Definition of Shilling and Board Etiquette.

Being a relative "newbie" to this board, I was wondering if someone could educate me on the issue of shilling. I know that a person is engaging in shilling when they pass themselves off as a student and then post on this board for the purpose of providing exposure to a school they work for.

My question is this: Would mentioning the merits of a school you are attending be considered shilling, even though you are not an employee and have no intention of advertising for the school? What is the proper etiquette?

 

This is all about disclosure. If you disclose that you're part of an organization, you pretty much avoid the "shilling" charge. However, it also comes about from fudging the facts (or out-and-out lying) about a school you have a vested interest in, even if you've disclosed it. Overly-aggressive recruiting behavior should fall into this category, too.

When I was involved with MIGS, some accused me of shilling, despite the fact that I (a) never told anyone to enroll and (b) disclosed my involvement. I think that would have been mitigated tremendously if MIGS itself had behaved professionally, which they most surely did not. Plus, I allowed my own ambitions to keep me from seeing the truth about those guys sooner--denial. That affected my credibility during that time, and made even neutral comments about MIGS look like shilling. Fair enough.

We have several members of this board associated with schools. I don't think their involvement constitutes shilling, even if they suggest to other posters to take a look at their schools. But its a fine line. (See above.)

If your interest in a school is as a student, I don't think you can be a shill unless you falsely represent it in order to promote your interests. We see that will some diploma mills ("mill shills") and a few DETC students and grads ("denial").

 

This is why I list my degrees and where I got them from in my signature. If I'm in a thread talking about how great AMU or Excelsior is, people can see that I was a student so they can take my advice FWIW.

 

The DegreeInfo community has a lot of people with some sort of interest or bias for or against a particular school or schools, or accreditors, or others. In fact, I'd argue that it's likely that nearly all of our regular contributors have some sort of biases or connections to various schools or programs. It goes with the territory, I think.

So, as Rich said, the issue is all about disclosure. People get particularly incensed when someone (like the recent proprietor of the so-called mind-body medicine school) represents him or herself as an unbiased third party but is revealed to in fact be the proprietor, or employee, or paid shill for the school in question. That not only reflects badly on the program, it is likely to reflect poorly on the person individually.

So as long as there's full disclosure, and no intent to deceive or misdirect or misrepresent, it isn't a big issue.

Now there is one other issue, and that's the increasing numbers of posts from competing sites or blogs. The vast majority of them just do drive-by spamming (usually from some barely literate Indian SEO spammer) and those are quickly deleted and banned. But more complicated are the ones who post just-barely-over-the-line valid information that's usually cleverly displaying a link back to their site.

To be quite honest, it puts us in a difficult position; we want information to be disseminated and shared, but we also don't want other sites trying to steal our traffic and monetize it.

So the policy has evolved some over the years. We generally don't allow links to competing sites (particularly if they are mostly ads or promotion for schools) unless the poster is well known to the community, established, and has posted useful, meaningful information over a period of time. And in general, we don't allow *any* links (competing or otherwise) in sigs, because, quite frankly, it becomes impossible to monitor and consistently enforce.

I hope that clarifies.

 

Very good. I had the concept right all along and I appreciate you all reinforcing that. Thank you for the info.