This BALG forum is one of the largest active magickal communities, and arguably one of the best and as a result, like any successful community, we do have a constant issue with spammers (and even scammers) trying to catch a ride on our high membership numbers and search-engine rankings.
As a result, we have to be extremely careful regarding what we permit, and we encourage members, both Regulars and newer members at other Trust Levels, to flag if in any doubt when it comes to seeing a potential advertisement or promotion.
Our member-moderation system encourages people to flag on a precautionary basis, and that is always the correct thing to do - all flags are reviewed by Staff, and at most, a post may be hidden for up to 24 hours, usually far less, before a decision is made on it, and the member who cast it will be notified privately of the decision.
We also do not permit the promotion of external groups, including the (aptly named, IMO) Discord servers which have proven time and again to be a problem for this community, when the people on them trend towards an “Us and them” culture, and then an “Us versus them” approach to the BALG forum.
- For this reason, Regulars, especially, diligently flag posts containing solicitations to join a Discord server, and this is absolutely the correct action.
In this instance there is a link to a Discord server run by, and for, the Dark Arts Virtual Summit and the link for that is within the poster in the OP, and also in that same image in @MorpheusDarkson’s post, which I have moved here.
This is not an official BALG Discord (there is no such thing) and is entirely separate from this forum, it’s run by the Dark Arts Virtual Summit for this event.
Since we have this ongoing problem with people trying to spam their Discords, and any seeming exception to that rule generates a lot of hurt feelings, and confusion as to whether the rules have changed, I am asking Dark Arts Virtual Summit to please not post text links to their Discord, however the link may obviously remain in the image that promotes their Summit as it’s part of their normal marketing material for this event, which features BALG authos, including E.A. Koetting himself.
That way, there are no errant links to trip up a sincere new member, searching in advance to see whether they can promote their own server here, but the link is short enough (id: RgqeM33) to be readily available to people who want to join the Discord that’s run by this event’s organisers.
But I repeat that this is NOT a BALG Discord, it is run by and for the Dark Arts Virtual Summit relevant to this event.