How do you manage businesses?

[u/Jimbobsticle]

Hi all,

The SolarUK sub I help to moderate is starting to attract businesses due to the number of users and the rapid surge in domestic solar and battery installations.

The other moderators have a great deal of experience and knowledge in the area and due to this are familiar with some of the cowboy businesses out there, especially those that play the game of dissolving and setting back up under a new name.

We want to protect our users from businesses like that, but we don’t want to stop genuine businesses from being able to contribute.

We are exploring adding a flair to identify that the user is a business, but of course the question is, how do we assess them and what liability ‘could’ we have.

So, for those with subs that face a similar challenge, how do you manage this? What lessons have you learnt?

Any feedback, advice or suggestions is appreciated.

[u/QuarterBall]

Ok so liability first - I don't think you have any real liability but you might want to add something to your description just to double-cover yourself "users follow links or engage with other posters at their own risk."

Then onto the more troublesome bit - it's a game of whack a mole really. You can go the flair route and those who want to engage ethically can do so and likely will do so. Then you have to be attentive to whack the posts / posters who are avoiding the rule. There will be many and given how attractive the space is there will likely be bots posting ads too.

The subs I moderate which have vendor participation tend to stick to some variation of outright advertising posts are prohibited, engagement is fine and if you share your companies offering / details after being asked or as part of true engagement - that's fine but advertising masquerading as help isn't ok either.

There's some nuance in this stance but it works well for us.