User Guidelines Update Regarding Videos and Self-Promotion

[Patrick]

Hello,

Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com.

We have always had pretty strict guidelines regarding self-promotion within our community. They have served us well and helped to create the high level of discussion that we enjoy here.

As time passes, more and more people share video in our forums. This is a good thing because there are plenty of discussions here that can be aided by visuals - such as technique demonstrations and competition footage. However, as people create video and post it here, we have noticed that some have included tasteful branding in their videos - usually for their martial arts school or a resource that they run.

This creates a potential conflict with our guidelines regarding self-promotion. Today, after a lot of thought and discussion amongst the staff, we have made an adjustment to our guidelines to clarify that conflict. We want to encourage people to share video here, as long as they are committed to being a member of our community - not just someone looking for video views. As such, we are relaxing our guidelines on self-promotion, as they apply to video, to allow for light, tasteful branding.

Here is the new policy, in full:

Videos may include light branding in good taste, such as a watermark or the mention of an organization and link at the start and end. However, the video must be used to encourage conversation here. If you are posting a video as the start of a thread, you can't just post a link to a video. You must begin a discussion that exists here. This is a place to start conversations, not simply drop links to videos. If you are responding to an existing thread, the video must add value to the conversation and speak directly to what people are talking about.

This should only be done where a video offers a visual that will enhance a discussion, including competition footage and the demonstration of techniques. In those cases, a video is a worthwhile visual aid. A video, where you talk about why McDojos are bad, does not offer a necessary visual. Instead, you should just start a discussion on that topic and not include the video.

When sharing a video, please post a link directly to the video hosted on a third party video sharing site, like YouTube. Please do not embed it on your website and then link to your website. Please do not tell people, in your post here, that they should comment on another website, subscribe to your channel, etc.

If it becomes clear that you are only here to post links to your videos, and not to engage with the community at large, we will restrict your ability to share videos.

This policy applies only to videos that include branding of companies, organizations, products or websites that are affiliated with the person sharing the video.

I'd like to provide some examples to help illustrate how this will work.

What does tasteful branding look like? Please see

and

.

What does it mean for a video to start a discussion here? Please see this post.

What does it mean for a video to add value to a discussion as a reply? Please see this reply.

Our goal is to encourage people to share videos they create, including a plug for their own school or website (much like a signature link at the bottom of your posts in the forums), but to discourage video sharing that feels exploitative to our community or overtly self-promotional.

If you have any questions regarding this new policy, please do not hesitate to ask, either here or via private message.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Patrick