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If it was a commercial product I can only imagine it was within the remit of answering a question as commercial products are often the best solution.
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That seems a little harsh. One "commercial product" link out of 69 non-spam answers and four pages of non-spam messages isn't the behaviour of a typical spammer.
Is there now a blanket ban on posting links to commercial products in QA, even if they're highlighted as such?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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You misunderstood. I reported that message as spam. Headshot functionality was not in place for some day. This time, it worked and his account got closed.
Further, if Admin thinks so, he can get his account back. But yes, link to commercial product IS spam,so should be reported ('If it helps OP,it's allowed' is debatable). It's totally different thing whether to report account or not. In this case, i would not report the account.
Programmer : A machine that converts coffee into code !
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Would you agree to shedding all your Sitecore posts, and not posting any further ones if you were re-instated?
Thanks,
Sean Ewington
CodeProject
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I haven't made any posts on QA or Discussion RE Sitecore, I use Sitecore in my username as I am in the process of building a Sitecore blog and thought having that as part of CP would be beneficial to exposure (and it has been), and I include my blog posts as part of my Technical Articles. I appreciate Sitecore is a commercial product, obviously it is, but so is Visual Studio, MS Word, Excel etc and people ask and answer questions about that all the time. If my blogs (or posts) were sales related then I could understand it being undesirable, but the blogs are purely technical and there to help people who use Sitecore, even though I know it is a small niche market. As a side-effect to mirroring my blog posts on CP I have also been taking part in the QA and Discussion forum on the site so as to not just be a "free loader" taking the increased exposure and giving nothing back in return, and as has been kindly pointed out by Richard, my activity in that regard has been far from spammy.
Hopefully the above clarifies where I feel my position is, and if you still want me to remove the blog articles and not submit any more then I'll agree to do that, but obviously I'd appreciate it if there could be a re-think on the situation that would allow me to keep the blogs and continue as before, as it was my main reason for joining the site.
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You are most welcome to continue sharing your blog on CodeProject, but no more blog entries about Sitecore. I've removed the existing ones and restored your account. Also, please no mentions or links anywhere else on the site to Sitecore.
If your account gets reported again, it will not be restored.
Thanks,
Sean Ewington
CodeProject
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Ok, thanks for your time.
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I must admit I'm a bit confused.
Disclaimer: I can't see his posts / articles or tips about the product anymore so hard to judge.
But if the articles really where about how to use the product and provide technical information about it, then why should this not be allowed?
Provided it doesn't actually try to "sell" the product but merely provides a "how to do this with this product" kind of thing.
Is that any different than asking a technical question in Q/A about the product? (there have been plenty of questions about Crystal reports and other products)
One of the reasons I "question" this is the fact that lately I see the tendency to pull the trigger on the whole "this is spam, lets nuke the hell out of him" a bit to fast.
I understand that spam is a real problem and should be taken care of.
I just hate to see a potential valuable member be nuked just because of 1 mistake. But then again maybe I'm to forgiving.
I of course have no knowledge about any possible legal issues surrounding this so ...
Tom
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It's a super blurry line, Tom. The amount of people I've caught coming in with a facade of "I'm not associated with that company" posting on products that they were either paid to post on, or were just straight up evangelists for the company themselves, is so high, crackdowns must occur. It's simply been abused too much.
Thanks,
Sean Ewington
CodeProject
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I understand that, and honestly I wouldn't want to be in your shoes having to deal with this all the time.
My only concern is, that we don't get jaded (no idea if that is the right word but...) and throw out the good with the bad.
Anyway it was in no way a criticism against you or the team. Only a concern.
As I said before I appreciate the amount of work you guys do a lot.
And in the end it is your decision 
Tom
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You might have noticed that I used the term "historically"
We now have a Third Party Products and Tools[^] section that allows members to post articles about 3rd party products. There are provisos, though.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Did not know about that section. Learn something new every day
I guess that nullifies my entire concern .
I wouldn't want to be the final judge on those article's tho. I imagine I can be quite hard to figure out if those provisions are met, especially number 5.
Tom
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Tom Deketelaere wrote: But if the articles really where about how to use the product and provide technical information about it, then why should this not be allowed?
Because we've had many, many (too many) cases were companies have been posting articles about their own products in order to push their own commercial offerings.
At the most basic, this goes against our submission guidelines. We have historically not accepted articles on technologies to which a typical developer in the space would not already have access. There's not much fun in reading an article that provides exactly the solution you're after...except you have to pay several hundred for a license. I started CodeProject because I simply couldn't afford licenses and so worked with the community to provide free (as in beer) and open solutions for all.
Secondly, if companies have no restrictions on posting endless series of articles pushing their products then why would they advertise? Instead of using our Developer Media services to talk to developers in a sensible manner, we'd have the homepage being a flood of commercially oriented articles. We'd be a ghost town.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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We have beer in the fridge. Did I mention @[Kevin Priddle] brews his own?
We values everyone's opinion, Tom, and I really appreciate the comments.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: We have beer in the fridge
Yeah, if that fridge wasn't at least 6.558km away and more than 12hours I'd be sitting next to it right now
Although that might explain why the hamsters are sometimes less than willing to comply
Chris Maunder wrote: Did I mention @[Kevin Priddle] brews his own?
Tempting, o so tempting *checks flight information to Canada*
Well if he (or you, or anyone else of the CP team) is ever in the neighborhood of Belgium feel free to take you pick from this list[^] and I'll be more than happy to buy some for you
Tom
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I didn't realise you're in Belgium.
I would die of alcohol poisoning if I live there. Belgium beers nail it. Absolutely brilliant.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: I would die of alcohol poisoning if I live there.
I'm pretty sure that has actually happened here.
My home town has (or had, been a while since I'v been back there) a bar where you could get almost all of them. Tourists regularly try to drink them all in the short period they stay there, last I know off none have succeeded
Anyway the invitation is open and lasts indefinitely
Tom
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What's the name of the town (and the bar)?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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They've increased the list since 2006 - my out-of-date beer guide claims "over 80" beers on a "steadily more adventurous list".
However, it also claims it's a young person's bar, so that rules me out. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Richard Deeming wrote: "over 80" beers on a "steadily more adventurous list".
Yeah that was the official number, unofficially well... (regulations and such  )
But the establishment has been cracking down on regulations and bars so that 100 will probably be all now 
Richard Deeming wrote: However, it also claims it's a young person's bar, so that rules me out
You are only as old as you think you are
Besides in the time I was considered one of those "young person's" I didn't go there and we considered it a "slightly older person's" bar so...
Tom
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If you'd ever stray to western Sweden I'll take you to Ölrepubliken.
They have some 400 different beers, about 30 of them on tap.
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Looks good. ![Beer | [beer]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif) 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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