"We welcome bloggers to post on our forums and encourage you to keep on blogging - we love blogs! But, we have a few rules. Note that these rules do not apply to bloggers running their blogs on the SlowTrav website.
Please follow these guidelines:
You may NOT post solely for the purpose of recommending your blog. Do not start a thread just to get people to go to your blog.
If you have travel information on your blog and someone asks a question that one of your blog entries answers, you may post a link to the page, but be sure to include some basic information in the post, don't just link to your page.
If we feel you have posted just to promote your blog, we will delete your post. Please put a link to your blog in your signature! That appears on all your posts.
New Rule as of 7/24/08 - If you will be traveling and blogging about your trip, post your announcement in the "Blogging from..." thread at the top of the appropriate country forum. Just one post per trip or country visited, please. People who want to comment about your blog will be directed to do so directly on the blog, and not in the thread "
I know a lot of our members have blogs and many of us love to read them, but this rule was put in place for a reason and we have to be fair to everyone - long standing member and fly-by-night poster alike.
If you have questions, feel free to contact one of us mods.
Thanks,
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Shannon,
Note that these rules do not apply to bloggers running their blogs on the SlowTrav website.
Shannon, my blog was set up initally by Pauline, back when I was visiting the Sorrento webcam with the ST banner, so I assumed it was a ST blog.
Since then, I have been able to start other travel blogs, like the one in my link below, without Pauline's help.
So, is my current blog (link below) considered a ST blog or not?
Many of us do not have advertising on our blogs and are not selling anything, so when these people give us a "heads up" on ST that they are currently traveling and blogging as they travel, it is useful information.
I will never have advertising, nor do I have a personal company, but there are time I have blogged about say The Travelsmith store closing, info that I think all of you would like to know about, but since I am relatively new I knew members weren't reading my blog. So, I thought giving a heads up to read my blog was ok.
So, even if it's useful info and we personally have nothing to gain..we can't do it?
Another situation is... I did 2 blogs that I know members who are in SFO Bay Area would love, but how do I share it? I ended up emailing Colleen directly, but still that doesnt seem appropriate to do.
I want to say I'm sorry if I've broken the rules, but it seems such a fine line to stradle.
We agree that it is important to know when people are traveling so that we can check their blogs... so we are working on that. I will keep you posted.
June, that is not a slowtrav blog....
wheretonext, I would say that if you want to let people know about something like a store closing, do it in a post, like you did. You have a link to your blog there and I am sure lots of people click on it.
Yep, I think Shannon covered it. Slowtrav blogs all have the prefix www.slowtrav.com/blog and are located on our server. June, if you'd like to move your blog to Slowtrav, we can do that.
After lots of discussion by the mods we have decided that it is really important to know when our members are blogging during their travels, so we are going to institute a change.
At the top of every forum there will be a thread where people can post when they will be traveling. I am hoping that all of our members will do this, because I know sometimes I'll click on someone's blog and they have been traveling for two weeks already and I didn't even know!
The new rules: (which I will also edit into the first post on this thread):
We welcome bloggers to post on our forums and encourage you to keep on blogging - we love blogs! We also want to keep our Slow Trav discussions focused while we offer travelers the most updated and relevant information. To give readers information about active travel blogs yet prevent the forums from being peppered with random "Look at my Blog!" posts, we have the following rules:
If you will be traveling and blogging about your trip, post your announcement in the "Blogging from..." thread at the top of the appropriate country forum. Just one post per trip or country visited, please. People who want to comment about your blog will be directed to do so directly on the blog, and not in the thread.
You may NOT post solely for the purpose of recommending your blog. Do not start a thread just to get people to go to your blog.
If you have travel information on your blog and someone asks a question that one of your blog entries answers, you may post a link to the page, but be sure to include some basic information in the post, don't just link to your page.
If we feel you have posted just to promote your blog, we will delete your post. Please put a link to your blog in your signature! That appears on all your posts.
If you have any questions, please let us know!
Thanks, Bill Maher (just kidding!)
