Ads In OP of Threads...

I absolutely hate these changes. They are intrusive and in some case of very doubtful legality.

Links to sites selling in game gold for example!!

Just imagine a post from Gaile Gray about the EULA, or saying "buying in game gold is not acceptable" and that having sponsored links out to a gold selling site!

At the very least these changes should be optional and you should be able to turn them off in your preferences. At best they should be removed totally.

Thanks kzap. Clicking on banners to support GWG.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wrath Of Dragons

This is kinda silly.

Time to start adding this to my posts?

"This post is sponsored by ---->"

Get rid of them. The banner at the top is more than enough. I don't come visit this site to of ads shoved in my face every 5 seconds.

On the brightside, unlike the ads at GWO, you don't get viruses and keyloggers from these ads.

Quote: The green links in forum threads are very obtrusive and annoying. For me personally it is simply unacceptable that something I wrote is altered without my approval to become an advertisement. If these green links aren't removed, I'll stop posting on the GWGuru forums and look for a new home, period. I'd hate to do so, because the GWGuru forums are clearly the best GW forums on the internet. Please, there must be other, better ways to advertise. I don't mind banners all over the place. But pop-ups and ad links in editorial content or forums are a no-no. Quoted for truth. I feel the same thing.

I own a few domains and offer free hosting with no bandwidth cap to sites I like and wanna support. Of course the server generate probably less bandwidth than guru by far, but I still pay for that. I have a politics: no advert on the sites hosted. At all. Simply because that's what internet should have remained in my mind. Of course I understand one can't afford or even don't want to do that, and I have no problem with sites like guru putting ad banners and such.

But THIS!

Ads are not on the top of the page, you haven't added a culumn of ads on the left side, but the ads are now a part of the text of random posters. Ads are one thing, but when you stop making differences between someone's words/mind/etc and commercial advertising, things are getting really bad. And that's sad. Sorry but I won't - I can't - keep posting for a long time in a forum where my own words are a pretext to generate ads, which are much more visible than what I worte. Think about it: do you have a forum so you can have ads or do you have ads to make live your forum?

EDIT - Oh they seem to have just been removed, thanks a bunch!

EDIT 2 - No, they've not

Quote: Originally Posted by arcanemacabre

I missed the boat on the green text..

Personally, I hate the thought of any sort of ad being embedded into any post I make. I've seen plenty of forums that have a break in the topic with embedded ads (flash and text) which is, in my opinion, a necessary evil for free forums.

But inside posts... no. If it stays I won't be starting any threads. Though I will contribute as long as they don't start randomly popping up in all posts.

Theyre gone for me, both the green text and the ads. GJ GWG ^^ <3

Mmmm me too.

*starts clicking the banner ads*

Apparently they disappear after a few mins of activity on the forum. They had disappeared for me too, and now are back a few hours later.

/resign

No, we still don't allow the discussion of ad blockers Please, this is just a test I think you can all see that we are making changes and taking your constructive and valid suggestions as we progress here. There is absolutely no reason to go over-the-top as we test this out. Please continue to leave feedback, let us know about any bugs you see. Change is never taken lightly, especially in a forum setting, and we are all very aware of that. Nowhere has anyone stated that this is permanent, that it won't be changed, that we aren't taking suggestions or listening to your feedback.

Quote: Originally Posted by kzap

I missed out on the green word links, thank goodness, but I would vote against them.

As to the block ad in the 1st post on each page, I suppose I could learn to live with it if it was a static ad instead of animated. The animation keeps drawing your eyes away from the text. It's very annoying which does not induce you to click on the ad, but to get out of the forum pages.

Of course, my first impression this morning was that the OP had included the ad in their post. I think I would be upset also.

I agree with other posters that if you had a voluntary donation method, I would donate money to keep this website operational. I have noticed that your bandwidth has been recently increased and understand it has to be paid for somehow. Old habits (never clicking on any ads) die hard, but I will click on the banner ads more often.

I have gotten use to the banner ads and even clicked on them.

I refuse to get use to ads inside of threads, pictures or links. This just looks like one of those cheap free forum sites now.

Page load is worse now then it has ever been, and I was just thinking how much more stable the forum was behaving prior to the new "test."

Either charge for a premium membership that has AD FREE viewing of the entire site and would be customizable for the user or give us a more visable donations accepted HERE link and cut the advertising down to just banner ads.

Those are my thoughts anyway.

GET RID OF IN THREAD ADS PLEASE.

Yay! The picture of my warrior in the Post Your Warrior Thread has a sponsor...

As everyone has said, inthread adds are so annoying. There isn't a reason for these when you already have other ads running the place. Someone else also mentioned a donation link, is there one?

i started a thread on this subject, and saw this one, so i thought i might add my 2 cents. please, get rid of the ads. as if we aren't bombared enough with ads everywhere you go nowadays, ads creeping their way into forum threads is just annoying, and the last place they should be. i go to these forums frequently to read content, not to have ads shoved in my face. i like the idea of a contribution system. i would contribute to this site because it is quality, and i would also do it to keep these ads out of the threads. :P

Ay-yi-yi, I just threatened to ban a user a few days back over the ads they embedded themselves into their first post, complete with referral links. And now this o_O

I rarely create threads, preferring to post in existing ones, but I can really see how people might be offended over having their post turned into an advertisement, even if just an ad on the side.

The Gaile Gray post link is a particularly comical demonstration of how this can have some incredibly bad backlash.

Additionally, the forums, while not too bad on the loading times, hang on the first post for me until the flash banner has loaded. I really, really dislike that ><


Intermittent posts generated by adbots, even multiple ones, annoy me less than the single one actually inserted INSIDE the OP's post, or even intellitext. Whatever the final implementation is in, it's GOT to be less intrusive. Converting people's very posts into adverts is... a serious issue.


It's also something we don't allow people to do willingly and ban people for.


I know that guru isn't free to run, and that a large amount of people run adblockers as a slap in the face to any website run primarily on ad revenues, but there's got to be some kind of compromise here. I could even live with 'on the side' gamefaqs style ads, and I loathe those, as long as they're silent.

Edit:
Oh... my... goodness -_-
This won't do at all.

Although they have now mysteriously disappeared (yay for being logged in and active) I really dislike this change. A serious reason is that it very much increased my page load times- given the amount of data that's on here loads can be verrrry slow anyway. This just made me frustrated and I logged off. A slightly less technical reason, but still serious to me- NO I do NOT want to see pictures of baby suri......god.......