The Mother Board

[EmilyB]

[Karlsweldt]

A relief to have found this announcement concerning the "pop up" ads within the Forum entries! I had the impression that some form of virus had invaded the servers.
I agree, that a "profit margin" must be maintained, to be viable and for continued existence. But I, as many members feel, that the relation for our words to specific products we do NOT endorse should be controllable. A lot of our members are store owners/retailers or service personnel. If it indicates we are 'supporters' of the provided link, when we tell people otherwise, it creates a bad business consensus. Having a "toggle" for the feature would be worthwhile. Granted, the products associated with the links are viable, but there may be the "equality" cry from unsavory sites to be included in the same "gravy boat" of sales promontions.
After all, the sponsored links provide revenue for the Forum site, not for us as individuals. To be equitable, we should be paid for use of our "free" speech (relate to "designer Jeans") on the Forum in having the sponsors initiate tags to our word use! The only other alternative may be in charging a 'fee' for membership, which would support the Forum..perhaps on a "post-as-you-go" basis? But then the most frequent posters would be charged enormous rates for their "time" on the site! Would the 'Mods' be given free time, as "perks"?

[don'tknowmuch]

[CDBurner]

I think it would be good to have an easily found explanation (such as a text disclaimer) to let people who are new to the forum know that those links are ads, not products we're linking to.

BTW, I thought we used to be able to change the colors of links ourselves using code like this, but it doesn't seem to work any more...

[Ghen]

Since this is the real thread for the discussion I'll repost:

To make money off these sponsored links someone is going to have to click through them. Who's going to do that? Newbies by accident or current forum members on purpose.

When a new person comes here and clicks through a link in my post, he is doing so because he thought I recommended it. As I would Never recommend Dell among other things, this offends me. Not only that, but it will create even more confusion than some of these people already have.

If you think that most people that come here for help are smarter than that, then they will also be smart enough not to click a sponsored link! So either the links don't make money or they make money by confusing newcomers to the site.. Whichever way you have it is not very friendly to new people. They will get their support elsewhere as there's a billion forums out there that won't use green links.

Not to mention the fact that as soon as these threads die about sponsored links, someone who didn't read them will make a new one ad infinitum. The confusion will never stop until one of two things happen. Either the links go away, or sponsored links on the internet reach critical mass and become mainstream. I doubt the second is going to happen.

Please, either remove the code or make the links outside of a post window. Maybe after each post with a keyword, have an advertisment? That would be much more agreeable for me and leave absolutely no chance at alienating those who come here for help in their despiration.
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[Davek804]

well, you could always say at the beginning of your post, a double underlined green word is not a reccomendation by me, its a sponsored link.
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"We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey."

[colinJohn]

yup, then 'double' would be in green and linked to 'doublespeed Internet.com fastest in the west endorsed by this author'

have a nice day
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"that's some catch that Catch 22"
"It's the best that there is"

[Ghen]

If this is a perminant change to the forums then I will do something like that, most likely bold text in my sig explaining green links aren't my recommendations. This though totally defeats the purpose of sponsored links which is to trick readers into clicking the link based on their opinion of the poster/website.

If its a hidden or sub-hidden ad, then its ment to trick you into clicking.
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[MoboCop]

I have pulled this campaign from the forums.
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Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted - Albert Einstien

[Peanya]

Will it at least be on the home page and review pages? I know that the site does need income.