How I Search in Obsidian

[Gahrae]

This was the initial message from the forum moderator.

Final thoughts…

Just imagine having your contribution here being reduced to ‘minimal’. How much effort you put in and… ‘minimal’. How would you react?

My ratio of links to external content exceeded some non-specific limit, … that is, “right now”… on an old post … all because I let people know that I was excited to share new ideas in the future.

If you look through my posts you’ll see they were relevant (topic: share and showcase), helpful, and well received (hearts). This is what they want to prevent?

Go read these articles and imagine copying over the images, gifs, code samples, examples, and lengthy but understandable explanations. Would it read well here? Would it reach a wide audience here? Should this material be kept away?

The core issue is placement: Medium.

Ban Medium, take a clear stance. “We want to prevent authors from investing their time to create and share useful content.” Imagine a world where people aren’t motivated to trade their free time to do what others want: is this world paradise or baren?

The argument is “access isn’t unlimited, people only get so much free stuff before they have to wait or subscribe”.

This is the actual argument. A completely free location is fine but one without limitless access is not.

As an aside: Obsidian is free, we wait for free stuff, or we pay to get it all now. … This is exactly the same model. It motivates contribution and contribution fuels innovation.

The forum moderator has made the rules known: “no mentions of own Medium posts near or abouts 40% regardless of relevance”. And some gleefully cheer, “yay, no more stuff.”

Those are my final thoughts. I don’t need the rules re-explained. I won’t keep the conversation going. I will just put my efforts elsewhere.

I’ve enjoyed my time here. I really enjoyed the challenge some of the problems you’ve posed have been. But it was a wake up call that what I’ve been doing isn’t wanted. So I’m moving on.

[ryanjamurphy]

@Gahrae

what I’ve been doing

Yes, as has been discussed far too much here already, self-promotion and solicitation is strongly discouraged. The core issue is providing gated / paywalled content. It isn’t about Medium or any other platform and it isn’t about a percentage of content. That’s why there has to be a moderation judgment call about this behaviour.

It’s great that you want to develop a business model to create content about Obsidian. You are free to do so. You are simply not free to use Obsidian’s official community platforms to excessively promote paywalled content.

Let’s be grounded about what happened here. You weren’t banned for posting a link or had your stuff deleted. A moderator simply reached out to say that you’re running up against a potential Community Code of Conduct violation. That’s advice or, at worst, a soft warning.

It’s too bad you took this soft warning / guidance so harshly. An obvious, different, scenario could have played out here: one where, instead of getting defensive, you strove to understand the spirit of the Community Code of Conduct, took the advice, and continued to contribute to the community and build up the resources you were creating.

Many others have done this with great success! So, let’s not pretend that it is impossible to do, or that the rules create a chilly, anti-innovation environment for content creators.

I hope that others who happen upon this thread can see how that path was easily possible, and I hope you take the time to reflect on how this alternative path could have played out better for everyone.

[rigmarole]

Just to update, Gahrae and I have talked it out further, and he wished to add:

@Gahrae

Hi Obsidian Forum,
I’ve had some time to reflect on this exchange and the mods are definitely right about this. Paywalled content is not sharing, it is advertising. In the beginning none of my Medium posts were monetized. When they became eligible and this was turned on, I should have realized I was suddenly turning gifts into purchases. I want to publicly apologize to the mods. I certainly was not reacting appropriately to this discussion. My arguments for economic incentives were also very out of place in a community of free giving. I won’t be sharing links here to any future articles hosted on Medium. These two spaces will be kept separate in the future.

My apologies as well, for careless use of language in the original DM.