Hands up if you've been banished from the LitRPG Facebook page? * raises hand. I posted that I was looking for reviewers for an audio book for which I had free promo codes. And I got this: Your recent post has been reviewed and thusly deleted. It has been judged that you knew the laws set in place about self promo. I have hereby found you guilty of self promo on a non promo day and promoing without mod approval. The sentence is immediate banishment. I love the writing style. I must read one of his books So, maybe those of us who have been banished should get some kind of badge.
uggh so strict, competing with his audio ya see. I seriously think people deserve a warning, strike it sure, but warn them if they do it again then they're out.
If he banished a lot of people, then I suggest starting Banned by LitRPG, or Banned by Kong, FB group. If it becomes large enough, you might overtake him and rule FB LitRPG! If you kill the LitRPG group, I wonder what kind of magical item it would drop?
He does ban a lot of them, most are in the Society group (I help mod) I just think it's really harsh. I know there needs to be rules with promo days, we do it a lot in all the groups I'm in, and every group is different. But, straight out ban, is way OTT in my opinion.
Hah Tom! Truth be told, Dawn, I knew I was breaking their rules and that I'd probably get banished, so I'm not playing the 'how unfair, poor me' card. But then I had this community and others to fall back to: communities where there's no problem making announcements of such a nature in the appropriate place. I do, however, want to draw attention to the policemen (I use the term 'men' advisedly) who stand, stick in hand, in the background of that particular group. It's not the community group that I thought it was when I first joined and I'm sure many other LitRPG enthusiasts are equally misled. It is a clumsy attempt by a small number of authors to dominate the genre.
I don't understand why he would have a problem with people competing with him. That is the only reason I could see with him stopping something like this, unless it is to stop a flood of advertisements. 4 years ago when I got deep into writing what I was writing, I always got excited when more people came into my genre. It increased the exposure of the super nichey stuff I was doing and actually made it a recognized thing.
That... is amusingly pretentious. I mean, irrespective of the fact that you did break their rules, the person who wrote that deserves a swift smack upside the back of the head. If you, an author in the genre the facebook group was purportedly created to help expand, violated a rule so flagrantly that it requires a ban, you'd think they'd treat that with the seriousness that it actually deserves. I mean, really. I've been a mod on forums and other places that you have to smack down people breaking the rules, but doing it like that is absurd.
I started a writing group on Google+ years ago. I ran the place until they hit 50,000 members and then I turned it over to some of the moderators who worked with me. We were death on self-promotion, but that's because we had to be. When I first started the place, I encouraged authors to share what they were working on and tell us about their books, but I asked that they start a conversation with us. Allow people to get to know them. Know one listened. We had countless authors stop by and post links to their books without even so much as a single sentence of who they were or why they were there. So, I altered our policies for dealing with them. I started to leave comments on posts to explain what I wanted them to do and asked them to edit their post with the understanding that I would remove the post if they didn't comply. About 2% of the people edited their post. After several months of beating my head against the wall, I went to the moderators and told them that all of us were volunteers (including me) and that I didn't feel right about asking them to devote time trying to reason with these people who obviously had no interest in hearing from us. After that, we just started removing the posts without even leaving a comment. If someone posted their book again, we would ban them from the community. I say all of that because sometimes moderation is a matter of balancing what's good for the groups and for the volunteers who help maintain order. That being said, banning someone on their first offense does seem a bit heavy-handed. Here's a link to the group I used to run.
I made a post on LitRPG concerning gore in full immersion video games. Five minutes later, the post was deleted with no explanation. I considered myself warned and thus only reply to posts now in fear of being banned. That led me to LitRPG Society. I made the same post and had a great discussion. Loved the group. They were open to discussing LitRPG topics for both readers and writers. Made a new post on LitRPG Society today about everyone's favorite book covers. I was banned with no warning. I broke the subjective rule of, "Don't be a dick," by posting market research questions. From what I know, there's no rule about that... and it does relate to LitRPG. I thought I was creating discussion worthy material, though apparently I'm just a dick. I've apologized and asked to rejoin. Haven't heard back. Just venting a bit because I actually liked the group and respected Blaise. Sorry you were banned from Kong's group. I hope you get some good reviews for your new audio book. I don't have time right now for it, otherwise I'd ask for one of those codes. Good luck! Edit: I've been let back into the Society. I'll leave my post for venting purposes. Edit2: Blaise and I chatted a bunch. He seems pretty cool. Respect re-earned.
You know what will get you banned here? Being a bot peddling college courses from India. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, BOTS.
The only thing I ever dominate is the willing people who..... errr.... wait what was the topic again? Blaise has always been a cool guy from my few interactions with him.
Yup. Banned. Especially after pointing out that he was promoting his newsletter, and that that the group header was promoting his books etc.
I've avoided a ban, but largely because the only thing I've posted were book links. Even then I'd probably ditch them entirely if they kept on with that stupid "You must put this formatting in the back of your novel" nonsense.
Ok I know it was a bit harsh but the wording is hilarious!!!!! Odd though, since I joined the LitRpg group they kept sending me promos from different authors, maybe it's queued so as not overwhelm people?
I have missed great happenings in the realm.... Shameless self promotion is A-OK with me, the inequal allowance of self promotion is just sort of... obtuse. Not in a mean sense of the word, but just in a goofy looking triangle way. "Like, you're not even tryin here Triangle, get in the game!"
They briefly asked people to put a specially formatted ad in the back of their books if they wanted to advertise. Then pulled it back when there was a huge backlash.
