Overly promotional

1. 66

   Suspect20posted 15 years ago

   I just had a hub flagged as "overly promotional" and am a bit confused after reading the FAQ on this topic.
   
   A direct quote from the FAQ:
   
   "Please note that promotional links are links that you have any interest in promoting (your blog, your Website, affiliate offers, etc.). Links to well-known Web resources which you don't have any personal interest in (like Wikipedia, news sites, encyclopedias, open directories, etc.) are exempt from this limitation."
   
   My hub is
   
   http://hubpages.com/hub/Dragon-Age-Orig … are-PC-RPG
   
   It is a list of the most popular and useful mods that have been released for this particular game.  I am not affiliated with any of the mods I am promoting, and I am certainly not an employee of Bioware or any of the sites which host these mods.
   
   Is it really preferable to link to different file hosts, regardless of how reliable or unsafe they may be just for the sake of not repeating a domain link more than twice?  Or I need to break this hub up into multiple hubs of lesser quality in order to stay under the maximum link limit? 
   
   If I don't qualify for the exception which I quoted above then what exactly are my alternatives to share this information (which I think is quite useful)

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2. 65

   SandyMcCollumposted 15 years ago

   I went to the link and it said it isn't published anymore... I looked at another one of your hubs and it didn't seem overly promotional, you have eBay capsules and such. I don't know what was on the unpublished one, though. I am sorry I can't help you.

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3. 77

   sunforgedposted 15 years ago

   flagged and unpublished..means you cant link to it
   
   one of my first hubs was about Firefox add-ons, so I naturally linked to the firefox add-on site a lot.
   
   It was annoying to have to find alternate sources..but I did
   
   I believe a lot of reputable sites are whitelisted and dont bring up that flag though
   
   I would make hubgroups on any hubs that potentially would force me to run around looking for new link sources.
   
   I rather write 5 shorter hubs that link to the "safe and appropriate" source than 1 long one w/ less than perfect souces

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4. 66

   Suspect20posted 15 years ago

   I was thinking one of the site-admins would see this post to answer my question. I assumed they would be able to read the thread I linked.. or at least know how to view it.
   
   The Hub which got flagged as promotional linked to only two sites (http://social.bioware.com/  and  http://www.dragonagenexus.com/).  I was asking how either of the links above do not fall under the exception to the 2 link rule which I quoted in my original post.  I have no interest in promoting either site, neither of them are owned by or benefit me in any way.
   
   The error message I got on my hub says: "This flag was set based on a human review of this hub, and can only be cleared by HubPages staff".
   So someone read this hub and manually banned it for overly promotional. 
   
   The hub's main usefulness and appeal was that it created a single list for the most useful mods for this game.  There are not many additional hosts or sources of these files I could link to instead of the two I chose.  Breaking my hub into smaller hubs would defeat its entire purpose and really remove the need for it all together.
   
   
   On a related note, why is there no more direct reason given for this very general "overly promotional"?  If someone has already taken the time to read over and come up with a reason for flagging my hub, would it really require much additional effort to add either a direct contact method, or at the very least a clear reason for the hub violating this rule?

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   1. 66

      relacheposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      The way the rule works is you can't have more than two links to any singular domain in the Hub.  Did or does your Hub contain more than two links to either of those two sites?  If so, that's overly-promotional. 
      
      And if the sites you are linking to earn money in any way, they are commercial, you don't actually have to own or benefit from them.

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5. 86

   Marisa Wrightposted 15 years ago

   As Relache said, it's fine to link to those two sites.  You just can't link to each site more than twice. 
   
   The rules are set for good reasons.  As with any rule, it's inevitable that some genuine users will get caught in a rule made to catch spammers out.  However in general, it shouldn't be necessary to link more than twice to any site - you've given your reader the link to the other site, surely it's not so badly organised they can't find all the information they need by navigating within the site?

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