I am confused

[lobos]

Recently I completed work on a script that would allow a Smarty Based Templating Solution for Joomla. The code is GPL and the soution is very nice for template designers to use. Excited my finally finishing this I rushed to the Joomla site to post my news, I also posted it in the templates forum as well.

[mod edit: removed self promotion link]

To my dismay i visited the forums today and noticed that my post had been wiped without any notification as to why by MMMedia .

Here is why I am confused and the only reasons that i can see why this is done are these:

1. Joomla does not welcome contributions
2. Joomla does not like GPL code
3. Jealously
4. An honest mistake

I like to think that 4 is the reason, because it could not possibly be the other 3, at least I hope not...

Kindest regards,

Lobos

[MMMedia]

I replied to the post regarding why it was removed.  Are you not notified of replies to your posts?

Edit: I will repeat the reason why your post was removed.

If you take a look at the rules located here:  http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,65.0.html  you will see that posts that are strictly made for self promotional purposes are forbidden.  You have now made more posts regarding your commercial product through out the forums today.

Please read through the rules.  Self promotional posts are not allowed.  You can submit a news article through the news.joomla.org website to let the community know of your product.

Quote from the rules:

# No commercial advertising is permitted.
# Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING eg. Posting and making excessive, inappropriate and unnecessary references to your products and websites is self promotion.

[ChiefGoFor]

I dug around in the trash and found MMMedia's reply to your post. I thought it was a very kind response. For the record, here is her response:

Hello Adam,

Welcome to the Joomla forums.  If you could please take a moment to look through the forum rules located here:  http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,65.0.html  you would see that self promotional posts are not allowed in the forums.  If you would like to submit a news item to news.joomla.org in the Commercial Template catagory to let people know about your product the link is here: http://www.joomla.org/content/blogcategory/0/33/

As this thread/post directly breaks the forum rules it is going to be removed from the forum. 

[lobos]

If you take a look at the rules located here:  http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,65.0.html  you will see that posts that are strictly made for self promotional purposes are forbidden.  You have now made more posts regarding your commercial product through out the forums today.

But it is not a commmercial product, The Webvida Theme Engine is GPL and free... and my posts "through out the forums today" have been offering people solutions to their problems...

Kindest regards,

Lobos

[MMMedia]

Your theming engine may be free, you sell templates for your theming engine through your website, and anyways regardless of free or commercial, continually linking to your site to promote your products is advertising/self promotion.

Your consideration is appreciated in keeping the forums free from advertising posts.  For your free products you can place a post in the Open Source Products for Jooma! forum located here: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,46.0.html  and you can still post news items regarding your products/projects on the news.joomla.org site.

Edited for clarity

[lobos]

Your theming engine may be free, you sell templates for your theming engine through your website, and anyways regardless of free or commercial, continually linking to your site to promote your products is advertising/self promotion.

Yes but when I am offering help to people in the templates forum that requires The Webvida Theme Engine (WTE) I need to give them a link to download it... otherwise they won't be able to download it and won´t be able to use my help.

Kindest regards,

Lobos

[MMMedia]

Can you not offer assistance in other ways?  Surely if you are as skilled as you seem to be you can offer assistance that does not involve people having to use your system.  Regardless, it is self promotion for your products.  It is not allowed.  There really is no way around it.  Your contribution of your system is appreciated, but must be treated the same way every other contribution is.

I also forgot to mention that you can submit your projects to the extensions.joomla.org site, there people can read about your product, download it, use it and review it for others.

[lobos]

OK, fair enough I get the picture Good bye then.