Site funding.

[Milk]

I find the new incarnation of AdWords really quite annoying but I accept the site needs money from somewhere.

[FunkyDexter]

I don't mind the advertising generally but the adwords really do grate. Mind you, I also wouldn't mind making a small contribution but I suspect it might reduce the traffic on the site significantly. That might not be a bad thing though.

[si_the_geek]

Apparently our site admins have tested the subscription/donation idea before, on a site where the majority of users said they wanted it and that they would pay... but they didn't pay enough to even cover the costs of implementing a payment method.

Even without that, my personal opinion is that a subscription based idea (like one of our main competitors, who also have more Ad's/Adwords than us) is a bad one.

[Milk]

I don't think subscription is a good idea at all, I just wanted to balance the poll.

[techgnome]

I don't mind the ads, provided they don't detract from the posting (having a smart tag ad in the middle of a code block just seems silly) and if they made sense -- Really "test" is tagged to a white paper on ASP.NET? Really?

-tg

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Advertising is fine if it's relevant and unobtrusive... I believe these advertisements that people are getting annoyed about are in fact obtrusive. They look like a normal hyperlink, ones normal reaction is to hover over it or even click on it, then BOOM! A bloody popup

I understand a website of this nature needs revenue to keep going, but I have a real problem with websites that abuse advertising and thus ruin the experience of the website. A great example of this is phpclasses.org, take a look at this picture:



This website offers a subscription service to get rid of these adverts, but I've already been so put off by the state of their homepage! That same with experts-exchange *giggle*, I hate their agresive tactics and I won't go anywhere near them. Granted their tactics are no less aggressive than they naive... but you get the picture.

Stack Overflow on the other hand has some decent advertising tactics, they aren't obtrusive, in fact all of their advertisements are relatively complementary.

The other thing is I pay £12 a year for my flickr pro account, that gives me loads of great features over it's pretty good free platform, thus in comparison I would only pay a fraction of that to remove adverts from a website (well, I wouldn't because I don't think that's how it should be executed), and a fraction of £12 would probably not even come close to covering the cost of advertisements.


I don't know what to say, I know you guys have got to make money, but I have a fine tolerance when it comes to this kind of stuff, am I the only one?

[mendhak]

As long as VBF doesn't end up looking like Codeguru and some of the other forums out there (first post contains a question, then two posts of ads, then actual answers, entire thread surrounded by more ads), then it's good. Despite the ads, if you look at your VBF thread, it's quite nice - the content on this site covers the entire screen!

Same for flickr, it's worth paying for and the subscription model is in the features rather than obtrusiveness.

[si_the_geek]

ILMV, I reckon your price/cost estimates are about right... and I reckon that few of the people who come here to primarily to help others will be willing to pay for the privilege.

I don't know what to say, I know you guys have got to make money, but I have a fine tolerance when it comes to this kind of stuff, am I the only one?

Nobody wants adverts (not even the admins or owners), but people have different amounts of tolerance to them... some people were outraged enough to leave when we first had the ad at the top of the page - while at the same time that the experts site (be careful where you put the spaces, you don't want an expert change!) added adwords in addition to their subscription and banners.

The way I look at it, this place is still significantly better (in terms of ad's, and other things) than the sites it competes with... mendhak's example (which is owned/run by the same people as this site) is a good one.

[Shaggy Hiker]

It's the delay that's annoying, but I suspect that will go away over time.

In many regards, the web is still in its infancy. As far as we have come, we have further yet to go. This will take changes in technology, as it always has.

[stlaural]

As long as VBF doesn't end up looking like Codeguru and some of the other forums out there (first post contains a question, then two posts of ads, then actual answers, entire thread surrounded by more ads), then it's good. Despite the ads, if you look at your VBF thread, it's quite nice - the content on this site covers the entire screen!

I totally agree with that. As long as the site stays as functionnal as it is I don't mind the ads.

[techgnome]

As long as VBF doesn't end up looking like Codeguru and some of the other forums out there (first post contains a question, then two posts of ads, then actual answers, entire thread surrounded by more ads), then it's good. Despite the ads, if you look at your VBF thread, it's quite nice - the content on this site covers the entire screen!

Same for flickr, it's worth paying for and the subscription model is in the features rather than obtrusiveness.

I just double checked.... I don't see the ads inline - I know it used to be like that, but it's not what I see now. I see the internet.com bar, a list of CG articles (similar to VBWire, but centered), the CG banner logo, the threat toolbar, first post, second post, etc... All the junk at the top before the first post seems to take about the same amount of room as it does on VBF, only CG doesn't have annoying flash ads on the right (ah, I'd better check on that from home as the firewall here does funny things with flash).

Point is, I don't see inline ads there, only on the index and search result pages... and they are in a column on their own on the right, which I could collapse if I wanted to.

But again, the firewall here does funny things, so maybe I should check from home.

-tg

[FunkyDexter]

I reckon that few of the people who come here to primarily to help others will be willing to pay for the privilege

Oddly enough I think you have that exactly backwards. The folks on this site who do most of the helping are the regulars who, I imagine, feel part of a community and would be more likely to support it. It's the masses who are looking for help and who usually end up with a post in single figures who wouldn't want to support it because they don't have the same level of emotional buy in. Perverse, I know.

