Policy on promoting products you're involved with on Slant

This policy is no longer in effect. Current policy can be found here: https://slant.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2324738-promotion

If you have an official relationship with a product on Slant the following rules apply:

  • You cannot solicit others to recommend your product for you.
  • You cannot flag or edit pros/cons added by others, or edit the option’s description.
  • All pros/cons you add must be backed up by a third party source specifically backing up the claims made.
  • You cannot contribute to (commenting is allowed) or “don’t recommend” other competing options.

Failure to adhere to the following rules will result in your content being removed and your product potentially banned from Slant.

What is everyone’s thoughts on not allowing them to contribute content at all, just comment?

Occasionally a product owner is knowledgeable in the space and could contribute some good content, but I think I’d rather have them share their opinions in a comment over adding pros/cons.

Maybe limit this to monetized products? FOSS especially seems like it ought to be an exception; authors of free tools are often very knowledgeable of the alternatives, and don’t have material incentive to tear down the competition. Similar thoughts about free online resources, tutorials, industry blogs etc.

I’d expand line 2 to:

  • You cannot flag or edit pros/cons added by others, or edit the option’s description.
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I like that. I haven’t witnessed any manipulation from FOSS people. The OS part is key though as many people have currently free products they are promoting or products with a free tier.

Actually the elementaryOS people have brigaded, so maybe no exceptions to the rule when abused.

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I think good faith is the way to go.

I don’t think listing a product you’re involved with on Slant is an issue if it’s done respectfully. The underlying problem is that we don’t want certain kinds of behavior - astroturfing, vote brigading, baseless claims, censorship, attacks, etc so I’d rather we focus on curbing those separately instead of grouping together people statistically more likely to act badly and limiting them.

The obvious drawback to this approach is that moderation is more difficult, but I think the benefits outweigh this. A developer talking about his product will generally have the most accurate information, might have unique insights and will most likely be better informed about the whole subject (not just his product) than even a well informed user. Thus potential for better content.

I’d also argue that it’s easier to pick apart claims than it is to come up with them. So even if the content starts out bad, marketing-y or biased, it’s rather easy to remove everything that lacks substance and work from there.

I think working on tools for detecting abuse and enabling the community to do something about it is the way to go about this. Plus, I don’t think a policy will stop bad behavior so we’ll need those tools anyway.

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My original suggestion, when Matt came to me with thoughts on ditching this rule entirely, was to keep the current text in place but add a clause stating that this rule is defensive: we reserve the right to enforce it to the letter, but prefer a more open format and will meet good faith in kind. It’s a good solid policy and shouldn’t be weakened, but wiggle room at our end won’t hurt anything. This could replace the FOSS exemption, too.

I don’t think this really places any extra burden on moderation, because it’s not like we’re going to have a fully automated way to identify devs, watch them, and limit their behavior. If we’re doing all that anyway, a decision not to chase most of them down with pitchforks doesn’t seem like extra work.

Actually re-reading what I wrote I think we don’t even need the FOSS rule. Devs can still add their products and pros/cons under the current rules, it just limits some of the activity.

Yeah, I see no reason to give preference to anyone, as FOSS has already been abused for recommends in the past.

Maybe for the first rule we could allow a personal recommend, but keep that no one can solicit on their behalf (no brigading). As it really seems like a natural action to recommend your own product and will be pretty hard to enforce (and will happen often anyways).

Fully agree.

Yeah I mean if the only real change required here is the recommendation line that seems super minor. And I do think the FOSS rule does need to get removed given the ability to contribute under these guidelines.