Forum:Advertisment Disgrace

Shouldn't Wikia be using advertising to generate interest in their own sites, rather than insisting on putting advertising on every wiki, just so they can line their own pockets?! I understand they need to generate enough income to keep the project afloat, but if the goal is to create on-line communities, as Wikia implies, shouldn't they concentrate on doing that, rather than stubbornly insisting on placing offensive, badly placed and unrelated advertising on every wiki, discouraging potential contributors from making edits?! Surely, there are other methods to generate enough income to keep the wikis in existence, without being so blatantly obvious about it! --81.79.249.81 13:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikia is very large and has a lot of traffic. That's why they're taking the actions described at Forum:Site performance issues and improvements. In addition, the United States (the country in which Wikia was incorporated in) is suffering from a serious recession. Also, what are the "other methods to generate enough income" that you're talking about? Wikia can't hold fundraisers like Wikimedia. If you know a way to generate a ton of revenue without the use of ads, I'm sure Wikia would be happy to heard it. Unfortunately, you're just complaining; you haven't done anything to find a solution. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 22:31, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If I may make a suggestion, it might be beneficial for Wikia to take a more standard route. Use a series of user-generated or otherwise popular tags in order to define a wiki as accurately as possible, then limit the ads shown on that wiki based on the tags provided. That way, if nothing else, the ads you'd be getting wouldn't be nearly as 'offensive and out-of-place' as you're complaining about. If Wikia hasn't already considered this possibility, you may like to take it up with them through some sort of contact or comment. Personally, I haven't been quite as bothered with the ads at this point.


 * Alternatively, of course, you could always try and work something out with them by simply paying to get the ads removed. Most websites charge for ad-free service. Xelrog T. Apocalypse 02:08, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The last alternative had been dicussed many times. Who would be help resposible for paying to get rid of the ads in each communities ? And what if that person would not like/care to do this ? Or maybe doesn't have that kind of revenues.
 * Personnaly, i think people complain too much about ads on Wikia. Does they complain about ads on Hotmail, ForumActif or Google (to only name a few) ? Mostly not. — TulipVorlax 03:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about the individual wikis or about Wikia staff as a whole? Because I rather doubt it would be that much trouble for them. All it takes is a simple switch of sorts in order to decide whether ads are displayed or not.


 * Aside from that, I don't think the real problem for most of us (with the plausible exception of the original poster... I can at least understand where he's coming from) isn't that we find the ads annoying. They just seem unprofessional, is all. Personally, I'd probably pay to get them removed on my own wiki - if that's what it takes to earn my patrons' respect then I'm very much prepared to take that step. - Xelrog T. Apocalypse 06:22, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It sounds technically simple but its not because of the way they are doing their contracts between wikia and the advertisers (not official). And advertise its all about potential you can have no income in 1 day and have tons the next day, how would you quantify that? by an average and then propose that to the wikis community. Should wikia do biddings to see who pays more? the community or the advertiser. But wikia is working hard to be desirable to advertisers since they are interested in huge bundles of potential advertise they will be discourage by the wikis where they cant advertise. Also keeping track of all this wikis that have paid, what have not pay, why they have not pay?, will require more man power and will bring costs up. I mean its simple but there are a chain of events that you must also considerate. My guess is that when wikia thinks and feels its very steady it will give the opportunity to the communities to be able to pay for the removal of ads --


