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I am happy for Spiral Arm to take an in house advantage at the close of the Kickstarter, so long as this is strictly temporary and not repeated except for the similar lifespan of a similar crowdfund project.

If regular new releases get ads I will not be happy, and I don't think others will either. however I dont think this is a real risk, if anything I think Dakka has been restrained about the amount of in house coverage it has given, and this is an important time for a new company, so all is forgiven.

Since those of us that are not DMC (at the moment) are not paying anything for Dakka a few days worth of extra bottom of the page advertising seems fair enough

but it would certainly get (more) annoying fast if it was permanent (which from what Lego's posted it won't be)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Since those of us that are not DMC (at the moment) are not paying anything for Dakka a few days worth of extra bottom of the page advertising seems fair enough

but it would certainly get (more) annoying fast if it was permanent (which from what Lego's posted it won't be)

DCMs still get the ad at the bottom, just so y'know.

I don't mind them running ads for their KS, but the weird part is that the lower ad trailing the posts doesn't look like an ad, it's just a big pictures of minis with some text under it and it took me several seconds to even figure out what is going on with it. It initially looks like it was accidentally cross posted from another thread.

Where the top ad banner is instantly understandable as being an add, ks logo, words on the image etc. The bottom ad is just an image without any visual indication it's an ad, it's kinda weird.

It says it was posted by Advert and the Subject is Advert. I guess they could have made that part bigger and blinking.

Honestly I don't mind. In fact, maybe when the campaign is done you can replace the medge ads with links to rules and faqs for using dakkadakka. Lots of persons need to be reminded of the rules or even how to use the forum.



EDIT 1: Removed curse that got through filter

EDIT 2: Further edited post because I need to grow up

 pretre wrote:
It says it was posted by Advert and the Subject is Advert. I guess they could have made that part bigger and blinking.

Go and view several project logs then come back and tell me it is not confusing.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 pretre wrote:
It says it was posted by Advert and the Subject is Advert. I guess they could have made that part bigger and blinking.

Go and view several project logs then come back and tell me it is not confusing.

/shrug I didn't have a problem and I've been in the project logs before.

I'm cross-posting this from the main MEdge N&R thread:

This is the first time I've ever been unhappy with Dakka...

I'm truly sorry about that, and I hope that you can forgive us.

Since we purchased Dakka in 2007, we have made dozens of decisions over that time to preserve user experience in exchange for not maximizing potential revenue for the site. My mantra has always been that as long as the site pays for its own operation, then every decision beyond that is based upon the concept of: 'does this make the user experience better?'

Anyone out there who thinks we've made a ton of money operating Dakka over the years is sorely mistaken. We have purposely kept Dakka as ad-free (as possible) to maintain that user experience, despite continuing to add incredibly costly benefits like the free picture hosting of the Dakka gallery and continually upgrading our servers to handle the increased user load (as the popularity of Dakka has continued to climb). Not to mention all the man-hours that go into actually running and maintaining the site for which we take no pay.

While the success of Maelstrom's Edge is incredibly important to us, it is not some cash cow we're trying to milk. The realities of plastic miniature production means that an incredible amount of capital has to be invested up front with the intent to make back those costs (and hopefully a profit) over the long term. So Maelstrom's Edge is very much a passion project for all of us. We didn't create it to try to make a buck, but rather because we wanted to make something we thought would be cool and hoped that others would also find cool as well. Yes, Maelstrom's Edge will go to market at this point regardless of how much or how little more we raise on the KS, but having a strong closing can definitely really help to push the project forward, and that in turn could eventually help to fund Dakka, ensuring that we can continue to grow the site without adding new permanent advertising.

However, part of trying to do what we can to get our message across about MEdge does obviously involve temporarily breaking some of those core ideals and putting fairly annoying ads here on Dakka. So again, I apologize for that. Please know that we will not be running further Kickstarters for MEdge in the future, and these advertisements are very temporary (just until the end of the KS in 5-ish days). I hope you can empathize with all that hard work and effort we've put into running Dakka for many years where the focus has been on putting the user experience first, and cut us some slack for this temporary breach of etiquette.

Thanks yakface

Ha! Yakface, it is your website and I admire the integrity but in the end we really can't argue the use of the owner's own site to flog his own product.
I can see the phone browsers having a few hitches with functionality worth pointing out to avoid crippling some browsing experiences however but that is about it.
We as users may "make" the site but you keep the lights on.

