Am I allowed to post a link to my website?

[jeffery_winkle]

When I first joined Physics Forums, the first thing I did was post a message in the "Introduce Yourself" section, where I included a link to my website. When I next visited the site, not only was the message removed, but I was completely banned from the entire website. I had to literally join again using one of my other email addresses. The only reason you gave for banning me was the word "spam". What spam? "Spam" is where a con artist sends unsolicited emails to unsuspecting people to try to lure them into a bogus get-rich-quick scheme or pyramid scheme. I can't imagine why someone would falsely accuse me of doing something like that. My only guess is that this had something to do with the fact that I posted a link to my website. So I concluded that if someomne makes the innocent mistake of posting a link to their website that they are, without warning, permanently banned from Physics Forums. Wow! You must really not want people to post links to their websites!

Then, just now, when logging on, I was confronted with the following invitation.

"PF thrives by your sharing of our community with your friends , family and colleagues. If you have a website or blog, please feel free to add a link to Physics Forums. If you do, tell me and I'll give you Gold Membership."

What gives? Is this some sort of trick to get people to make the mistake of posting links to websites so you can ban them from Physics Forums?

 

[Dr. Courtney]

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/physics-forums-global-guidelines.414380/

There are several kinds of links that are prohibited. Perhaps your link was reckoned as one of those.

I have a link in my sig to a download of source code that one of my students wrote, so some links to personal material are permissible.

 

[Vanadium 50]

hey are, without warning, permanently banned from Physics Forum

And yet here you are.

"She turned me into a newt!"
"A newt?"
"uh...I got better."

 

[micromass]

When I first joined Physics Forums, the first thing I did was post a message in the "Introduce Yourself" section,

Yeah, if the first post you make on the forum is a link to your personal website, I would see that as spam too.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I can see how my wording is confusing now. What it should mean is if you have a website, add a link to PF on your website. How does adding your website link to PF spread the word about PF? Get it? :)

 

[jeffery_winkle]

Ok. I still think you should be allowed to put a link on Physics Forums to your website if your website is physics related. Physics Forums is free to put up a disclaimer that they don't check out or vouch everyone's website.

 

[phinds]

Jeffrery, it would appear at first blush that Greg has lost sight of the fact that "community" is usually a two-way street but it's a bit more complicated than that.

First, this is not a chit chat site and while folks here are nice and will show some interest in you personally, it is not really a forum about any of us as people, it's about STEM stuff. If you post a link to PF on your site, Greg is happy but if you post a link to your site, then the moderators have to check to see if it's some crackpot site (YOU know it's not, but they have to find out) and they are already overburdened by other things (for example, they have to carry Greg around in his golden litter every afternoon and they have to keep an eye on flakes like me who sometimes make inappropriate responses in posts) and they are not paid for any of it.

I'd say it was an honest mistake on both sides and it seems that Greg agrees since he hasn't re-banned you (which is what normally happen if you sign up again after having been banned once).

 

[phinds]

Ok. I still think you should be allowed to put a link on Physics Forums to your website if your website is physics related. Physics Forums is free to put up a disclaimer that they don't check out or vouch everyone's website.

Give Greg money and he'll let you put a site link in your signature. Check out the one in mine.

EDIT: Oh, and you're missing the fact that PF only allows vouchered links, so that suggestion doesn't work.

 

[strangerep]

Ok. I still think you should be allowed to put a link on Physics Forums to your website if your website is physics related. Physics Forums is free to put up a disclaimer that they don't check out or vouch everyone's website.

Alas, no -- there'd be hundreds of such disclaimers. Just because a website is "related to physics" doesn't mean it's non-crackpot. If you want to refer to your work, post a link to an article in a peer-reviewed journal, or an article on the arXiv. This is all explained in the PF rules.