LPR001 posted at 9:07PM Sat, 27 February 2016 - #4257552

**Links to known, safe, established websites are not being banned. If you want to link to a tutorial on YouTube, Vimeo or Lynda.com, info/install guides pages on Smith Micro or DAZ, and links of that nature are accepted. ** If you have a blog and want to share your tutorial then pick the link up from the host ie YouTube etc and that would be fine. Since the majority of videos are hosted by the majors and streamed to your blog I don't think anything has changed with the tutorials as far as being made available.

I don't think Renderosity ever intended to have a rule where anyone was expected to miss out on the valuable resource of learning their craft.

3DFineries posted at 9:08PM Sat, 27 February 2016 - #4257520

It is all off-site linking to competitive sites. Not just in the free section but also in signatures & posts, so if you have a link your signature expect a message as soon as we can get to it. Additionally, offsite linking to other marketplaces or freestuff sites are not allowed within the forum, gallery, or forum signatures. For example: Links to competing stores like Daz3d.com, RuntimeDNA.com, etc are not allowed. However, links to non-competing stores like Etsy.com or Ebay.com are acceptable.

And please don't shoot the messengers. We're just doing our jobs by following the rules. Please & thank you.

I don't want to shoot the messengers. But I do wish you would talk to each other, decide what the rules actually, really, truly, finally ARE, and then let us know. As long as, you're contradicting each other -- in the same thread, even -- how are we supposed to have any idea what's going on?

There's nothing worse than having one mod say, "Yes, that's fine," and then have another turn around and delete something and then give you a warning as well, as though you're some kind of reprobate who refuses to abide by the TOS.

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Anyway, I am not going to post help to newbie users if I am going to be hamstrung. If I can't link to tutorials -- no matter where they are --, if I can't link to freebie scripts and other products that help to solve a problem or are necessary to perform some function, then I'm not going to post any help because it's just not worth it doing dances around a TOS that is against everything the World Wide Web stands for.

Linking is the FOUNDATION of the web. It's what makes the internet the super connected source of information and sharing that it is today.

To be sure, a marketplace's Google rank is, in fact, still largely determined by the number and quality of its links. But any site that limits the outgoing links, in a misguided effort to prevent the loss of sales, is going to lose far more than it gains.

If I link to a tutorial on Daz in a forum post that helps a newbie, the newbie will watch or read the tutorial -- and they MAY decide to browse the Daz marketplace. Or they may bookmark the tute, close that tab, and return to Rendo's forums to thank the person who made the link.

If I can't link to that tutorial, but must, instead, give directions about how to search for it, that newbie will almost certainly end up on Daz's marketplace while they are looking for the tutorial -- and they are far more likely to get distracted and stay there.

Moreover, for every outgoing link to a freebie maker's site that Renderosity loses, it will also lose a quality incoming link. What is a quality link? It's a link to a site with a closely related topic or within the same industry.

Sure, links to Etsy and Ebay and so on are permitted, but Google has told us themselves that links both to and from sites which are unrelated to the topic or industry of the site in question are not considered "quality links". They are, in fact, more likely to drop your ranking because Google perceives lots of unrelated linking as being link farming. So, yeah, ban the quality links, encourage the low quality ones. See what happens.

I used to make a living doing search engine optimization. I've seen sites buried by Google and for no other reason than that they tried to create a walled garden. Walled gardens are okay if you're Apple or Facebook. But if you have fewer than several hundred million users, setting one up is like cutting your throat. Google is deeply committed to the FOUNDATION of the world wide web -- that is, the LINK: they made and continue to make their living from it. And any not-enormous site that tries to go against the philosophy of free information flow through the technology of the LINK is going to be hurt by Google.

My $20's worth. Take it or leave it.

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