gunmetal
My currently pending submission (http://n4g.com/NewsPending-392972.aspx) was reported as spam with the explanation "No contests."
I've been through the posting guidelines, and did a quick forums search to see if I could find anything to back this up, but have come up empty. I PM'ed the reporting user for clarification, but thought I would post it here as well.
I see articles on the front page currently linking to posts offering free beta keys and the likes.... I guess I don't understand why those "Make a comment to enter to win" articles are so different from the one I posted?
Any guidance would be appreciated. I don't want to post stories inappropriate to this site, but I would think a giveaway of a full game would be every bit as interesting as those beta key giveaway posts we see constantly.
Since, I'm that member, I'll give you my reply here. For one, I think Cat sums it up right there. This is sort of one of those unwritten rules to a degree I guess. Much like Youtube not being a valid source, amongst other things.
Here's my take though: As far as I'm concerned, all sites' personal contests (especially when asking to register and jump through hoops to enter) I will in fact report when I see them. Not going to change. As far as I'm concerned, "personal" contests like that are meant to be advertised on your site, for your users. Not all across the web. The only contests I see as acceptable are ones that the developers themselves have. Like the stuff Cat mentioned earlier: Pixeljunk's contest to name their game, or a more recent example is FreeVerse's name a planet contest. This is what I was taught.
Obviously your contest got approved, so there's no reason to get upset about it. Using previous approvals of contests just doesn't fly as validation though as PLENTY things on here get approved that shouldn't. Just look how busy the "Report Problematic Stories" thread is to verify that, and that's probably not even half of it.
Plain and simple, it's probably more one of those "open to interpretation" things right now, so it will be a sort of roll of the dice for you if posting contests in the future. Depending on who's around when you post it, it may get approved or it might fail. Trust me though, I'm not the only one that would report it as spam like that. And sorry to say, if I'm around, I will report any others in the future as well. Cat's post above you describes my thoughts on it to a T pretty much. Site contest=no...report. Developer contest=fine.