You're probably right, though. There aren't enough of those regulars to sustain the site on a donation model and I personally like the idea of a subscription model far less than an advertising model.

this place is still significantly better than the sites it competes with

I definitely agree with that.

[si_the_geek]

I agree about "the masses" being even less likely to pay, but many helpers would refuse on principle due to their donation of time/skills... and losing just a handful of them could be disastrous.

[mendhak]

I went to codeguru.com and I first had the page preload ad (where you have to click to skip the ad).

Clicked forums, right column has an MPU (the square flash advert) or a skyscraper and a bunch of links underneath it, forum pushed to 2/3rds of full page width. Of course you can collapse it, but it's there.

I went to a forum thread and the header takes up about 1.5 inches more of space than the VBF header. Open them in different tabs and start Ctrl+Tabbing to see what I mean.

Another big difference is that I don't post there, so that site immediately lost half of its appeal to me.

[rjv_rnjn]

And chit chat posts are cleanest of them all !

[SambaNeko]

That same with experts-exchange *giggle*, I hate their agresive tactics and I won't go anywhere near them.

The funny thing about them is that I only ever go there through Google, and they show an "unlocked" page to Google to enhance their search rankings (just scroll down... the whole answer thread is at the bottom of the page).

[rjv_rnjn]

The funny thing about them is that I only ever go there through Google, and they show an "unlocked" page to Google to enhance their search rankings (just scroll down... the whole answer thread is at the bottom of the page).

And the funny thing is that same technique doesn't work in Chrome (fine in IE & FF).

[kleinma]

If anyway wants to make monetary contributions to me personally, then I will personally feel sympathy for you for having to put up with these ads. 10 dollars gets you 20 minutes of me feeling sorry for you.

Sounds like a good deal right?

[EntityX]

I don't notice any more ads then there used to be here on VBForums. I have my pop-up blocker on. Maybe that makes a difference. I see an ad at the top right of every page that is right now for Visual Studio 2010 and then below Quick Reply 5 link ads inside the Marketplace box and a BlackBerry ad just below that. For me that's it. I don't think that's too bad.

[pcuser]

I don't notice any more ads then there used to be here on VBForums.

It's not the amount of ads that's the problem, it's the very long delay before the page loads when using IE that's annoying.

[techgnome]

hehehe.... I just had the lag happen with this thread... the culprit this time was IMLV.... the down loading of that image took longer than anything else on this thread.

-tg

[EntityX]

When people attach images to their posts they should always try to keep the size down. I always try myself even though I may sometimes fail. I did a save of that image in post #6 just to see how big it was. It saved as PNG for me at 203 KB. I used to have an older version of PhotoShop that made it easy to reduce the file size and keep the dimensions the same. It was a save for internet option.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Well I couldn't be bothered at the time + I was at work, and there is no way in hell I'm opening up GIMP to try and optimise an image... I'd rather be knocked unconscious!

Oh and tip: disable javascript is your friend :-)

[kleinma]

Oh and tip: disable javascript is your friend :-)

Yes it is fun to browse the web like its 1994!

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Amen brother

[JuggaloBrotha]

I aim for 1990 - I disable frames too....

[KiwiDexter]

I agree about "the masses" being even less likely to pay, but many helpers would refuse on principle due to their donation of time/skills... and losing just a handful of them could be disastrous.

Have been a member of a number of sites that imploded as soon as the dreaded commercialisation happened. People seem happy enough to donate as long as it's not expected or you can miss out on standard stuff. I donate to a couple of sites cause I enjoy their products but not all sites I visit*


* This post brought to you by the Australian Society of Fence Sitters.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

The only forum I've ever donated to is a motorcycle one, whereby subscribers get access to forums where you can buy and sell, but more importantly the forum where people are giving away old motorbike stuff, I scored a £150 tank bag once.

Just out of interest moderators, how much does it take to keep VBF going? Surely it's running on a linux server inside an old Xbox in Wossnames bathroom???

But seriously, what kind of costs are we talking about here?

[si_the_geek]

Moderators have no idea, because we aren't involved in that side of things... all I can say is that I think this site (shared with about 30 others) has a proper hosting centre, plus at least 4 technical staff, plus various other staff.

If anyone on the site knows the details it will be Brad!, but I doubt that he will be willing to share the details.

[techgnome]

I'll admit, if VBF started charging (not that I think it would go that route), I'd bail. I've been a part of other sites where there is a tiered system, the basic free tier which gets you XYZ. They also had a paid tier which gives you XYZ and 123. With them it's the same thing every month, it gets down to the last week and the subscription aren't always enough to pay the bills, so so during the last week of the month, there's this massive "pass the hat and donate" push that happens. Becomes very distracting.

-tg

[honeybee]

I voted for #2. To be honest, I have been away from VBF for many years, and after returning, I haven't noticed any change. It's only recently I have noticed some members talking about the adwords and then I started noticing them. It's a great job by VBF to have the ads incorporated this way. I would hate it to be like many others.

[minitech]

The AdWords were fine when it was just "VB", "ASP", "C#", etc. and they showed a VS 2010 ad, but the new ones are a pain. I would donate. Apart from that, I don't mind ads. As long as you don't start pop-behinds.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

The poll is pretty crap mind, where are the options for those who don't like obtrusive adverts?

Do you like cats?
Yes
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