posting ads

[stapel]

Should something be added to the "registration" agreement regarding posting ads? A clear prohibition would give an easy excuse for eliminating accounts created with advertizing in mind.

For instance, once again today a poster signed up apparently for the sole purpose of following up tutors' replies with ads for her tutoring business.

I doubt many would object to on-topic links to relevant sites (such as to the "movies" recently produced explaining one exercise or another, or to archived discussions at "Ask Dr. Math"). But using FreeMathHelp (and the bandwidth charges they're paying) for free advertizing seems abusive to me, not to mention misleading to the student-users.

Just my $0.02....

Eliz.

 

[Ted]

I suppose I could modify the agreement for that purpose, but I'm more inclined to just deal with it on a case by case basis unless it gets to be a common problem.

I have no problem eliminating accounts that are blatantly spamming with unrelated content, but if someone is posting a math tutoring site I will at least ask them not to continue before I ban them.

My usual message is something to the effect of "you can have a link to your tutoring site in your profile if you want, but only if you are posting to help students on our site." In other words, please don't just place a link to another site. If you want to post a nice solution to someone's problem then it would be okay with me if your signature contains an unobtrusive link to your personal site.

Hopefully this approach will work for the time being.

Ted