As I see it, the main issue with "inappropriate" ads is not so much where my ad is showing, but what ads I'm showing on my site. So my idea is this: Have two categories of ads the first would be for "more informal" ads (excluding ads that are currently excluded) and the second cat would be for *proffesional* or *business-safe* ads. Having these two categories only would make it still feasable for Shawn to continue to approve ads, and will make the ad-network much more attractive for "proffessional" sites such as business sites, education related sites and the like. How this would work, is Shawn, (if he's the master of the universe he can do it ) would classify the ad when it is approved into one of the two categories. If an ad is classified as *informal* it will cost you more weight to run it on the network and if it is deemed *business-safe* or proffessional, it will cost you a little less. Likewise, with the ads you are running on your site, if you choose to run only *proffessional* ads, you get docked a certain percentage of your would-be weight. I think this proposal would satisfy the majority of the issues with ads for the time being- namely "inappropriate" ads being shown on some sites. Implementing a full-fledged categories system is going to be much more complicated and difficult and could result in "complicating" the ad-network and reducing its efficiency. In addition, the whole idea of "themed links" is up for debate, and if you restrict your ads to sites with a similar theme, your links will be shown across a much narrower base of sites. To finish this post, the only thing left to do would be to decide, more or less, what the definition of the *informal* or *not proffessional* ads would be, and the rest would be considered ok for showing on business, educational, formal sites. I will begin the list with a few ads I have seen, and if Shawn likes this idea, then the forum members could help compile a sample list of ads that would probably be considered *informal* Informal ads ----- stag party cheat codes PS2 Cheat Code Formacion para el trabajo Weihnachtsgeschenke Christian Book Distributors Computerspiele Stag night bank twarzy seraphim proudleduck I am including foreign-language ads and "invented words" in the list. Do you think this is feasable or is it flat-out too subjective to even think about?
Mmmm... it might be too subjective I think. You would be leaving it up to the reviewers to decide which of the 2 categories to put them in. And that in itself forces it to be subjective IMO. I could be wrong though... what do others think?
Yes, the weakest point of this idea is that its subjective. However, if we could define an *informal* ad in some way, it might work. I think we need the opinions of others, namely those who have complained about inappropriate ads, to help work up a definition... maybe to start with, anything to do with religion, anything deemed as "wrong"- not necessarily illegal, but things that have the appearance of "wrong" such as game cheats, anything in a foreign language, and any invented words.... What do others think?
Well; if I had to put a Christian distributor in an "informal" category; I would be obliged to do the same for a spanish dictionary as well. I would do the same for my recipe site and my scout site too; since they don't sell anything; at least at this point, but I would choose an appropiate category for these: for now it would be other. I personally don't have a problem with a christian distributor; however I do have a problem with a religious site that would have an ad like "Jesus Saves!" on my business site. This applies to any religion: As long as they sell; then they should be classified as business. Adult sites (nekkid sites) don't come under this heading, though because of the content. I do think there should be a family friendly category; or a kid category; if there's enough call for it. How about an information category? I'll have to think about it some more.
its now a larger network a suggestion would be to simply put ads deemed inapropriate to vote 1% members vote negative it's automatically disabled as the board is self regualting members that constantly moan or put up too many ads to vote etc can be filtered out by those who are actively interested in quality alternatively posting of such votes can probably be restricted thus the whole thing remains automated with no strain on whoever looks after it. M
Yeah... the ultimate goal is to make the ad network self-sustaining as a true co-op without the need for an actual administrator (I have "real life" things I need to do ). A vote system of some sort is a good idea. And along the same lines as some ideas I have for the volunteer ad reviewer system as well (require more than one approval for an ad to go live for the initial review).
I think several big categories are good enough. I have two concerns about the themed improvement: 1. The weight may be very unbalanced in some categories, take an extreme case: there are only two websites in a category, one has 10K weights and the other has 100, will it cause problems? 2. The targeted links are themed-based now according to the control panel, will the participated websites be also themed? They may be different. For example: I add ads on my computer forum and get links to a personal finance website. Even divided into only several categories, it could be quite difficult to implement, but should be fine for Shawn .
Breaking it up is going to be *really* complex on the backend, and not something I've completely worked out in my head yet. It's complicated because there are going to be category crossovers, the need to make internal weight adjustments for people's ads being displayed (for example if they choose to only display ads for a very small category, but want their ads every where, their impression rate would need to be scaled back accordingly).
I think the original idea posted here is not a great solution because, as you said, it is subjective. That is when all hell breaks loose. I like the idea of voting, but I am really not sure how you are gonna make that work. The nice part about you being the one who says what is "in or out" is that there is one person involved. To be honest, I kind of fear the day that this coop is turned over to the masses as there is sure to be a lot of bickering and it could just blow up. I think the idea of there being reviewers for the ads that make it into the rotation is a great one. And, having the need for more than one mod to approve an ad is a great "check". I think what we really need to do, is decide on a more clearly defined set of guidelines that all ads must follow. With a clear definition of what a "good" ad is, it will cut down on the "why not this one" posts and problems. Perhaps people can "petition" to see if an ad can make it into the rotation or not through some well defined process. Maybe each member of the coop gets one petition per month and they have to receive a 50% majority approval for that petition to make it into the rotation. I am just thinking out loud here.
If that's the case then you should be able to choose more than one catagory to display on your website, just not the Hilary Duff catagory.
It's a co-op network, so there doesn't really need to be any "secret" meetings IMO. Just post it in the public forum and get the opinions of other members (regardless if they are an "official" reviewer or not).
I like the idea about fewer categories making them more general. For example let's take business theme - it's huge, but some businesses don't work together at all, so they can be devided in by a few categories like health related, house/home related, retail sales related and so on.. by creating more general categories like that we can create a whole list of more narrow categories/subcategories taken from DMOZ let's say just for the reviewers. So later when they (reviewers) have specific web site which will belong to a specific sub/sub/subcategory it might be assigned to the top/higher level general category to appear on all the web sites in that category. Or you can just let users to choose their very specific catogory, based on that category they will get a list of available related categories which they can run their ads in. According to the chosen categories they will display ads from those categories on their sites too. Does it make sense?
When I made the distinction between informal and professional ads, I was not referring to businesses in the sense that they have to sell products, I was simply trying to draw a line between something that would be acceptable for say, www.digitalpoint.com or a .edu site and something that would not be acceptable there. I realize my proposal is very subjective, and in fact I don't like it as much as I did this afternoon when I posted. However I do like the voting idea that came up. The voting could work something like this: users can vote on ads, 3 categories 1. acceptable anywhere 2. a little more informal but still acceptable 3. kick the ad out users could see who voted so it would be balanced, and maybe implement a vote for or against users too, based on how they vote on ads. And the last part would be, you get to decide if you show all ads, or if you only show ads from category #1, along with a reduction in weight. Do you think that would work or am I just shooting a dead horse?
I'll second the voting idea. One vote per forum member? per co-op account? and if enough people have an issue with it, it gets banned. People will sometimes vote against ads they don't like, rather than ads that hurt the network. 1% is low. Sites could I assume be banned in the same manner, but I think 1% (at this point 30 ppl/accounts?) voting against a site to ban it would make it too easy for one person to rally and get a site they don't like banned.