 * Making a point: The next best thing to spellchecking. :P


 * Anyway, you have a point. But I think you're oversimplifying things a bit as well - if it were really such an impossibility it wouldn't be an available feature on sites cross the net, such as [Free]Webs and Proboards... and if Proboards can manage an ad-free function I'm sure the good people at Wikia are capable of it. The true defining factor is how much they think we, the people, can put such a feature to use. If they can earn enough off of us to bridge the financial gap they could just as easily turn it into profit rather than costs. In any case, it's up to them to make the final decision. Best we can do is hope. - Xelrog T. Apocalypse 06:22, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Errr....is it just me, or is this whole thing pointless? In My Preferences, when you select a skin, there's an option specifically for removing ads. Prince of MadnessDaedryon 06:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's just for removing ads on the article pages. The ones we're (or at least I'm) talking about are the banner ads on the mainpage. - Xelrog T. Apocalypse 06:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * sorry but spellchecking is working perfectly now there is no addon on firefox for english grammar and if you read my user info you will know im not a native english, and i take that comment insulting and discriminating...
 * now you are comparing models well i will tell you... why aren't the other wikis successful since wikipedia its a clear example of success... But in business there are many variables, and solutions dont work to some people and while to others do.
 * If you are only talking about the 2 ads in main page that register users have to see. That was the price wikia gave us to be able to remove all ads in articles. And if thats your complain you are wasting our time.
 * Daedryon: some communities care about what IP users have to see --
 * I would ignore Daedryon; he's a vandal with a history. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 12:17, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * @Cizagna: I never said anything about IP users...
 * @Michaeldsuarez: I'm no vandal. I was a good contributor on UESP, and I had had enough of the site and the egos of the mods, and what I didn't know was Rpeh was gonna block me for no reason eventually. Then my account was compromised, vandalising was done under my name, I regained control of my account, took the blame for it all, and now I've moved on. I'm now a Sysop and mass-contributor at the Castle Crashers Wikia. Therefore, your statements have no meaning. UESP got what was coming to them, although it wasn't at my hands. And as for the chat-room spam, I have 3 laptops on the same connection in my house, and my friend frequently is over, using my connection and visiting Chatspike and such. I've not been on Chatspike since I got booted from UESP. But as I said, I've turned a new leaf, and put all that behind me. And hey, if you want to call me out again, go for it. See what happens.  λ T 20:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * @Daedryon: Well what you said its only for register users not IP users. and im talking about a real advertise balance where the communities that care about their IP users are satisfy also as those are the ones that mainly complain about advertise... --
 * Errr....no, I didn't. What I said was as follows;


 * Errr....is it just me, or is this whole thing pointless? In My Preferences, when you select a skin, there's an option specifically for removing ads
 * I don't see anything about IP's in what I said, and yes, that's all I posted. Check the history.  λ T 22:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, I should mention I don't see any ads regardless, as I keep my HOSTS file up to date, which in turn blocks any and all ad sites, spyware sites, etc, from even loading on my internet. It seems one of the things affected as well is the Wikia Spotlight box. S'just white for me.  λ T 22:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What Cizagna's saying is that what you said (as in, going into Preferences and changing the settings) only works for registered users; IP users can't turn them off. - Daiku { Whine Here } { Look what I did! } 00:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ohhhhhh, ok, I see now. I apologize Ciz, I was in the wrong. I read what you put wrong. My mistake.  λ T 00:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikia doesn't have as complete control over placement and position of ad content as many people think. See w:c:wow:WoWWiki_talk:Working_with_Wikia. Also, it would be nice to separate the threads into those talking about the effect and experiance of ads by anonymous vs. logged in users. Personally, I have little sympathy for anonymous users. They are mostly lurkers and at least logged in users have put a teeny bit of effort into the wiki. Now it would be great, if we could have ads that disappear the more you contribute, but given the current situation that is a bit of a pipe dream.

I consider at least 50% of the complaints about advertising as pure whining on the order of I want my free stuff also ad free and I want to pretend I'm going to pay to keep ads off, but everyone knows I won't and most others won't either. As I've said in other places, WoWWiki started as a contribution based wiki and guess what? Hardly anyone contributed, so the original maintainer had to shop WoWWiki to keep it alive. Now if you have a counter-example, I'd love to hear it, because I've never heard a believeable one that had anything to do with any wiki of size.

Either provide concrete examples and solutions or go whine on Wikipedia or some other site. All I know is if I tried to make anything like WoWWiki on Wikipedia, it would get mostly AfD'd and it did. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 5:48 PM PST 20 Apr 2009