I've been warned for spam and advertising, with simply sharing my music tracks for free on gumroad, music in which I put so much time. You cant even give something for free these days. Can someone explain me what is happening? Regards, Marcin Klosowski

Your topic looked like spam to someone.

Don’t take it personally.


L. Spiro

Looking at the warning, it seems this was your first post, it is an ad, and it was posted in Your Announcements. 

If you browse through the rules of Your Announcements found under "Does My [Your] Post Belong Here?" there is a quick guide which explains what goes there.  Notice this line:

• Forum restrictions: To post in Your Announcements members must show a minimum amount of participation (5 posts) elsewhere on the site (forum posts or replies, blog entries or comments, etc.) before being allowed to post.

Also notice the requirements that it both be useful to other people AND that you must be an active contributor to the community.

It looks like you got a warning that says to (direct quote) "please participate in our community before posting an advertisement in our Your Announcement board." The warning expires in 20 days.

As harsh as it may sound, I think it is a good warning.  We love announcements and site members talking about things they've done, giving links to their projects, and announcing their successes.  But we are first and foremost a discussion board, so if you haven't been contributing to discussions then you aren't really a site member, you're just looking for a place to advertise your wares without paying for running the ads. 

It is easily addressed for the future: contribute to more discussions.  Once you're an active forum member, we'd love to see your announcements about products you've created.

It looks like you also posted a copy of your ad to The Lounge, which is not allowed.  While it is great that you are offering 12 music tracks for free, that is not a discussion for a discussion board. It is still an ad asking people to go download your stuff.

Thanks for the explanation, and I'm so sorry for misunderstanding forum rules. I simply don't have a lot of experience with any forums. Regards to all.

10 hours ago, frob said:

It looks like you got a warning that says to (direct quote) "please participate in our community before posting an advertisement in our Your Announcement board." The warning expires in 20 days.

As harsh as it may sound, I think it is a good warning. 

I don't know, to be honest it seems to me like just deleting the post and sending the member a message would probably have been more than sufficient, given that this is pretty clearly an honest mistake (and especially now that this person has gone to the trouble of trying to learn from their mistake).

Besides, a 20 day warning doesn't really seem like it'd accomplish anything unless the member was already planning to continue participating in the community for at least another 20 days. If anything, it seems like it'd discourage someone from being an active member of the community, whereas someone who made one post and then left forever wouldn't even know they'd gotten a warning.

If there's really such a commitment to enforcing this rule, why not just have the forum software automatically disable posting until some minimum threshold of participation is met? At least it'd ensure consistency in enforcing this kind of thing, because right now I feel like it's a bit haphazard -- those weird "Kenneth Eng" posts are still around, for example, and that guy seemed to be deliberately failing to be a productive member of the community, even after having the situation explained to him repeatedly.

I guess I just prefer to err on the side of having a welcoming community that can be flexible about this kind of thing, rather than one that says "nope, not going to remove your 20 day warning even though you apologized and tried to understand what you did wrong. Rules are rules, no flexibility, etc." Anyway, that's what I think.

10 hours ago, cowsarenotevil said:

Besides, a 20 day warning doesn't really seem like it'd accomplish anything unless the member was already planning to continue participating in the community for at least another 20 days.

It's a warning point. The 1-point warning does not affect the user's ability to participate in the community in any way.