Pimping Sigs?

Boston · 06-03-2003 7:26pm

What about people like patman and cat who have commercial links in the sigs? are they evil too. Also what about those stupid wish list things that link to the likes of amazon.co.uk

mike65 · 06-03-2003 7:34pm

All I can says is...

Dont be at yourself · 06-03-2003 7:49pm

I don't really have a problem with it, as long as it's just text.

Thorbar · 06-03-2003 8:00pm

Thanks bit of jaysus we have someone with a bit of cop on at the helm, selling advertising space on sigs are you out of your minds? Might as well throw in a few pop ups as well. I think Dr teeth has the right idea, if someone is pulling the piss just email a mod or admin about it otherwise leave things as they are. Oh and the likes of Patman should be allowed to keep their link in their sig as long as he doesn't go spamming all over the board just to get it more exposure. If yer flooded under a wave of sig abuse then just set down some iron rules for a few months until the monkeys get it into their thick skulls that you aren't some sort of gob****e that they can make a sly buck out off.

[edit]The likes of shinji and megs' sigs should be allowed in my opinion. Although both of them are links to places where they work they're not particularly LOUD and considering the service they've given the community in the past I think it would a bit of an injustice to force them to chance their sig.[/edit]

dvlnblk · 07-03-2003 12:31am

Hey all, I was just looking at my hit meter on my site, www.victorswebsite.com and I noticed I got a bunch of hits from this messageboard. So, I came to this site and read this thread and saw someone named Victor had a link up to www.victorswebsite.com. This was not me, what's the deal? Also, what the hell is a Sig? Thanks for the help, Victor

Victor · 07-03-2003 12:41am

Originally posted by dvlnblk
Also, what the hell is a Sig?

Assuming you aren't a troll* Sig = Signature

*Is that you Gordon?
This is my sig

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DeVore · 07-03-2003 11:25am

Jesus, wasnt one victor around here enough!

Well he *appears* to be the real deal as he's got an email address at that site...

Maybe we should call him Victor 2.0...

Welcome to boards.ie...

DeV.

seamus · 07-03-2003 3:31pm

I'm tellin yis...the day is coming when getting your site posted on boards.ie will be as serious as being /.'d

DMC · 07-03-2003 3:56pm

I personally dont see the harm in a little text only URL sig at the bottom of each post. We had a spate of it at one time on the ICDG board, so we created this rule on ICDG.

DON'T Post links to off-topic sites, including your own if it is not a TV/radio/media/high speed internet related site. You may not start threads solely to promote or link to other internet sites. You may not, in particular, advertise commercial sites.

(You may however place a text only link to your own site within your sig.)

We have Tony on the ICDG boards, who is an invaluable poster to the Satellite forum. He has his own satellite installation business, www.satellite.ie
It was because of him that we put in the last clause in the rules, it let him have just www.satellite.ie as his sig. Its not in your face, its not really attention whoring.

Interesting debate, all the same.

amp · 07-03-2003 5:16pm

Personally I think that a mere inoffensive weblink even if linked to a commercial website shouldn't be banned. Big assed stupid sigs with huge pictures are far more annoying.

Puck · 07-03-2003 7:19pm

Making money off of this community without giving something back is wrong. Linking to non-profit sites and personal websites is fine. What really pisses me off though is people coming here for the sole purpose of advertising something and then leaving. They have no respect for what we are doing here or the community we have built up and view the place only as a way to reach a large number of people for free.

My two cent anyway.

Pablo · 08-03-2003 1:23am

who wants to read the same 3 lines after every post. i think they are a waste of space on the screen, it means that you have to scroll down even further to read the next comment. and yes i know that you can turn off sigs and i do. If only sigs were turned off by default and you'd see them if you specified on your profile.

zAbbo · 08-03-2003 1:27am

sigs can be turned off u know

Gordon · 08-03-2003 1:35am

Originally posted by Victor
*Is that you Gordon?

Sh*t I'm typecast!

As for signatures - how about getting boards' very own intern that makes that lovely protein coffee, I think he calls it "cumpuccino" to do some coolness. Gordon's patented SIGnore®©. This patented SIGnore®© will be a clickable link to make the particular offending users signature - IGNORED! Or should I say - SIGnored®©.

Vote SIGnore®© today because "your future is our ignorance".

DeVore · 08-03-2003 1:11pm

(woo! Go Puck

).

Ok, this is interesting because I think most people seem to have a good take on things. Let me try and summarise what the general feeling is in terms of advertising...

1. people who put blatant "We R Teh w1n with teh c00l leet stuffors d00d.. come to our super cool web****e" size 4 ads are left to me for my amusement. *evil grin*

2. If its *your* commercial website you can put one link, size 1, with no other related text like so:
--
www.spin.ie
(please note that the visible text is the url of the website...)

(Here I'm thinking about people like balloba and others who are really community members and who run their own fledgling site.)
We reserve the right to rescind this right

3. If the site isnt commercial then you can include it in your sig as normal but we reserve the right to ask you to tone it down if you are s00p3r-pim0ring it.

In general sigs should be size 1 (they look better and you get more in before the adminazis come along....)

I'm going to add "we'll never sell sig ad space" to the list of "do popups, sell the mailing list or use layered ads..."

Have I missed anything? Is this a fair representation of what people want? Should I take option 2 out and say "no links to commercial sites at all?"

DeV.

Dr_Teeth · 09-03-2003 12:21am

Sounds good to me, I personally wouldn't mind seeing a short slogan in addition to a commercial link, as long as it was in good taste. However that's a grey/subjective thing so I can see how just having the link alone would be preferable.

Teeth.

AdMMM · 21-03-2003 8:15pm

So is linking to personal sites ok?

