What Constitutes Advertising?

[Fax Celestis]

I'm in a spot now where I'm ready to start putting out a beta of my d20 Rebirth project, but I'm a little leery about saying anything about sale or similar due to that "Bannable Offenses: Commercial (For-Profit) Advertising" clause in the Rules of Posting. Can I ask a moderator to draw a clear line what's okay and what isn't?

Mostly, I'm curious if I link in my signature to an off-site location that has a product for sale, does that count? What about a forum post lauding it's release? What if I'm interviewed by a forum-member? Can I make a post saying "blah blah these were my purposes, this is what I did, and you can see it over here [link to index thread] or buy it here [link to book] for $X"?

[Roland St. Jude]

The most important provision for your purposes is:


You may always advertise or link to works of art online, such as other webcomics, fiction sites, music sites, or anything else that generates original artistic content—even if that site also makes a profit off of that work. We don't want the rules against advertising to prevent people from discovering new creative works that they will love, and don't want to penalize artists for trying to make a living off of their work. However, if a site only resells creative work and does not have any of that work available online, then it is primarily a commercial site and cannot be advertised here.

You can link to your own site about the project, even if your purpose is to introduce us to some product for sale, as long as that project is original artistic content. Linking to a reseller would seem to be prohibited, but you could do that on your own page, I suppose.

Just be sure to do your linking in a way that is not spammy (such as cross-posting, multiple threads, etc.)

[Fax Celestis]

Good, then, I think I can keep within those bounds.