Topic: Clear Forum Rules

I tried posting a topic on the 'Retro' forum last night linking to some 8-bit music a friend of mine creates, only for it to be immediately locked. I was encouraged to put links to my friend's 8-bit music in my signature. That's fine. I don't really understand why the topic was locked - esp. in a forum that doesn't seem to render a wealth of content that I was otherwise cluttering up. However, I took the moderator's zealous recommendation and put it in my signature. So, it got me thinking.

I remembered looking over the rules before I posted and didn't see anything like, 'You can't post videos or works of art'. That would make sense since I noticed several people had posted YouTube videos of 8-bit music but it wasn't music they had created. After looking further into the Retro forum, I noticed several topics had been locked where someone had tried to share some 'fan-made' art - weather it was a painting, a piece of music or something else. I thought this was peculiar and frivolous - esp. when you consider the lack of clearly delineated rules about posting original works of art.

So, my suggestion is simply, try adding something like the following to your forum rules:

You may not post fan-made works of art or music in the forums. If you created something you want to share, you're only allowed to share it in your signature. All other licensed, copyrighted work is fine, as long as you or someone you know didn't make it.

For my part, I'm disappointed in a rule like that because I believe everyone can benefit from exchanging fan art and ideas but if that is Nintendo Life's policy - they ought to make it better known.

Most of the time the mods here at NL are fairly lenient about that kind of thing, but making a thread for the sole purpose of advertising something is one thing that we don't do here.

Advertising would imply some kind of monetary benefit. This was a YouTube video of 8-bit music in a Retro forum. Not only is it relevant - it's free. Other people tried to share a painting they had made. Those topics were locked, too. I'm not asking for leniency, I'm suggesting clearer rules.

Clearer rules sounds like a good suggestion. But NintendoLife likes to keep the forums nice and tidy. With that, the moderators try their hardest to keep multiple topics that share the same goal, at a bare minimal.

Basically your topic falls into an already existing topic and can be shared, viewed and commented on from that outlet.

I'm afraid your thread fell under the 'no advertisement' rule, and you're right — we haven't spelled that out publicly in our Rules. We have been actively enforcing it for years, though, and it greatly cuts down on spam from users with their own websites, blogs, forums, YouTube channels, kickstarter projects, friends' fanmovie projects or bands or websites, etc. and so forth signing up and posting for the sole purpose of advertising or link-dropping to our userbase. Our view is that if you have something to advertise, do it via your signature. That's what that space is there for, and as our users see you out and about contributing constructively to topics and threads across our site, they may choose to visit whatever you (or your friends) have to offer if they so desire. Plus, you get a lot more views that way as opposed to one lone topic on our forums, quickly buried.

I'll talk it over with Ant and see what he has to say about it. thank you for the feedback!