Disappearing posts

[Prem Chudzinski _extensi_]

I’m having some troubles with some of my answers posted on the community.atlassian.com

For example, yesterday I’ve suggested a solution for:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-Software-questions/Set-Quick-Filter-as-Default/qaq-p/116230

Today my answer is gone and "COMMENTS CLOSED”.

What is happening?

[Monique vdB]

Huh, that's strange. @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-, any idea of what's happening there?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They look like spam to me.  Adverts posted, irrelevant or wrong, on old threads (necroposting).

[Monique vdB]

@Prem Chudzinski _extensi_ can you post an example of your reply? It's possible your reply was removed due to our terms of use.

[Prem Chudzinski _extensi_]

Hi @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-,  @Monique vdB

Why an add-on based solution\answer should be considered as spam? Yes we're marketplace vendors so it in our business to make sure customers are familiar with our products. And if we manage to solve their problems we create a post. Growing marketplace is a win for Atlassian, experts and vendors. That is one of our main marketing channels. And a lot of other vendors do the same.

Regarding "necroposts" Its 2017 and now we've got a fixes for Questions backdated to 2012-16. If in the future someone will have a similar question, he'll be able to get an answer or hint how his issue can be solved by using the atlassian community search engine.

In my opinion this is how we build a good knowledge base. If that is not the case the search engine should archive old answers and close them automatically after a certain period of inactivity\time. 

I've reviewed the terms of use and can't find anything about add-on advertisement (Especially if they provide a solution\hint\new approach\answer for the Question - its a contribution). The same goes to a maximum time for an answer. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Samples of our content - we try to be accurate and not introduce any kind of spam. At the end we often provide the only or at least alternative solution.

1. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-questions/Quick-filters-in-Jira-7-1-6/qaq-p/55062
2. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-questions/Allow-users-to-create-Quick-Filters-in-KanBan-boards/qaq-p/18#U624179
3. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-questions/Bulk-changes-in-Scrum-Rapid-Board/qaq-p/339829
4. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-Software-questions/How-can-I-hide-or-remove-an-epic-that-has-been-done-from-my/qaq-p/591034#U623754
5. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-questions/How-can-I-write-a-quick-filter-that-takes-user-input/qaq-p/421149#U624193
6. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-Core-questions/How-can-I-print-Jira-agile-cards-for-items-that-have-been-added/qaq-p/308306
7. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/How-to-add-a-components-panel-to-the-backlog-view/qaq-p/527885#U623816

It would be nice to get a notification that something has been marked as spam to be able to review it and fix the answer.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Spam is generally defined as unsolicited commercial email.

When you post an advert on an old thread, it mails watchers.  Including people who may no longer be interested, becasue the discussion has ended. That is spam.

Necroposting is a post or comment made on a forum thread that is very old.  This type of posting is often done by people who have accidentally stumbled on a thread because of a search and simply have not realised it was not active.  It is also used to try to boost search terms in a system in favour of a (usually malicious or costly) result set.  

On top of that, necroposting can cause confusion - you did it on https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-Core-questions/Kanban-board-Quick-filter-input-field/qaq-p/203332 - which Phill then took the time to update to make it make sense again.  Most people won't make that effort, which makes the content poorer and less useful.

Why do I say "advert"?  Because it's "please buy my product" and is not necessarily helpful.  A good model to imagine is: 

I was using Cloud.  I got stuck because I could not do something with JIRA.  Someone tells me "move to Server and buy my product".  That is clearly an unsolicted, unwanted, and functionally useless answer, because the product does not work for me on Cloud. 

Now imagine that arrived in my in box three years after I asked the question.  I might not even be using JIRA any more.  It's spam.

There's a good post on advertising etiquette over at https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Mod-Chat-questions/Starting-Discussion-On-Plugin/qaq-p/581125

[Monique vdB]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- note that @Prem Chudzinski _extensi_ won't be able to see that, as it's in the mod space.

Note that our community guidelines do state: "Don’t push your services or products here. Messages with the explicit intent to sell a product or service will be removed at the discretion of our moderators."

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, thanks Monique.  That's a good summary of the guideline given there for us!

[Prem Chudzinski _extensi_]

OK I get your point.

In that case why not close all threads (posts) older than 12 months by default? 

How can we assume that something asked 2-3 years ago is not valid anymore. I often try to find something here and simply can't. The search results give 2-3-10 similar posts asking the same - no answer provided, as at the time there was no solution. So I'd love to see an update from someone rather having to duplicate the question. 

I assume a user who will see 10 answers saying there is no solution will not ask again nor review 2500 adons on the marketplace but look for an alternative tool.

If you look at stack overflow they would mark all the answers as duplicate and create links.

Maybe a notification scheme could be introduced - if post older than 6 months don't notify anyone unless mentioned using @ character??

The move to cloud example - whats wrong in that? If moving to cloud + getting an add-on solves someones issue\limitation\problem, is it a bad solution? Maybe that is not the most elegant solution but the poor guy will at least have an alternative. 

At the end this is general question to Atlassian (@Monique van den Berg) if vendors can use Atlassian answers to provide solutions "advertising" more or less their add-ons or not and will that be considered as bad practice. 

PS. I'm not able to access the provided link - no privileges.

[Prem Chudzinski _extensi_]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-, @Monique vdB Sorry I've not seen your previous answers before posting mine.

Anyway I think my questions are still valid.