I like the ads. I didn't know you guys had gotten so far. I keep seeing them and think, "cool." Good work. Good ad campaign.

Don't like the ads. But it's y'alls site. It's free and I love it. I wish you all the best for your game and I am looking forward to the initial reviews. I hope they are great... that it's universally accepted and you dethrone GW.... but those ads.... are a real bummer.

Looking forward to hearing about the game. And seeing some bat reps...

those ads though...

I have Zero issues with the banner at the top of the page, but the ads that masquerade as posts before the reply box are very annoying and jarring. Those I hate.

I tried using the "click here to hide this promotion" but it appears to be borked.

it hides the image but not the text - the code is a little more effort to hide than the image and since it is only up for a couple of days, not worth my time to write the extra code to cleanly hide it.

 AduroT wrote:
I have Zero issues with the banner at the top of the page, but the ads that masquerade as posts before the reply box are very annoying and jarring. Those I hate.

This is exactly how i feel. I visit the news and rumors a lot so i knew that those associated with Dakka were running the ME kickstarter. The ads at the top of the page throughout the campaign were attractive and direct. They were on a rotation so it was something new occasionally. Once i looked i could scroll right past them. however, I clicked on it each time i was shown a new one, just to see the status of the fund raising and any new miniature reveals the ad might have alluded to.

100% no problem with those. In fact if regular ads came in that form, that wouldn't be an issue. If they are relevant to wargaming and not for a ford taurus or something silly, then i would be ok with that being a permanent fixture on the site. I think that would be a real opportunity to help the community more than anything. Small businesses and kickstarters, like ME, could advertise in that spot and based not he good judgment of the admins, good games could get a boost for short periods of time and, in turn, the hobby grows.

The ads inline or at the end of the posts I dislike. When i scroll to the bottom of a discussion, the first time i thought it might be a picture relevant to the topic. Obviously it isn't upon a quick observation and i moved on. Some topics i like to skim through, avoiding repetitive arguments, and pictures help give me a frame, especially in rumors, to begin reading about a relevant piece of information.

The bottom ad is not a huge deal, but i don't think its the most efficient or "honest" way to drum up interest. Even if each person is only "fooled" once, that is thousands of people everyday getting fooled one time and subsequently leaving the site with a negative experience. With the top banner you notice immediately its an ad and you are done.

I am surprised by the strong negative reactions. Yes, it's annoying, but at the same time, think of it being a small support for DakkaDakka and all the years it's hosted for free :/

 whitetornado wrote:
The bottom ad is not a huge deal, but i don't think its the most efficient or "honest" way to drum up interest. Even if each person is only "fooled" once, that is thousands of people everyday getting fooled one time and subsequently leaving the site with a negative experience..

Given that it's resulted in an almost 1:1 increase in both views and backers from Dakka, I don't think too many people are being 'fooled' by it in a negative way. If it were being taken negatively by the people clicking on it, they wouldn't be backing the Kickstarter.

I was surprised and it is annoying, i would suggest to put in code that the images start as a thumbnail and those whom are interested can click to enlarge the picture.

 insaniak wrote:

 whitetornado wrote:
The bottom ad is not a huge deal, but i don't think its the most efficient or "honest" way to drum up interest. Even if each person is only "fooled" once, that is thousands of people everyday getting fooled one time and subsequently leaving the site with a negative experience.

Given that it's resulted in an almost 1:1 increase in both views and backers from Dakka, I don't think too many people are being 'fooled' by it in a negative way. If it were being taken negatively by the people clicking on it, they wouldn't be backing the Kickstarter.

Is that the bottom ad specifically generating interest or the ads overall? If so, it's interesting data wise and awesome for you guys. I don't have the stat data so i can't dig into the metrics. I can only make extremely make vague theories based on my own experiences, which, it would seem, aren't accurate or the wider case.

And, please, in no way shape or form construe anything i said previous as said in anger or an attack. Far from it. As i mentioned, i clicked the hell out of those ads.

I don't mind the adverts so much. The inconsistency in size is a bit of a pain in the ass though. If all ads were to conform to a certain size I think there would be less of problem.

I appreciate they won't be here for much longer but just in case you do a wave 2 promotion or something down the line.

If the ads could be below the reply button, but above the quick reply box that would be great too.