I received this message a couple of days ago:

You have been given a warning: You are posting in Blogs and Projects too frequently. Limit blog posts to no more than one post per week. Multiple and frequent posts are frowned upon here. Do not crosspost blogs, projects, and announcements - don't drown out your fellow indie devs. Your 9/2/22 blog entry has been removed for too-frequent blogging, drowning out your fellow indie devs.

Before I start complaining, I'll say I fully support and appreciate GameDev, plan to continue my GDNET+ membership indefinitely, etc. Great website. I've drifted in and out as far as actually participating over the years, but that's life. And of course I will fully comply with any rules regarding posting and so forth.

That said I have so many problems with this warning:

1. I really don't appreciate being given a warning like I am some sort of spammer or shill. Feels very hostile. I've posted 262 times over 14 years; that really doesn't seem excessive.
2. It's my dev blog, I should be able to post whenever I have news, regardless of how that affects GameDev. All IMO of course; perhaps the purpose of GameDev blogs has shifted over the years, but at one point it was marketed as a great place to host your own indie studio blog.
3. By that token, if the problem is my personal blog posts are drowning out other developers posts, the solution should be to reduce visibility of frequent posts rather than banning them. Are we just talking about the “Developer Blogs” section on the front page? Seems like a technical solution should be possible rather than arbitrary posting frequency rules.
4. If the one-per-week rule is to stay, why not just notify me before I make the post, instead of throwing away my carefully crafted post and giving me a warning for it?

Thank you for your consideration.

gdunbar said:
why not just notify me before I make the post, instead of throwing away my carefully crafted post and giving me a warning for it?

Fair enough. That's what should have happened.

What ever happened to the old saying about how beggars can’t be choosers?

gdunbar said:
I fully support and appreciate GameDev, plan to continue my GDNET+ membership indefinitely

taby said:
What ever happened to the old saying about how beggars can’t be choosers?

I like the saying about how one should keep mouth closed and appear to be a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Tom Sloper said:

gdunbar said:
why not just notify me before I make the post, instead of throwing away my carefully crafted post and giving me a warning for it?

Fair enough. That's what should have happened.

Thanks!

@fleabay

fleabay said:

gdunbar said:
I fully support and appreciate GameDev, plan to continue my GDNET+ membership indefinitely

taby said:
What ever happened to the old saying about how beggars can’t be choosers?

I like the saying about how one should keep mouth closed and appear to be a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Huh, how about that? It has been awhile since my credit card was charged. Fool I am.

What happened to GDNet+?

@gdunbar I was making a comment mostly as an observation, not towards you in any way.

The forums changed about 3 years ago. Looks like everyone that had a GD+ badge is stuck with it. I don't think they are any perks associated with it anymore so…

Regardless, new content getting posted is what keeps gamedev.net at the top of SEO searches. Without it, gamedev.net would sink fast and lose however many thousands it generates in ad rev per month.

The other 2 factors (gamedev.net name and huge general gamedev archive) won't matter as much without new content. Spam free of course.

@fleabay Huh, interestingly I have an email receipt for $3 for GDNet+ from August of 2021. So I guess I was supporting the cause longer than I had to! I didn't check my credit card statement to see if I was actually charged; doesn't really matter either way.

All I can add is that most of these checks are automated by design, because we don't have the staff levels to give everything personal attention. So we apologize where the checks are impersonal or make mistakes, but it's important to have some checks as otherwise spammers are able to game the system and make Gamedev.net worse for everyone. That is something that has been happening lately so the checks will probably get tweaked to try and strike a balance.