Ads in this forum -- Opinions?

I think its an open invite to spam this specific forum. There are quite a few posts in here, by individuals who signed up just to post to this specific forum. I think it should be closed. When Drupal 7 is released and PHP 5.2 is in play by default, maybe a list can be created of hosts who have joined the future.
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give a person a fish and you feed them for a day but ... teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime

Yeah, I don't think ads would really be good in this forum as people come here to get honest end user experience with hosting companies. Maybe a block offering text link ads on this forum page?

newms

It already exists: http://drupal.org/services/hosting

It doesn't need to be duplicated here.

My .02

Cheers,

Bill

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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

(Wish we had a way to run polls here...)

I think that with a clear policy on this, we may be better off receiving such offers here.

Such a policy could give guidelines on for example prefixing the title with a certain key word, and limiting the number of offers per x months per provider.

I think we could vastly improve the benefit of this by running regular surveys and let the users vote on favorites for Drupal hosting. Based on the best ratings, we could offer the top 10 providers (or whatever number we see fit) to "inform us more often", for example provided that they have some relevant new information since last time. We could also promote the top x in a dedicated block.

I would not have any problems with
a) helping good service providers reach us
b) help us both save time and find the best providers conveniently and with the quality assurement that a public poll from our own community would provide.

Without having thought thoroughly through the following, a potential possibility comes to mind:
- could be that we could give a special offer on running ads in a special block to only the top ten, charging special price for that extra opportunity, which they have firstly deserved by making a sufficiently high number of users satisfied. Maybe that could give a good new revenue source for the community on top of the existing paid ads.

I think that ads don't belong in this forum. Period.

We might consider opening another forum for advertisements (let's call it "hosting offers"), preferrably following the rules dman posted above. However, this forum is (as its description says) meant for questions. This means that a topic always starts with a Drupal-specific question about hosting. Comments should really be answers to the question; comments that don't really answer the question but instead contain general information about a hosting company, should be removed. I also think that people who post ads repeatedly, should be banned from the forum completely.

Maybe it sounds a little ridgid when I put it like this, but I think that we need clear rules to make sure that people looking for unbiased information can find what they need.

My opinion is in similar topic: I am strictly against ads here

This topic was opened from the perspective of allowing ads posted as forum topics. And the discussion has (I hope) stuck to that.

A related but different topic: ads in a sidebar block. If Drupal.org runs ads like this it would allow hosting companies who specialize in Drupal to get their branding out to people interested in Drupal. It allows the Drupal association (who runs the site) to make money from the advertising which can go to buying more servers. And it just might provide information that Drupal users need to find a good hosting company.

For those of you opposed to posting ads as topics in the forum, what do you feel about ads in the sidebar if the money is going to the Drupal association?

--
Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log

There is a balance between Light and the Dark. without one, there is no other.

One reason I chose Drupal over Joomla was because the Joomla site was chockful of ads. It was a big negative.
Hosting is an important issue but we can go elsewhere to get the list of drupal friendly hosts.

If I tell people who host on a different site about drupal, and they come here, looking for specific answers to that server {cuz I have had it for 3 years now, and just found drupal.} it would be wrong to mention the server that I currently use?

I have told everyone I know about this product. I find it so easy to use, I know that the beginners I work with will also use it. Most use some form of free hosting which limits them on what they can do, but I just talk them into signing for a paid service which they can use all this on. That nets me income as well, but that isn't why I do it.

Drupal is great and you will have full support from me, if you tell me what I can and cannot say as far as my current host. I think that advertising as a whole is bad, but for a user to specify which hosting service they use, would only be useful in answering specific questions about how the product works and where.

Jim Love
jim AT jimlove DOT com

I think that we should be aiming at having somewhere where hosting providers can list their services and perhaps even be rated by those in the community who use them. Hosting is our business and we really try to provide a quality service within the open source community. We aren't spammers, but our continued existence depends on reaching new customers. And since we don't have the big ad budgets of the major players, we're not likely to buy ads in many places. The net result is that we will perpetuate the big player syndrome, where the factory host providers win because they can saturate the market with advertising. A forum or posting location could provide a niche where quality and ethics were more important than ad budgets.

Why does anyone care about us? Well for one thing, we're really good to newbies. They can have a drupal site and we take them through the handholding stages. We answer the same old, dumb questions over and over (and we don't mind). For that, some folks are willing to pay a small fee. I'm not putting us up as public benefactors -- but we do perform a service.

And as much as I love telling people about what we do, I too am looking for clear guidelines about what we can say and where.

The name of this forum is "Hosting companies". So what do I expect to see when I go into this forum? Sure, hosting companies. I expect a list of hosting companies, along with information about them, where they are and what they do.

Is my expectation unusual? Wouldn't others expect the same?

In effect, if we don't want to see hosting companies here, it may be a good idea not to name the forum "Hosting companies". Instead name the forum for whatever should be in it.

Hans-Georg

.Having this level of spam is not good as it is seen as an endorsement like the siteground banners which if not backed by "Drupal" lessens Drupal but is a gain for siteground..

Drupal is now less then what it was in my eyes I'd never come hither previously and frankly I wish I hadn't Drupal has become less of a community and more of an entity.

Does "Drupal" endorse these hosts if not then have google ads or similar on the sidebar a third party serving them..

Honestly GPL has less meaning with these ads and will stop people donating (or me at the very least) even though they have done so in the past.

A totally biased view :) but more importantly a view that is likely to sway me away..

I think that any hosting companies, affiliates, resellers, or anybody else with a financial interest in a company or service they are promoting should clearly state their relationship to the company in such posts. Drupal.org should have guidelines regarding such practices and all links where revenue is being generated by the poster should be clearly stated next to the link.

Paid advertisements should be something that should be on Drupal.org to help pay for the costs of operating the site. Look at sourceforge.net, the place most developers go to look for open source projects. Advertising, if handled properly, should not be a problem. I would imagine that this site is not cheap to run and that the needs, in terms of technical resources, servers and data center costs will only grow.

One idea, for hosting companies and service providers, may be to offer a certification track, for a fee. Come up with various levels of certification that companies can go through. The process would need to be paid for by the company and the end result of being certified would be a logo that they can use noting the what kind of certification they have. If done properly, it can be a win-win for everyone involved.

Hosting companies can also help themselves by helping out on the forums rather than just using the forum to advertise their latest special. I know there are some companies that do have people who assist in the forums, while others that only see it as a medium for free advertising.

There should also be a way for the community to flag posts as spam with repeat offenders being banned.

There is not a perfect solution to this issue and there will always be someone dissatisfied with the end decision, but the current situation can be improved on.

One last thing, I do not think posts to the hosting forum should be listed in the recent posts.

Just my $.02 even though I only get offered $.01 for my thoughts ;)

My suggestion:

Allow a hosting company one (1) announcement about newly added support for Drupal and after that require them to pay new for an ad at the top of the forum as it seems is currently offered by Drupal.org.

This is not a forums for newbies, even thatthey are welcomed here. I don't think that you guys should allow any kind of service provides or commercialize or even worse to spam the forums. Ads should belong to a separate section (paid posts) or they shouldn't be here at all.

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