If you promote your site in this category...

[gwyneth]

...please be aware of its mores*.

These include:

The more specific your input, the more useful it may be--"green too celery-like"; "calling complaints 'lame-brained utterances from our customers" somehow seemed..."; "the proportions seem off on the watermelon and the radish"; "the animated graphic of your foot just wasn't worth the minute and a half..." Even a compliment such as "I like the colors" may help someone.

But you don't have to request input, and some members lock their threads after posting them. People who don't like it don't have to read those threads. However, if you're going to lock a thread you start here, please do it before anybody comments.

Promoting virtually all sites not hosted at HG is pretty tacky. There are probably some rare circumstances which wouldn't provoke annoyed counter-posts, but they're hard to think of.

There's an important difference between starting a thread here for promoting your site and for promoting a product your site is selling. The former is fine, the latter is not.

That goes double for posting review and affiliate sites here. Posting a link here to get traffic is one thing; posting a link here to a page that would violate any affiliate company's rules is another. (That's the most convenient way to cover a variety of practices that many members clicking from here would rather avoid, particularly involuntarily.)

And the broader, more powerful the affiliate garbage, the more we don't want it here...a few months ago someone posted their ebay auction-listing site that also spread their ebay super affiliate cut to cover anything that anybody visiting the poster's site subsequently sold on ebay, for at least a few months.

Finally, it's just dumb to promote your site here if it breaks the HG TOS. And if your mental response is "well, folks should mind their own business," don't be surprised if someone points out that on a shared server, it is their business.

*mores, Latin term without a precise equivalent. More than social dicta that aren't legal, mores also cover why members of any group buy into them. Netiquette is a pretty good example of mores.

[Keith W]

This is an excellent post Gwyneth and one with which I agree with wholeheartedly.

It is such a good and informative post I think it should also be "stickied" as well.

[GatorDHanna]

Great post, thanks. It has been "stickied."

[RainbowViper]

I agree, a very good post with useful and relevant information.

We've had quite a number of people who think that the rules "don't apply to them" and, when called out for it, take the position that it's no one's business but their own.

As Gwen pointed out, on a Shared server it most certainly *IS* everyone else's business, at least for those on the same server as the one violating the rules. This is especially true for spammers (and we've had a few), whose actions affect everyone else on the server, and for some time after the spammer leaves.

[Shahjee]

Very nice information...thanks

[gwyneth]

Here's the way a respected community member responded to someone whose site may or may not be dubious. It brilliantly avoids being cynical, while reserving that right; it allows taking something at face value, while advising we are not fools:

Originally Posted by eLIANT

Most folks in this forum are quite helpful - especially to innocent newbies. So for the moment we will believe your statement, above, and try to help educate you and point you toward any necessary actions.

However, if we learn during the course of any future "discussions" with you that your statement is untrue, you will find few people in this forum willing to give you any assistance.

I suggest we call this the eLIANT warning.

[gwyneth]

Here's another guideline. In this category, there are fewer legitimate occasions to re-open an old post than in the more technical categories, so expect a great deal of skepticism if you do.

That's because the two most reasonable reasons to open an old thread--scarcity of other relevant information and to inform/ask if the info still applies or has changed--are rarely applicable to threads here. And almost never to threads that are more than a few months old.

So unless your new post reviving the old thread is really clear about your rationale for doing it ("this old thread was the only..." or "thought everybody would laugh at these antique Google guidelines") don't be surprised if people assume the worst about your motives and start scrutinizing your post for broken images, hidden links, and other implants mentioned above.

[M@rc]

Thanks for the information.

I'm just waiting for a moderator to approve my submission,

[Thesyndicate]

What is the rules of SIGNATURES in the Hostgator forum?

[satnav]

I guess not just in signatures, but every other things you want to do here, there should always be sensible.