A short notice, because section 13 of the Terms says we will tell you when something significant changes, and this is one.
There is a new rule about how you link to something you are recommending. It is in section 2 of the Terms, in the Patch Panel Rules, and in the pinned rules topic. The short version:
Recommend by the vendor’s own domain. If you point someone at a product, a tool or a download, link to the vendor’s own website at its real address. Not a marketplace or reseller listing — Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Temu, TikTok, Facebook Marketplace or any site like them — and not a mirror, a link shortener or a download aggregator.
Two reasons, and neither is about tidiness.
Those listings are where counterfeit hardware and repackaged installers come from. A cable or a drive from a marketplace listing may not be what the box says, and “the same thing cheaper” is often the same thing with something added.
And a lookalike download page is how a great deal of what we write about in The Cache arrives in the first place. Someone searches for a tool, clicks the first result, and installs something that shares a name with it and nothing else. If we are going to write articles about cleaning that up, we should not be the place it starts.
Nothing changes about recommending things. Recommending a tool you actually use is the reason people come here, and it is explicitly not advertising. If you have a commercial interest in what you are recommending, say so in the post — that has not changed either.
While we were in there, the rules page now names harassment directly rather than leaving it to be inferred from “disagree with the answer, never with the person”. The Terms always said it. The rules page should say it too.
What happens when you post a link. The post waits for a moderator before it appears. It is not refused and it is not lost: it is saved, we are told straight away, and it goes up as soon as it is read. The site is days old and moderation here is one person, so this is how the rule gets kept without anyone losing a question to a filter.
You can ask first. If you want a recommendation cleared in advance, or you think a link was held when it should not have been, write to us. Choose “Something else” and say which link and why. That is a better use of the contact form than most things on it.
Questions, or think a rule is wrong? Reply here, or write to us.