While I highly appreciate developers/authors/wizards having thorough documentation, I have to ask a moral (ethical?) question:
Is adding documentation for a product on the wiki acceptable? I’d like to position marketing nowhere near an open knowledge-base, personally. From my view (and some experience), documentation for paid products is a form of marketing (“advertorial” or “trojan horse content” - real terminology used by marketers/growth hackers).
See, I came across a page in the tutorial section a while back, only to find I had to purchase the “thing” to follow along. It really felt like a trap. I propose a rule/guideline for the wiki: to only have open and freely accessible content referenced, as it pertains to tutorials and such. Perhaps add a section specific to Marketplace Fab product tutorials/documentation? I’m wanting to smooth out what feels like a rough edge as well as an open path for people to abuse our lovely community (aside from your normal bots and spammers).
Documentation for products sold should be provided with that product (I believe this is a soft requirement when submitting?), kept to the support/release thread for that product and if the producer of that product is so inclined, perhaps posted to a dedicated section on the platform for product documentation. Having those product tutorials mixed in with tangible, natural tutorials isn’t such a big deal now… But I see it becoming a pain eventually. Now I’m not against Marketplace Fab content at all; I just loathe spam, bait-and-switch marketing,
Anyone else have an opinion on this? I believe a logical, fair and objective solution can be found for what we as community members can do to help keep things tidy. That’s another important element here: Epic staff having to spend their energy moderating and keeping things organized is not ideal. It starts with the person posting, and then falls on us to engage and possibly correct, and as a final solution that shouldn’t ever happen, moderation by authority takes place.
Note - it’s now 6/5/2026 and I’ve edited this ever so slightly (terminology accuracy and the paragraph above added). I’ve posted a reply to keep things cleaner and not confuse things.
I don’t really see that as advertising. If someone has a product that requires documentation, why not post it on a wiki where most users find their information? Not every developer on the marketplace has their own website to host it on their own.
I can see where you don’t like it, but unless there is some literal advertising going on through it, I don’t see too much of an issue. @SE_JonF has a point, most users come here looking for their support anyway.
It’s now been 10 years since I originally started this thread - which is wild to think about… In those 10 years my crappy memory tells me that things have been pretty good on the spam/guerilla marketing front. I can only theorize, but I assume that staff have contributed greatly to keeping the Learning community chugging along.
What I’ve done as a community member in that time, is simply call people out when they post non-educational content. Just today I did so, here. While that game looks like a hilarious good time, it’s a blatant advertisement, not a tutorial or knowledge-share.
I lean toward some sort of community-led effort where we can easily educate and correct someone, directing them to where they can advertise their products/services. Essentially what I do passively while browsing the community, but with tangible tooling and docs to point at, to remove any doubt. While it seems to be rare, there are still blatant cases of disrespect to the Learning platform, which are easy enough to resolve. However it’s those scenarios where people post something in the grey-area and the content is in the “advertorial” category of marketing that aren’t easily corrected. This is an example of advertorial content in that grey area. Seems innocent enough, but has vibes of “buy my thing, and here is how to use it after you do”.
I personally don’t believe there is anything wrong with tutorials/usage guides for products, but still feel it would be better organization (thinking like a taxonomist) to have a dedicated section/category for such content. It simply removes any doubt and keeps things transparent. I’ve come across tutorials titled in such a way that makes the paid product aligned with core Unreal Engine functionality/content, and while there is no way to directly prove the author’s intent there… it’s pretty friggin’ obvious.
All this isn’t a huge deal - I don’t want people thinking I’m over hear freaking out and ugly crying. It’s a small behavioral element within our community that I think has value attached to it, worth being aware of and honest about. It’s the sort of thing that left unchecked, results in every other Learning resource you see being some sort of funnel towards a shopping cart, straight up spam, or those riding in the grey with barnacle marketing and playing innocent/dumb when someone questions whether something was actually a tutorial for Unreal Engine (or other valid topics).
An easy way to think about this clearly to get my point across is… someone’s motivation when posting content to the Learning platform should be to share wisdom, not get more sales or traffic. That’s where the first act of moderation would occur: with the person posting the content. There’s nothing wrong at all with advertising, so long as it’s done in the right place
