An announcement by a manufacturer of a forthcoming product using Roon Bridge in the Audio Products section is within the guidelines, provided the commercial affiliation is transparently disclosed. Any spamming into other threads would be removed.
Commercial affiliation is currently disclosed by a title with the name of the company or firm.
It’s been suggested that such announcements should either not be allowed or that some better disclosure should be required.
This thread is to discuss what users would like to see as regards such announcements. Ultimately the Forum guidelines will be determined by Roon, but we can let them know what we would like to see.
The problem with so egregious an advertising post as in @Orchard_Audio’s thread, semi-transparent or not, on this user forum is that it comes across as an endorsement on Roon’s part.
Roon’s policy is to not allow advertising on the forum, which is what the vendor’s other post is, plain and simple.
When Roon has a flag, where one of the bullets talks about advertising and spam, I don’t think they are just referring to adverts about low mortgage rates or baldness remedies.
Don’t know - seems like the TOS isn’t very specific regarding this. But anyway I’m with you in that content of this kind should be clearly marked as what it is and probably more explicitly than it currently is possible.
I could think of one thing which may help to avoid confusion and also “obfuscation”:
A dedicated user type like “company” or “commercial entity” with a clear indication of that user type. Dunno if that’s easily possible with Discourse - and it would require those users to properly identify their interest when creating such an account. Maybe those user accounts should be available just on request so some preliminary checks could be made by admins and/or Roonlabs.
It looks to me like most (all?) users who somehow have a business stake in what they post are already voluntarily doing something along this line - but it might be helpful if there’d be an easily recognizable standard for this.
Additionally, the ToS could require a disclaimer for product announcement posts which are made by commercial entities. Probably some keywords in the post title would be enough.
Does this mean I shouldn’t post about how I made $3600 working from home on the internet last month? Or about my
$1200 speaker cables I made on my kitchen table that lift the veil (that I sell on eBay and Fulfilled by Amazon)?
Roon forum has been an advertising medium for a handful of “value added” vendors since day 1 and it’s always come off like a Roon endorsement. Throw a few fanboi’s in the mix and no doubt plenty “value” was added. Why the sudden change of heart?
There is a clear difference between a poster who comes here to announce a product that works with Roon via a third party like Ropieee, and someone who comes here to promote a product as an alternative to Roon. JustBoom, Allo and more recently Orchard have done this and it has been fine. They have been respectful of the readers and have not pushed their products into places they don’t belong like onto other product threads. Things are good as they are. But an announcement section might stop the overly sensitive from seeing things they have a problem with.
Not sure who you are asking about a change of heart, but there hasn’t been a change to the Forum guidelines. This thread is for discussing whether there should be a change and what users want to see.
Two things I’m struggling to understand:
How is a title with the firm/company name and title not sufficient transparent disclosure of a commercial interest ? Has anyone actually been confused or are we concerned that some hypothetical user could be confused if they failed to read the title ? This kind of thinking is what leads to ticking two boxes before we can delete.
How is information provided by a disclosed commercial interest on the Forum regarded as an endorsement by Roon ? Even the Roon Ready and Roon Tested partner programmes are limited to testing particular aspects. The Roon Staff are very careful about not commenting on products. That’s what users can do that Staff don’t. Do we not want to hear from Jussi and other industry figures ? I think their participation has generally been a healthy thing for the Forum.
I think the current arrangements are pretty good. Industry figures are welcome if they transparently disclose. They can tell us what they are doing but can also expect some robust discussion. If they engage in marketing hyperbole they can be called out on it, provided we don’t engage in gratuitous abuse. I thought the Pecan-Pi thread worked pretty well in that regard. The Community cocked a collective eyebrow and said “Really … ?”.
We are endorsed by Roon…Sonore is a certified partner. The discussion above seems to about companies making Roon Bridge devices which are not certified. We only make RoonReady certified devices. You said this site “should” be for answering questions, but who is going to need questions answered if they don’t know new products exist. Also, you failed to look at those threads to see all the questions I have answered in them. In my opinion this forum “should” not be a cheap way for you discredit a company.
I see that many people (mods included) would disagree with me, so I recant my objections.
Still, the question that is not answered is as to what advertising Roon is referring to when, in the sub-menu that pops up when flagging a post, there is a bullet item to check that refers to advertising.
What constitutes advertising that is disallowed? Certainly, that’s not referring to adverts for non-stick cookware, etc.
True, Roon endorses your product as being Roon Ready. If it has made any other judgement about it, I’ve never seen it. To subtly conflate Roon’s endorsement as to a product’s Roon Readiness with any other qualities that might be proclaimed. is exactly the practice (by many vendors) that I am trying to communicate against.
I am believing that this forum is not the only place people get info about a hobby so dear to them.
Don’t know how I discredited your company, but my apologies for hurting your feelings.
I think the moderators (and the community at large) do a great job ensuring there’s no spam on the community site, but I would draw a distinction between spam and “commercial announcements” that are relevant and beneficial to the community.
Generally speaking, when a manufacturer comes here to announce a product that’s legitimately related to Roon, and also engages with members of the community, I think that’s worthwhile. The requirement (as mentioned in our guidelines) is that they’re transparent about their affiliations – there shouldn’t be any doubt that the post is announcing a product the poster has a commercial interest in.
Obviously, there were some issues with a recently-announced product but those issues are now resolved, and that happened because the poster was engaging with the community. So from my perspective, the system is working just as we’d hope.
In the future, if anyone feels like commercial affiliations are not being properly disclosed, or if you feel a poster has crossed the line from transparently announcing their product to spamming the community site generally, please flag the post so moderators and Roon staff can look into it.
We appreciate the feedback from the community, and we’re also really happy to see manufacturers and partners engaging with Roon members and getting feedback from the community, and this is something we hope to see more of, not less.