Update to Project Showcase posting policy

Privacy Guides changed its forum policy so that Project Showcase posts are only allowed from @verified users, a group limited to tools recommended on the Privacy Guides website, with no exceptions. The team said a rise in low-effort, AI-generated submissions had made review an unmanageable moderation workload that harmed operations, and it confirmed that self-promotion remains permitted only in the Project Showcase category, including for @verified users. Developers and media users can still participate in community threads to answer questions about their own products, but project or product posts from them are no longer allowed.

Hello everyone, After careful consideration, the team has decided to change how the General Project Showcase https://discuss.privacyguides.net/c/privacy/showcase/13 category works. What’s changing Last months we’ve seen a increase in low-effort, AI-generated submissions being sumbitted to the showcase category. Reviewing these submissions has become a significant and growing workload for our moderation team. For moderators, like myself, it has deemed impossible to keep on track with the workload. We prioritized moderation concerns with the community issues, however this left our inbox full of items to review, which harmed the operations. As result of this showcase posts are no longer open to all members . Going forward, showcase posts are only allowed from @verified https://discuss.privacyguides.net/ users . The verified group is for tools whom are recommended on the website. There are no exceptions possible. Self-promotion The Project Showcase category is the only place on this forum where self-promotion is permitted . This now also applies to @verified https://discuss.privacyguides.net/groups/verified users. Outside of Showcase, promotional posts will continue to be removed. If you see self-promotion elsewhere please do flag the post so moderators can take care of it. A note to developers and media @developers https://discuss.privacyguides.net/ and @media https://discuss.privacyguides.net/ users are of course still very much welcome to participate in community threads in particular to clarify details and answer questions about their own products and services. We value your input. The change is aimed at the spam, not at legitimate participation, but unfortunately means we will no longer allow project or product posts from you on the forum. We realize this is not good news for those who have put hard work in contributions to open source software, we hope you respect our decision to prioritize the forum experience and protect our moderation workload. Where to find the updated rules The full, updated rules for the category can be found here: About the Project Showcase category https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/about-the-project-showcase-category/114 . If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to ask below. Team Privacy Guides 1 Like What do you mean by product posts? Posts about a product someone made in the broadest way. So from github project to a VPN service. Doesn’t matter. Do you have a suggestion to make it more clear? Does it mean a person working on a project isn’t allowed to talk about the project unless it’s a project showcase or a question about their product? ph00lt0 https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/ph00lt0 5 They are not allowed to promote their own project. Only @verified https://discuss.privacyguides.net/groups/verified users are allowed to do so. So basically no more, “Hey, I’m working on this thing…” or “I’ve updated this thing…” unless you’re verified? lanedirt https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/lanedirt Leendert 8 Unfortunate to hear, but I understand the need to keep the moderation workload manageable with the increase in posts and/or being able to vet each one properly. As a developer, I have really valued being able to share progress and discuss feedback with this community for almost 2 years. I have received a lot of suggestions in this time, and many improvements have been implemented thanks to PrivacyGuides’ community. It’s unfortunate to lose that opportunity for projects that aren’t yet recommended, but I appreciate the work involved in keeping the forum useful 7 Likes maqp https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/maqp Markus Ottela 9 Does this cover projects that already have a thread already or just new ones? Am I allowed to edit some last message to put important information there or will that bump it to top and cause burden to mods? ph00lt0 https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/ph00lt0 10 existing threads will stay as they are but we won’t be allowing product updates in them from the project maintainers unless it is responding to a question. maqp https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/maqp Markus Ottela 11 This enables those who bother making a sockpuppet account to keep asking questions and keep it on top, while legit projects can’t even announce e.g. vulnerabilities and the need to update without gaming it themselves :T Are you sure you wouldn’t consider a “not endorsed” group that’s lives below the verified that legit projects could slowly be added to when you find the time? I wouldn’t care if the queue to that group has 6 months of wait time. 1 Like Seems like a strange way to encourage discussion and support projects and developers. 2 Likes ph00lt0 https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/ph00lt0 13 this exactly what we had and it does not work as the amount of submissions cannot be handled in the review queue of the forum. When you or we are actually considering to add something, open a Site Development Tool Suggestions https://discuss.privacyguides.net/c/site-development/suggestions/6 and invite the developer in to answer questions. That way it is community first. As for suckpuppets, we have been pretty good at defending against that as far as I am concerned. The measure was mad not because people try to evade the rules but simply because of too many slop submissions and we cannot review dozens of them per day. maqp https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/maqp Markus Ottela 14 Ok, one more question: Will replies like this https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/most-anonymous-messaging-app-as-of-today/41334/4 break the rules? i.e. fair representation of personal project in proper context with conflict of interest announced? Or should I leave my work out in any circumstances, even when it would be the only option, i.e. if the person asking has threat model that includes attacks against the endpoint? ph00lt0 https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/ph00lt0 15 You should have done that anyway. This was never allowed. Self promotion was never allowed in replies like that. maqp https://discuss.privacyguides.net/u/maqp Markus Ottela 16 Yikes, sorry about that Message received 1 Like I think this is a very unfortunate decision. Of course I understand that reviewing all submissions is very time consuming and I appreciate the work you have done so far very much. But as you already mentioned, this change also prevents new or small privacy- and security-focussed projects from being able to present themselves here or discussing with the community here. Maybe it would be possible to leave reviewing/moderation to the community? For example a voting feature could be introduced similar to the tools suggestions voting . If a project gets a certain number of downvotes it gets automatically hidden. In addition to that, you could only allow showcase posts&votes from users that are active in the community for x amounts of weeks. Would that alone not severely reduce the amount of submissions? These are just some ideas. I think there can be a way where good/honest projects can still showcase themselves while also filtering out the slop/advertisement without them being much workload for the moderator team. Is there any gray area between self promotion and a developer mentioning their product if its a relevant response in a thread?