KdjaCL · 21-03-2003 8:30pm

Yah so im covered ,we dont sell anything

kdjac

DeVore · 22-03-2003 8:02pm

Kdjac, Modtheater is the sort of thing we *like* supporting.

DeV.

kamobe · 22-03-2003 8:17pm

Surely, if sigs can be turned off by the potential browser, then why force people to get rid of them? If you don't like the sig, for whatever reason, what are you doing reading it? It's easy to turn them off, so do just that!

The sig should be at the complete discretion of the user, so long as it doesn't have big massive jpgs, or pages worth of writing, i dont see a problem with its contents....

DeVore · 22-03-2003 8:27pm

Because while I agree with you that sigs are interesting (to some people, I'm personally a big fan of them) ... I dont want to get advertised at while reading them.

We get enough advertising in our lives and I want Boards to be something more then that. Yes, commerciality has its place but WE should choose that place and WE should choose how it happens.

Anyway, sig-adverts are TOTALLY OUT OF THE QUESTION. We'll never sell sig space as ads. Ever.

DeV.

dahamsta · 22-03-2003 11:26pm

I thought this might come up sometime, but I haven't been subbed to this forum so I didn't see it. Anyway, I plan(ned) to add commercial links to my sig sometime - when my site gets better than this - and I was wondering what the reaction would be. I could type pages about this, but I'll try and keep it relatively short, in response to a comment made earlier:

Making money off of this community without giving something back is wrong.

Absolutely. I have given back to this community, by answering questions and saving people the time and money dealing with an "expert" would cost them, by creating a valuable archive of answers and opinion that people can reference, by modding a forum that the admins don't have time to mod, and by feeding back to the admins about how this community should go forward. Now, where's my money?

I'm being sarcastic of course, I don't want money. I enjoy coming here, I enjoy helping people, and I love it when they help me. But every person that comes here and tries to help in some way is giving something back, and if those people didn't do that, there wouldn't be a community. Those people don't deserve anything, because they chose to come here, but I don't find it inappropriate that they be allowed a mechanism for reward.

How this is implemented is a little tricky I suppose, and there certainly has to be rules - which can just be appended to the existing rules - but personally I think DeV's suggested linking method is too acute and so a little unfair, not least because I wanted to have a sig like this:

Play: Lists, Foot.ie, Teknoos. Work: Domains, Hosting, Development.

I don't see that as particularly obtrusive, or nasty. Sure, it's commercial, but I'm not forcing anyone to click on my links; and I have to say that I think it widdles all over some of the absolutely horrendous image sigs I've seen around on Boards. And finally, rather humourously, I'll never see it myself, because I have sigs turned off. And everyone else can do that too.

I have a compromise suggestion too, but I don't particularly like it and it's imperfect - I need to try it out on one of my own sites - so I'll leave it in my head for the moment. With all the voices. Boogah woogah.

adam

Shinji · 23-03-2003 12:01pm

I'll throw my hands up here and admit that I've been guilty of this - I have text links to the two sites I run in my sig and have had for ages, along with text links to a couple of "for fun" sites I'm involved with. I didn't put in a link to the online shop we just started up, though, since I figured there was a line between pimping free (to the readers) content websites, and pimping an online games store

If people find that kind of thing in sigs wrong, I'll ditch it - not a problem. It might make my nose start to twitch about the people who copy/paste EG or GI.biz content onto the Games board rather than linking it, though

Personally, I think there's a fair bit of difference between someone with a simple text link in their sig ("Hi! This is what I do. Check it out if you like.") and someone with a banner, link and full advertising pitch in there...

DeVore · 23-03-2003 3:16pm

Yes.

Ok, I'll expand that. Adam and Shinji have the spirit of the thing right and its ALWAYS hard to create rules/guidelines to enshrine a spirit.

Making money of Boards without giving something back is wrong. Giving something to Boards in order to pimp like a mofo is also wrong (I dont think we've seen anyone like that yet, but it will happen).

The only way to really deal with it is on a case by case basis and risk people accusing me and the admins of playing favourites. Which, to be fair, is exactly what we'd do. We'd favour those we feel bring something to the community without expectation.

Adam, I wouldnt have a problem with that sig, particularly if it was size 1 (I really like size 1 sigs

). Nor have I had a problem with Shinji's. Others might not get away with it....

I think everyone knows whats fair and whats not but as Boards grows we are going to have smart, selfish people try to come here and take from what we've worked hard to create. I just want to get some early, preemptive salvos in in that war.

DeV.

Mercury_Tilt · 23-03-2003 3:44pm

This post has been deleted.

STaN · 23-03-2003 3:53pm

I don't think that just putting up a visible url or a url through an image or a small bit of text takes away from the site. Something like:

======

======

Might, what do you think? Its not a 1337 3v3ry 1 look @ us ad but it is a link to a site that sum would find valuable.

Also in relation to sig ad's, unless i posted regularly on gaming boards, there would be very little target audience.

People aren't forced to click...

Victor · 23-03-2003 7:06pm

Originally posted by dahamsta
But every person that comes here and tries to help in some way is giving something back, and if those people didn't do that, there wouldn't be a community. Those people don't deserve anything, because they chose to come here, but I don't find it inappropriate that they be allowed a mechanism for reward.

I think DeVore's point is they do deserve something - respect.

Originally posted by STaN
Might, what do you think? Its not a 1337 3v3ry 1 look @ us ad but it is a link to a site that sum would find valuable.

But at 25k it is a little too big.

dahamsta · 23-03-2003 9:01pm

Adam, I wouldnt have a problem with that sig, particularly if it was size 1 (I really like size 1 sigs ).

That's what I intended (I really hate reglar-size sigs). I guess I'd better do some kind of website thing.

adam

yellum · 23-03-2003 10:00pm

Well said Adam.

Pimping Sigs?

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