"Lucky Subscriber" in the Computer Programming Section

Hi SP,

I just consulted a group of Support Advocates on this matter. So subscription pages are allowed on Khan Academy, (and it since the "lucky subscriber" generator is a part of the subscription page, it's allowed as well) however, should you see users actively asking for votes, or find voting rings, please do report it. Voting rings are not tolerated.

I hope this is helpful, and thank you for your concern!

Best regards, pinkpuppy22

Hi SP,

Would you mind sending me the link(s) to the "lucky subscriber" program(s)? 

Thanks in advance, pinkpuppy22

Hi SP,

pinkpuppy22 here again. I did my own research of the programs you described, and I found two, so the Support Advocates and I had a further discussion, and we determined that these programs are voting-ring-type/vote soliciting programs, and furthermore, that they compromise user privacy (by displaying usernames, be it in the code, or visible in the program).

Please go ahead and flag those programs (and further programs you come across) as off-topic or vote-soliciting. I've also been told that this issue will be brought up to the Khan Academy Guardians. 

Thanks for your patience and help! 

Best regards, pinkpuppy22

Ok, thanks! I just found these comments ;D.

I will be sure to pass the note on.

that's definitely one way to look at it. I see your points, and a agree with you, SP.

@Σℓḛḿḛהּ†ɑℓ ῬႬσḛהּḭẋ - thanks!

Okay, so I started the lucky subber thing a couple weeks ago. All I do is pick a random subscriber to give a shoutout to (just put their name with a link to their profile at the top of the code), because I thought it would fun for them to win. They have seemed to like it, and I never ask for votes or tell people to vote their stuff up. All it is a chance to help smaller coders be noticed, and provide a bit of fun for them too.

What part of this is violating the Khan Academy guidelines? Here is the program I use to find a "lucky subber": https://khanacademy.org/cs/i/6735916305104896

If those aren't allowed, are we still allowed to give a shoutout to things like first comments? I know a lot of people have fun with that. Also, what exactly is a Support Advocate?

@𝕄𝕣. 𝕁𝕊

I can answer one of those questions, and it is that a Support Advocate is someone who contributes a lot to the Support Community (here, this extension of khan) in the form of answering questions, giving descriptive answers, and escalating issues to the KA team. It's sort of like a mini-guardian.

The program can be found here, where you can see what they do, how to help if you're not one, how to apply, etc (on that topic, I submitted an application over a month ago and haven't heard anything back, so if you're applying don't expect a quick answer).

I hope this sorta helps clear up some confusion.

Hi 𝕄𝕣. 𝕁𝕊,

One of the requirements for sub pages is that you cannot keep a list of your subscribers or post the number of subscribers that you have. The "Lucky Subscriber" programs do not adhere to this requirement, since they contain a list of subscribers.

Additionally, users are only supposed to subscribe by posting a single period in the subscription thread, which auto-hides these posts. Asking to subscribe or posting "I subscribed", "Please add me to the subscriber list", etc. is considered to be off-topic and only clutters the forums.

Even if you aren't posting a link to users' specific programs, directing others to their profile can still be seen as advertising. Entering what is essentially a lottery to be mentioned in a program is not something that we want to encourage, since we would rather see users receive attention from creating quality programs and from actively participating in the community.

On the other hand, one of the few times where posting a user's profile in your program would be acceptable is for giving credit to someone who has helped you with your program. In this case, you should still only put a link to their profile or their username, and not any links to their programs.

Hopefully this helps clarify! Please let me know if you have any additional questions!

I think the main reason people are doing it is because people (like me) get frustrated because no-one ever sees their projects and can therefore never up-vote them, so they think of a way to try and get people to know their name.  for example everyone knows who green ghost is so if he came out with some random thing EVERYONE would look at it and it would therefore get TONS of votes.  But if you are someone like me who most people don't know, you can post a fully functional star wars platformer template and get... a single vote.(true story).  Personaly I only have like three subbers and they are only subbed to be nice.  SOOOO... People just want their stuff to be seen it's annoying when you work hard on something you are pround of only to be un-seen by all but you.   personaly I agree that people should be more careful about following the guidelines, but I also believe they are quite literaly just trying to make a name for themslef.

Thank you Evan Lewis!

That helped clarify things. Sorry for having those things, I thought they were allowed, as I've seen them on other programs before and I never heard they were against the guidelines. I'll make sure to not do it anymore though. Just curious, is this a new rule that lucky subscribers aren't allowed, or is it just being enforced? I've seen it before and it seemed no one flagged it or anything

No, this is definitely not a new rule. We've always considered this sort of thing to be a form of advertising.

However, until now I have never seen the "Lucky Subscriber" programs floating around, so it may be that this is a new creation or something we simply weren't aware of before.

Is asking others to subscribe using your own projects (the code or the T&T) still not allowed? The same goes for saying "I subscribed."

I'm confused because (I believe) almost every user with a sub page does those 2 things, and I don't think I (or any other user) has been flagged, warned, punished, or banned for doing them in the time I've been on KACP.

Apologies for necroposting. I thought this was the best place to put this.

Promise Asking users to subscribe to you on your own projects using a T&T post or program comments is perfectly fine. (Ex. Want to see more of my projects? Here's a link to my subpage: .....)

The problem being addressed in this thread was users asking people to subscribe to other users in their projects. (Subscribe to my friend, vote up my friend's projects, etc.). This is considered to be advertising and has caused lots of issues in the past, so that's not something that we allow.

The "I subscribed" thing is honestly not something that we strongly enforce, but it's not encouraged for a couple of reasons:

1. It clutters the forums with a bunch of posts all saying the same thing, thus blocking legitimate feedback, questions, etc. related to the project
2. A lot of these posts get caught in our low quality post filter, so they tend to end up getting deleted anyways

Got it, thanks.