Afternoon all!

It seems our cheerful little forum is the regular target of (borderline spam) posts from a varied selction of other art websites trying to promote themselves. Hithertoo we have been somewhat reluctant to cull such posts not wishing to deny forum members from good opportunities. However judging from the reception to a lot of such posts (and their content), they seem rather un-welcome and usually end up as bad PR for the website being plugged - we've actually had one website complain because the forum thread they started was ranking high on google with the website name and had the word scam clear in the result

So just fishing for some feedback as to whether a little tighter moderation would go down well.

I am all for opportunities for Artists but Blatent advertising of another website promoter on a forum that is hosted by a website promoter seems rather rude and opportunist, almost like spamming.

I might be in the minority here but these posts don't bother me, there's always the possibility that one of them might be of interest to someone. The alternative is they send us all individual contact emails which I think is actually more spammy and in that case you never know whether you've been "targeted" or if it's a blanket email. At least if they do it through a forum post it's more transparent and we all have the benefit of seeing each others' opinions. If the forum was being deluged with these kind of posts I'd take a less tolerant view but one or two a week is no big deal as far as I can see.

Picking up on the other point Chris made we probably do all need to be a bit careful of directly accusing people of generating spam/scams as they could argue it was defamatory, particularly if they are a genuine new business just trying to drum up some members.

Just my thoughts!

Elise

I just thought it was bad mannered,thats all.
I remember at one point I was going to start my own gallery website for artists and out of courtesy I asked The gallery first.
Just a pet hate I suppose, your right we are all adult enough to make our own minds up. if Chris doesn't mind it's no big deal.

Hi, I agree with Wendy, I feel that it is bad manners too, and very cheeky. It doesn't bother me at all though, I just ignore them.

http://www.kathykempster.theartistsweb.co.uk

They have not bothered me much to date, though sometimes I too have had a 'ruddy cheek' impulse. Not enough to feel swamped yet, however the thought of bad PR is cause for concern. Most of them are so transparent and the clumsiest can be cause for hilarity. I need to chew over this one. Pardon me if this sounds a bit dim, being not very web-wise, but would these additional posts help up the traffic to our site and can we stop them if they gather up too much momentum - like spam-begats-spam?

i'm with wendy in that i think its bad manners not to have asked forum/website owners first. I just think simple courtesy requires that you ask, and if you think the answer is going to be a No, then just doing it anyway is bad manners.

However there's not so many that they can't be ignored and it does give us a chance to discuss whatever it is and if its a genuine op. If it is a scam then helps all of us to avoid it - and by being picked up by google it helps others too. so on balance - even though i find them discourteuous - i'd say leave them, we can treat with disdain they desrve and non members seeking advice about the gallery/whatever can find it on google and share from our experiences.

There are some very blatant (and very funny) attempts to promote other websites. While it's bad manners, they are usually pretty obvious so I'm not sure it's worth the bother of deleting them.

I'll mull it over for a while.

When I have wanted to advertise my web gallery I have always asked the forum administrators for permission to do so. So far I have not been refused and have in fact been welcomed to do so by many as they know me and know that I keep it real. It is rude to just post onto art forums without said permission in my opinion. I have not advertised on here and would not do so until I thought the time was right and I would certainly ask Chris's permission first. Getting a web gallery right takes a huge amount of work and also ensuring that it runs smoothly before you go bleating off about how great it all is, so I consider the effort put in with greater value to the artists and potential buyers, the best thing to promote rather than FREE SITE selling. There are loads of web galleries, as Wendy says, but there are very few really good ones - I know which bracket I want to be in and hopefully my web gallery will be a recommended by the artists one too

A little advice as there now are so many popping up is to do a bit of research, see how long they have been going, where they are based,with a proper address and contact No: See if the appear in the search engines, do a page rank check on them. Make sure they don't expect full access to an image only.

There are some good new sites and it takes at leat 3 years for one to really be effective.

As Artists our money is sparse. So we need it to stretch to the sites that perform well for us.

I agree with Elise, whilst maybe irritating to some and and of little use to most of us i dont think these posts actually do any harm, provided we arn't too inundated with them. I think the worry for me about regulation is that we might in the process cull info from websites which may be useful as an addition to artists web such as those linked with a gallery etc.
I also prefer that they post on the forum rather than through website contacts ( unless they are disgressionary and genuinely interested in an individuals work )

thats really interesting Wendy - I didn't realise that. how long has this site been going?
and how do you check page rank??

Thanks...am a bit of a novice to all this mallarky

This link will let you check googles rating out of 10 for any website.

http://www.prchecker.info/

If it is a really new site it won't be ranked.

This site I believe has been going just over a year so a ranking of 6 out of 10 is pretty good

The other major Player only has a four and that has been going 5 years.

Google.co.uk only scored an 8
I agree with you in most Wendy, but you can buy top ten google rankings for $9 (even advertised on the site you refer to) so rankings really don't matter too much. The internet was new once too and a site will only perform well for you if YOU put the effort in as well.
You do well, we all know that, because you do the effort in bucketloads, always have which is great, but others need guidance and support through this artist process and some sites offer more than others. If you do all of the research you say above you will get Y*@@y.com all the time Want to be part of 5000 artists and never get found?
I could go on but it would be boring. No need to moderate we know how to ignore or delete, just please don't scare people off of taking a look if they want to - Chris and TAW would have got nowhere otherwise

No way was I trying to scare people off.
Just lately there seems to be a lot of galleries just popping up to recruit to help themselves.

You know how it all works,but some people don't.

A gallery needs to build a reputation.

I didn't say it should be moderated or deleted,Just pointed out a hard sell on someone elses website was downright rude.


I have always praised and promoted TAW the time effort and success in such a short space of time unlike yourself ,who was leaving because it hadn't performed for you.