Sue, I wonder if it might be of value to have a NEW topic set up for ObjectPascal related product promotion posts from vendors. That way interested members could do things like asking questions.
Just a thought (may be rubbish 
).
To be fair, the topic heading does say ‘Announcements and general questions about third party products.’
If this needs to be further refined then that is another subject, and the reason we have a Site-Feedback category.
There will be times when third party announcements are validly posted here. Things like new releases that may interest people who might not find out by other ways for some time.
Hey that’s where we are now and what we’re doing 
I think that’s a good idea - create a new category just for 3rd party announcements and keep the existing one for those wanting to ask questions. This would then make it easy to block advertisements without missing out on seeing questions being asked by members.
I think that’s a better way to go than my suggestion of billing vendors for posts. Split “Third Party” into
- Third Party Announcements
- Third Party Questions
Adding “Questions” should make it very clear to everyone which third party category to choose when creating new topics.
I just looked into this and I don’t think it’s a viable course of action for most users as long as the Third Party category includes both member and vendor posts. The Discourse help for the Mute Categories option states:
You will not be notified of anything about new topics in these categories, and they will not appear on the categories or latest pages.
Exactly. I meant to imply that this was a good thing to raise here.
It is a good thought and will be raised at the committee meeting. Some other ideas may also come up in this discussion.
Speaking as a vendor, I think this is a good idea. Have a specific place for vendor announcements that users can choose to ignore if they wish. Allow for vendor input in the questions forum but clearly label that one as being strict on the no ads policy.
Please allow me to comment, as I’m directly involved. First, please be aware I don’t feel entitled to suggest or “vote” for anything, since I"m obviously fairly new to the forum.
I posted this after seeing the discussion about Serge’s post, and even commented there. I thought it would be a “less problematic” post than Serge’s due to the points mentioned by @Lachlan, but it was also a kind of “test”, out of own curiosity.
First, I personally try to respect every forum I participate and don’t flood it with marketing material of my own. I’m not sure what is the impression of you guys about TMS in this sense, but I don’t see ourselves as marketers. I don’t think there is anywhere where you can say “TMS is flooding there” and even our own mail newsletters are much less common than average (e.g., Embarcadero).
Second, I don’t like seeing 3rd party announcements in forum myself, when they are too much and are not of my interest. I agree with @Lachlan. But mostly, when it feels like “automatic”, when it looks like it’s a robot posting: post and go.
The problem with 3rd part posts is that some people appreciate it, because I think it’s valid technical content like anything else. It’s a way to know what’s going on over there, the technical options available, and without false modesty, TMS is doing really cool things. For some people that only follows this forum, it’s valuable content. That was the reason I posted this one, because I thought it’s a really cool blog post, it’s not like a regular “Hey, another released version X.Y of product Foo with this new feature”.
Well, I wrote a lot and didn’t say anything. Sorry about that. 
Well, I’m here, I’m not a robot, but I will refrain from posting “news” from TMS until you guys decide if it’s 100% ok and how to do it.
2 Likes
Me too. I was a bit surprised to be called out in this.
@wlandgraf I’m sorry you were the test subject, it was obvious you were trying to do the right thing which I think everyone appreciates.
The biggest issue is that we don’t have our policies straight yet and we’re making this up a bit as we go. This is a new forum but not a new community. Prior to starting this forum ADUG operated on a mailing list which had been going for over 20 years. Your post and Serge’s are bringing up issues that we hadn’t really had to consider back when we were fairly private and hidden community.
I agree your post was interesting and based on valid technical content but at its core it’s a case study designed to sell licenses of TMS products. I wasn’t trying to infer that TMS was flooding us or anywhere else with marketing material, rather I was just bringing this issue to a head so in the future we would be ready to take a consistent approach with all third party vendors without annoying our members.
It sounds like the committee is meeting in a few weeks and will most likely come up with a policy on how we handle these issues going forward. Whatever they decide, you’ve been a really welcome addition and I hope you stick around.
1 Like
I was just trying to be fair and not exclusively pile onto TMS, so I called out everyone including myself with The Continuity Group.
I’ve since been convinced by the suggestions of others that splitting the Third Party group is a simpler solution that will probably have much the same effect.
@SueKing or @vincent if it’s possible maybe we should make the “Third Party” category read only but still have the “Questions” and “Announcements” subcategories accept new topics?
@Lachlan I am not sure if it is possible. I have changed the settings. See if you can post now. Comments on the forum imply you can’t have subcategories with higher permissions than their parent category.
@SueKing I’d also respectfully suggest that the topic from the TMS employee @wlandgraf be put in the Announcements subcategory. It’s currently in the Questions subcategory.
The topic is
This was discussed by the committee. The post was in reply to a question asked at the workshop, so was deemed OK for the Questions sub category.
I tried to post a new topic to the Third Party category and was refused. I was able to post a new topic to Third Party Questions (I’ll delete it now)
Really? It doesn’t read like that at all.
Excellent thanks. Comments on the Discourse forum implied you could not do it, but they were old comments.