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With this question that has been deleted only a few minutes ago, a flaw in our What topics can I ask about here? Help Center article has been raised.

The question was where to buy credits online, talking about a "gold selling" website.

I do think those questions should be added to the "site policies prohibit questions of the following types:" part of the article as

"Gold selling" websites or unregistered in-game merchandise vendors.

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    That's pretty obviously not a real question, but a spam bot at work. I can't search deleted content, but I am starting to see a certain pattern (namely playerassist/gamegoldfast). No point in even trying to salvage those.
    – a cat
    Apr 16 '12 at 12:58
  • @lunboks So we might have a problem with our botcheck systems.
    – Fredy31 Mod
    Apr 16 '12 at 17:19
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I think instead of something specific (gold sales in MMOs) we should probably add something along the lines of:

Terms of Service (TOS) or End User License Agreement (EULA) violations

Which would cover things like this, as well as other similar concerns around violations of, say the Steam terms of service, or multiplayer hacks, etc.

EDIT: This may be problematic, given our stance on things such as emulation and jailbreaking... Trying to reformulate.

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  • It was sort of implied to me (on a question comment thread) that 'if we closed these questions it's because it's not cool to ask here' and that was 'enough'? Though I do think changing the Help article is a good idea.
    – Gwen
    Apr 16 '12 at 6:03
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    +1 for this. Questions about EVE Onlines Isk and PLC markets (which are wholly unregulated third party RMT markets), or the upcoming Diablo cash shop (which is a more traditional, controlled RMT environment) seem entirely germane (so long as they don't devolve to website-Rec) and are not problematic the way TOS violations are.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Apr 16 '12 at 13:04
  • You talked about the D3 Marketplace... Question about that one would be accepted because being official stuff, it's not against the TOS or EULA. But should we accept the questions in the like of "What would be a good price for [insert item name here]?"
    – Fredy31 Mod
    Apr 16 '12 at 14:31
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    @Fredy31 I think it would be a horrible idea for us to start accepting Price Check requests. Games usually have entire forums dedicated to those thread requests and I think it could quickly spiral out of control, invite poor answers, and be too unwieldy to maintain. We've accepted more general questions about ingame economies (Earning SWTOR credits, Earning enough isk to play Eve for free) and I think we've handled those well.
    – FAE
    Apr 16 '12 at 14:44
  • More general questions like those can be acceptable, IMO, as the micro- and macroeconomics of some games kind of require the somewhat strategic "Good Subjective" questions we can excel at, as long as the we keep the answers updated. However, I think allowing individual price checks on items would just create a mess for us and end up flooding the site.
    – FAE
    Apr 16 '12 at 14:46
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    @Agent86 just drop EULA. Jailbreaking and emulation should be in the clear then, and all the stuff we actually care about is going to be defined relative to the Terms of Service if an active subscription service.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Apr 17 '12 at 20:28
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It's already covered in the FAQ:

Please note, however, that site policies prohibit questions of the following types:

  • [...]
  • Shopping advice and recommendations

But this is sort of a red herring: as lunboks mentions, it's clearly a spam bot. Spamming is against the Terms of Service:

Spam, personal attacks, and abusive language do not have a place on the Stack Exchange Network.

Even good-faith promotion requires disclosure:

Be careful, because the community frowns on overt self-promotion and tends to vote it down and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.

The FAQ isn't meant to be a comprehensive document: where if it's not in the FAQ, it's okay. It's never going to cover every possible edge case or situation, and I fear we might've lost our way if we can't delete obvious gold farm spam without adding yet another line to it.

That is, if you're inclined to create questions to spam links to gold farm websites, a line in the FAQ isn't going to magically change your ways and prevent you from doing so.

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    We've also had a few innocently intended (I.e. non-spam) questions about power levelling services in MMOs where that's not welcome etc. clarifying the FAQ to prohibit TOS violations makes sense, even if in THIS PARTICULAR case, there are other grounds to burninate the question.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Apr 16 '12 at 22:10
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz those would still be covered by the no shopping recommendations clause, I would think.
    – user3389
    Apr 17 '12 at 14:12
  • Not all are recommendations. I seem to remember a question about how to protect a wow account while using a power levelling service, for example.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Apr 17 '12 at 15:01
  • Such a clause also gives us a nice blanket rule that we can use to shutdown questions about online multiplayer cheating and hacks, etc.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Apr 17 '12 at 15:03

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