Yes, this diary is more meta. If you are uninterested in meta, which is completely understandable, please feel free not to read.
I want to bring up a question that stems tangentially from the major meta controversy of the past few days. For those unfamiliar, in the way of a one sentence summary, there was a rant on the rec list that- to put it charitably - somewhat misrepresented a previous diary and the comments in that diary.
I don't want to re-litigate that - in the end the community handled it decently. But the whole thing brought up a very interesting (to me anyway) question that, surprisingly, I couldn't find addressed in the site FAQ:
To what extent should attempts to sell or promote commercial products by users be allowed?
The impetus for the question
The connection to the previous meta is that the rant diarist has as his/her comment signature an advertisement for two family members' web sites selling Christian books and computer cables:
My boys, the hoodlum and the agitator have web sites. Can you guess which is which? If you read books visit www.membranachristianbooks.com And for computer cables go to www.yourcablestore.com
I will mention that I am a bit suspicious that this diarist may have been motivated to generate controversy, in part, to bring more eyeballs to this comment signature. This is because in addition to the rant which had its share of f-bombs, there were other comments that seemed designed to create controversy, for example:
my diary got on the rec list
and this pathetic piece of crap diary did not.
So, fuck you. fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck.
and this extremely 'hard sell' of said website products:
Yeah, so the fuck what? My hoodlum son has gone christian and trying to support a wife and two daughters by selling mostly christian books on the internet. So, if you are like the majority of kossacks and have $60k or $100+ in income get you ass over to his web site and buy some fucking books to help out a family living on $15,000 per year with a few crumbs....
Shades of grey
So, that particular example aside, how ok is selling stuff here? I think it is an interesting question without a clear-cut answer. For one thing, Daily Kos has ads all over the place, so a policy completely against user initiated commerce could seem quite hypocritical. We also have a long tradition of allowing solicitations from non profit organizations, from candidates' campaigns to womens' shelters, all of which are great.
At the other extreme, this site does have a purpose, which is to advance progressive politics in America and elect more and better Democrats. It certainly shouldn't be turned into a version of Craig's List where user comments are inundated with ads (not that there is any danger of that happening at the moment), or more to the point, there would seem to be a very straightforward case against allowing the promotion of merchandise that runs counter to the site's mission, such as Mitt Romney T-shirts or even SUVs.
So... clearly we have a situation that is not black and white. I think it is up to the community and administration to come up with guidelines, if they are needed. Like I said, I was surprised not to see something in the FAQ.
I will now just throw out my 2 cents of what might be reasonable guidelines:
1) Solicitation for and promotions of non-profit organizations would always be allowed unless they run directly counter to the mission of the site. So for instance comments supporting donations to the Nature Conservancy would be allowed, but those promoting Operation Rescue wouldn't. Pretty straightforward.
2) Straightforward recommendations concerning consumer products or media would always be allowed. ie "Go see this movie, it is great"
3) Direct selling of products or promotion of commercial enterprises would only be allowed if they are directly related to the mission of the site. So for instance people could tout a website that sells sustainable building materials, but not just any old building materials website.
Alright, like I said, those are just my ideas to get the conversation started. As I said, there are no clear cut answers, but it might be good to think about getting some guidelines in place. Also people might think this is a solution in search of a problem, in which case you are welcome to express that opinion too. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
UPDATE: There are some good comments talking about how the distinction might be between a mention in passing and a 'hard sell' like the example here. That is a great point.