Forum Use For Income

Don D

When I joined the Forum I remember reading some rule prohibiting the posting of sales gimmicks or solicitation of Forum members for profit of any kind. Does that rule still apply? We obviously from time to time have people dropping in who are selling this or that or offering consulting services. Is that prohibited or condoned? Would it not be a good idea to publish such a policy so that offenders (if it is an offense) would not say they didn't realize it was a problem? This question is not intended to offend anyone except those who may be violating the policy.

Whatever

I agree with Don D and would add: In order for me to value the opinions on the site, I do not want to have to determine whether or not the opinion expressed is valid or is being done to sell a product. Besides printing a warning, is there any way to block marketers from future access to the site?

sonny

I agree, the telemarketing at home and work on the phone is bad enough. Maybe it has depended on how blatent it is. I do remember one post that was VERY obvious. It was deleted almost immediately.

ray a

Excellent point Don, and if you fax me $50 monthly I will gladly offer my services of monitoring the forum and hitting the alert button everytime I find someone soliciting.

mwild31

I agree with Don D. - I sent in an alert (first time ever for me) on the post from "Rodney" a.k.a. Mary. Obviously selling something - even said it in response to one of Don's posts, "I'm providing a service...". There should be a rule....

System

Don and all: Thanks for raising this issue, which comes up every once in a while on the Forum. The motto of HRhero.com is, There won't be any shameless self-promotion on the Forum unless it comes from us.

We've had a few lawyers and consultants make blatant sales pitches on the Forum. We asked them to stop and deleted the messages as soon as we saw them.

However, some of these folks come to the Forum and contribute to the discussions, the same as everyone else. We don't want to prohibit that.

We've come up with a policy that tries to balance these concerns. You can find it below and also in the Forum Help section,
[url]http://www.hrhero.com/employersforum/help4.shtml#selling[/url]

As always, feel free to hit the Alert link under any message that doesn't seem right to you.

James Sokolowski
HRhero.com

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The Forum marketing policy:

We don't allow the marketing of products and services on the Forum unless they're affiliated with HRhero.com (meaning HR Hero products, M. Lee Smith Publishers LLC, the lawyers who write our newsletters, and theHRedge consulting firm).

For everyone else, you can't promote your products or services on the Forum. But you can identify yourself in your "signature" at the end of your messages. You can include your name, your firm's name, plus two other lines, such as your e-mail address, phone number, or your firm's slogan.

You can put additional information about yourself in your Profile.

We reserve the right to impose additional restrictions, especially if you're competing with a product or service affiliated with HRhero.com.