I'm sorry but I had to send an official warning to Darkangel, she posted and advertisement (as an annuncement) for an offer on a commercial site that was a decoy for selling something, she has been already told not to do it so I sent her the yellow card and motivated it in a PM. I've also deleted a picture from Alcide, he continued to post more than 1 picture per day even if he was told from me in 2 languages (english and italian   ). I told him the reasn why in an email hoping that he won't continue in avoiding the rules. I think that not to be lax on these things would preserve our credibility

As we already discussed.  I agree.

Talked to Alcide, it was a language problem, I said to him that's ok and to talk to me that speak the same language idf there is something he doesn't understand.

Talked to Darkangel, I removed the warning and said it, again, that's better to ask to the staff before doing it anymore. She looks upset, I hope that she'll become happy again.

I don't think she meant anything by it. Which will seem to her like some toes had been stepped on. I myself have done what she had said about the free software and what it is seems to be just take a questionare on their software and then after that go to a web site log in and get the software at the buy out cart. Upon the credit check out just simpley put the voucher number in and get the Shader LE for free. Very harmless and I don't see a problem because it was in the forum and she wasn't selling anything. Just trying to be a part of us and helping someone out like we do to get something free.

I would like to make an update. I just went down to the site and done about a
11 part questionare. It seems without hassle that I got this freebee valued at $79.99 at regular price without know hassles at all. Serial numbers included with a 389.2 download. As with us saying things about Daz giving away V3 I fell we where in error to call the ball so quickly. It is of same idea and thought to go out and get something that I truly believe she was like so many others including myself, just trying to be a good neighbor here at PF. Maybe before this happens we need to reevaluate things like this to be careful. If we are in the wrong it is like a lawsuit. Word gets around and soon no one will want to come here. We need to sit back and take a deep breath and think on this one.

I said her simply to ask a staff member before posting link to a commercial site.
I consider a "free product" a product that is free and that will reamin free forever. I don't want that we turn down the policy of the site for gaining more people, in this case it would be simple to add some porns and have tons of enthusiastic users. When no one will come to the site I'll close it and abandon 3d art. That's it.

Ok I guess.Just trying to through my two cents in.Sorry for the fuss,I didn't think that this would be made a big deal. After all I thought it was our way to show an opinion before this happened and finale. Davide my friend if you think that this was the right thing to do than I don't think there was any need to post it. After all it is your call on it and you are the owner of PF. But as far as the rules are if you stick with just no tolerance to the rules then it in a way confuses people. Like we have a law here to drive our cars. If one goes over 70 mph then it is either speeding or reckless driving. It is simple a law but has two meanings to it. If you have control over the car then it is speeding. But if you drive the car in an unskilled manner then it is reckless and a more bigger fine for the offence. This is just showing how rules can be and if it was breaking a rule or for the moment. At the moment something was given for free and for just giving a questionare got a $80 dollar model software for the "moment" free to the people who wanted it and a person just trying to post to tell people it was free to who wanted it for that moment.                                               

Tormie";p="31953 wrote: 

I'll close it and abandon 3d art. That's it.

I don't understand what brought this on but It sounds a bit harsh Torm.  

I do understand the idea of a free download item being offered even by a commercial firm.  Though this may look similar to the free purchase and download of V3, M3, A3, and Emotiguy from DAZ.  There is a critical difference in this instance.  With those models, they could be downloaded and used without any financial gain by DAZ or anyone else.  In this case the offer being posted here leads to Posetteforever being involved in the financial gain of two organizations.

The first being e-frontier, the survey was to help them determine how to best market one of their products for the greatest profit.  Also such marketing surveys often cost a huge amount money.  Doing it this way, the cost for the survey was minimal resulting in greater net profits for the company.

There are three interconnected sites.  The main site is Dreamslayer Artworks. The second is Dreamslayer Artworks Evolution for Anime and Manga art.  The third site is Darker Realms, it was started to hold works and discussion deemed to be too extreme for the main site.  All three sites operate like one much larger site they are owned by Armorbeast and DarkAngel is an admin of those sites, wish I will refer to as DA.

DA is free to its members to join, but it is a commercial site.  They have sponsors.  For contests the sponsors provide the prizes.  Such as for the PotW (Picture of the Week) winner gets a gift certificate for use at the sponsor's site.  The sponsors provide payments to DA.  In exchange for their payments DA and it staff are rewuired to promote those sponsors on their three sites and on other sites such as PF as well.  e-frontiers is one of DA's corporate sponsors.  Therefore, posting of the promotion at Posetteforever, was not such an altruistic act as it appeared to be on the surface.

The last time this happened, the promotion was removed by Tormie, and I spoke at some lentgh with her about PF policy, DSA policy, DSA obligations to their sponsors and talk about other admin issues.  Then we settled the issue with a friendly admin to admin agreement.  She was to post any realy free items just as any other member can.  However, any reguarding one of their sponsors or any conditional free items would have to be cleard by Tormie or myself prior to it being posted anywhere on PF.

I believe that is was an oversight on her part, in forgetting to having it clear first, as per our agreement.  Had she preseted it to us for approval, the wording would have been rejected since it was promotional copy provided by e-frontier.  The link itself would have been rejected because of the survey combined with it being a link to a sponsor of DA.

There is nothing wrong with what she did, excepet that it not compatible with the non-commercial policy of PF.

Kenny, the wrong thing I did is probably to have edited the post before showing it to the staff members, now you can't see it, but however, coming to PF and seeing a big advertisement in the front page saying e-frontier here, e-frontier there is not what I really wanted to see here. As pangor pointed Darkangel is involved commercially with those companies and it was not the first time we warned her not to use the site for advertisements, even if they are covered with a free gift.

If someone else would have posted it I would have probably edited the link and posted a PM to the user. I did the same to Darkangel, I simply added that it was not the first time so the warning become official, even because she come from a commercially involved site.

Maybe I'm a bit suspicious, but after some years of fighting against it I can consider myself an old FART on spam and spammers.

Probably we'll have to add a clearer rule for advertisements of free items, something like that a free resources can be advertised if and only if the resource will be free forever, not a special offer that after a week become a commercial product, this is spam, literally waht spam is, a decoy. This is due for the high respect we should have for people that make free stuff for nothing.
We had a kick of popularity in the last period because we are the only one site sharing VK's last car, this is (one of) our target: show the users free resources  to make their beautiful pictures, and hopefully host them too. If we fail it's obvious that this site will become a nonsense, one of the thousands 3d art sites full of banners and hidden advertisements, it should be clear that after three and more years of PF the site was never intended to be or become a way to gain money, I took the cents from my pockets, but it's not that someone has to be obliged with me, it's simply the only way that works for this site as it is, and believe me, about 80 dollars every year is something I can save simply without buying some candies . On other sites there are webmasters that looks like they are using the money for the bread to mantain the site, but they are liying, it's only an excuse to gain money. This is not our project here, we do it only for fun.

Kenny, the "censorship" I did with Darkangel is something I did because I couldn't bet on her good faith, maybe I was wrong, but actually I think I was true. I hope this can clear your doubts my friend

Now this is getting somewhere. I just needed some more insight on what was happenig. This clears it up. I agree and no problems with me as I see just what went on with the rules. Thanks for clearing it up Davide and Michael.   Time to move on and have fun as always.