[wp-forums] Services forum

[petit at petitpub.com]

TechGnome <tg at tannagh.com>: says:

> This sparked a thought about an additional "rule" ... enforce the use 
> of the tags to indicate if they offer commercial or pro-bono "help". 
> IE, the thread that started all this should have at a minimum of  
> "templates" and "commercial" (or "paid") tags on it. At least then 
> there's no surprises when some one clicks the link (thinking they 
> might get some free templates) only to find out that it's $12.95.
>
> -tg
>
>
> Podz wrote:
>> The thinking continues.....
>>
>> Should ALL help be offered through that forum? If we say free help can
>> be anywhere then people could use that as a front to then charge.
>>
>> Should we manually 'nofollow' all links in such a forum to cut down on
>> possible abuse? By this I mean someone offering help but they leave a
>> contact website which isn't actually the right one.
>>
>> P.

Not being a forum guru, but fairly active in the support forum, I think 
the free
an volonatary help offered there is a vluable asset, and as before ads and
commersial aspects of WordPress contributions should be held off.

Also I belive that manually fix "nofollows" would in the long run become a
burden for moderators. As was already done before, I think such thing 
should be
moderated to a halt, when it appears.

As inevitably commersial requests and offers, will come up as it has in some
cases, the Services forum may be needed, though I'd rather name it Commersial
forum. It should have a clear separation from the support forum, and no 
entries
from it should show up on the free support forum.

Enforcing tags, doesn't seem to be an option, as they are seldom used in the
support forum. ( Likwise people normally doesn't "close" threads at resolution
of a problem. )

I think such a commercial forum could be linked from the support forum with
someting like: "This is a free support forum for WordPress, the software.
If you request or offer payed sevices, please post in the anchor: [commercial
forum]."

And maybe: "If you are a wordpress.com user go to 
anchor:[wordpress.com/forum]."

References from the support forum to the commercial or services forum 
should be
moderated out, as for any other ads in the well known kind and polite 
manner ;)

IMO: Services forum yes - mixture no - one link only connection.

Opinion from a non moderator.
/Petit