For real this time, Thanks,
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Amy,
The other is the big one next April with pre cruise in Barcelona and Andorra. The Cruise has Athens, Rhodes, Cyprus, Tunisia, Malta, and Egypt.
Granted, it's not slow travel, but we are doing most ports on our own and we are deep into extensive research that I would be happy to share now, during and after travel.
Would this be something that I could share? and what section would I mention it, because it's a little Spain, a little other Europe and a little rest of the world.
Land Travel will resume in 2010 with extensive Greece and Turkey!
Once again, I'm sorry I broke the rules, it wasn't my intent!
Hi Shannon, I feel responsible for the breaking of the rules with the comments I made on Karen's link so my apologies to Karen on that.
I appreciate you and the mods taking the time to point out and clarify the rules. It sounds like a good one. I enjoy reading travel blogs too so I am very happy to see the new blog announcement threads at the top of each forum.
Thanks again, Kathy
Posts: 647 | Location: California | Registered: 19 September 2004
Karen - if you are traveling, and you are going to be blogging while traveling, then definitely post that in the blogging thread, in the forum for each country that you will be in.
Kathy, I can't wait to read your blog when you are in Spain! So if you don't post about it, I will.
I rarely read blogs (sorry, Kim )but occasionally enjoy travel blogs.
And thanks for the reminder about other blog posts. It's very off-p.....g to me to have someone reply to a forum question with a brief note saying "look at my blog". My guiding mantra online is "be careful where you click" .
I think this is a great idea. I also love reading people's blogs when they are traveling, and it takes lots of dedication (and is sometimes difficult) to blog on vacation.
I have a clarification question: How about the food forum? It is for gold star members, but could we put one of those "I Blogged About___" threads there? Or is this just for travel forums?
Even though I have a ST blog, and these rules don't apply, it feels weird to for me to direct readers to a blog post.
Originally posted by Palma: I have a clarification question: How about the food forum? It is for gold star members, but could we put one of those "I Blogged About___" threads there? Or is this just for travel forums?
I think we will stick to the travel forums here - and we would like to keep "look at my blog" posts off all the forums. But, if there is something one of our members thinks everyone should be alerted to in their blog, please write to one of us mods. We know that there are times when checking out someone's blog is important and can bend the rules in these cases.
As a person who doesn't read blogs, I would prefer that someone who has something they want to "share" with STers would actually POST it on the forum. In other words, if you want to communicate, post publicly.
As a person who doesn't read blogs, I would prefer that someone who has something they want to "share" with STers would actually POST it on the forum. In other words, if you want to communicate, post publicly.
Some of us don't do this because we don't want to 'clutter' the forums with information that may be of interest to some, but not all. I seem to recall there have been complaints about that in the past. It is easier to post a snippet and a link so that people can click through if they are interested in reading more and just sail on by if they are not.
Jerry
The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. ~G.K. Chesterton
Some of us don't do this because we don't want to 'clutter' the forums with information that may be of interest to some, but not all. I seem to recall there have been complaints about that in the past. It is easier to post a snippet and a link so that people can click through if they are interested in reading more and just sail on by if they are not.
The other reason some of us have mentioned our blogs in the past, ok, I'll just speak for myself. I am too lazy to retype or even cut and paste it all, delete the code stuff, resize the photos differently, and basically write the whole thing again! I am speaking about recipes with step-by-step photos. A good example is my emotional reaction to today's taralli recipe. It took a long time to cut and paste word for word what was on my blog, but this story was so emotional, I wanted to share it with those who do not read my blog. I cannot post more than one photo in a post on a thread.
The thought of "promoting my blog" never entered my mind. Sometimes a recipe is just a recipe.
Thanks to the moderators for making this change and the announcement thread on the country forums. Makes it a lot quicker since it takes so long for me to get the ST pages and blogs to load.
I noticed Jane has made an announcement while she is traveling in Croatia right now.
I also noticed that a couple of people have added discussion posts in the "Blogger Announcement" thread (for the Rest of the World).
.
