributing to an helpful answer

consider also applying to write on freecodecamp.org/news

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Do I post my content on every post? Look at my history on this forum.

I’m not sure how the age of the post matters, but if that’s part of the rules I’ll avoid doing that in the future.

I love learning and I love helping others especially because I was in a similar situation as most people here on freeCodeCamp.

Unless one of the leaders can draw clear rules around this I think I have to just avoid posting my content. I’d rather be a part of the community than risk being banned.

I’m honestly not trying to come across salty. I just feel any post I’ve ever shared my own content in has been genuine and helpful. So if I can’t understand where the line is then I’d rather avoid doing it all together which I think kinda sucks for other people if they can benefit from it.

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Ok that does actually make a lot of sense to me.

I guess it’s best to just avoid it all together then. I’m 100% cool with that. I’m not on here to specifically promote my own stuff, I’m here to help people.

Thanks for clarifying :slight_smile:

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Hi @dannyjamesfletcher !

We understand that you personally don’t have bad intentions and are just interested in helping.

But from a moderator’s perspective, we see a lot of people attempting to spam the forum with the sole purpose of pushing their content.

A lot people will try to create an account just to promote their content but luckily we are able to catch it. :grinning:

So that is why the rule exists is because unfortunately we have seen to many people with selfish intentions.

So it is just easier to moderate this way. :grinning:

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Thanks @jwilkins.oboe !

Yeah totally makes sense.

I’m definitely not here to spam the community. I’ve been with FCC since the glitch days before this forum was made :slight_smile:

Just wasn’t super active in the online community the last couple years but I’ve hosted plenty of FCC meetups and still maintain a local FCC slack and facebook community (when I have time).

But yeah I don’t want a bad reputation here and I apologize if some of my posts have seemed suspicious.

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