[[help:referral_posting_limit]]

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Referral/Third-party Link Posting Limit

As of 22 January 2013, referral link posting is subject to a per-user throttling that is determined by the quality of past referral deals.

As of 14 June 2017, referral link posting is no longer allowed, (exception explained here). These referral posting limits are only applicable in rare circumstances or for users posting links or mentioning their third party/price comparison websites.

As of 24 July 2018, third-party posting limits are imposed per third-party site as well as per user. If multiple associated users are posting third-party links for the same site, the posting limit is shared between them.

  • By default, each site is limited to 1 referral post (deal + forum) every 24 hours or 2 referral posts (deal + forum) every rolling week, however
  • Sites that have posted referral deals that have low votes will be further limited. The vote average is calculated by taking the sum of (positive vote - negative vote) for each deal post, divided by the number of recent deals.
    • If the vote average across the recent deals is 0 or below, the associated user cannot submit referral posts until the vote average is corrected over time.
    • If the vote average across the recent deals is between 0 and 3, the user cannot submit referral posts for 2 weeks from the last post.
    • If the vote average across the recent deals is between 3 and 8, the user's limit is reduced to maximum 1 referral post per week.
  • Users/sites that have posted good deals with referral links are rewarded - if the two most recent referral deals made the front page, the limit is increased to 3 posts per week.
  • Users/sites that have reached their referral posting limit will see a warning on the deal submission page. If they continue to submit posts with referral links despite the warning, their account will be placed in the penalty box.

  • Users/sites that have exceeded their personal or site referral posting limit will not be able submit further posts.
  • Users/sites that have reached or exceeded their referral posting limits will be able to see further information on the vote average/breakdown of posts in their post history page, visible to themselves and moderators only.

Notes:

  • Posting limit is calculated using a rolling window down to the precision of seconds. So for example if a referral deal was posted at 4:45PM yesterday, the OP will not be able to post again until 4:45PM today (assuming 1 per 24 hours limit apply).
  • Recent deals currently include deals from the past 30 days.
  • Vote average is calculated by taking the sum of (positive vote - negative vote) for each deal post, divided by the number of recent deals.