Ah – you got a straight answer to your question and the mods got out the banhammer!

did my post get deleted or did i not post ?

did my post get deleted or did i not post ?

Deleted. Best not to talk about such things…

Deleted. Best not to talk about such things…

yeh just had an email about it…..

now im all for adverts but this is a bit excessive lol

ads here today are setting off my work computer’s virus scanner, it is blocking something from them.

If you need an explanation,

Site Terms & Conditions

Essentially, the ads pay for the forum. No ads, no forum. As I understand it, anyway.

bigyinn – Member

The only thing that someone could claim was offensive at the OP was that the picture potentially objectifies women.

But of course it’d be madness for STW to intervene, because the OP is reposting an ad that their website served him up.

I have absolutely no issue with nekkid ladies, but it’s kinda ridiculous that people can and have got in trouble with the mods for posting tamer pics than the adverts post.

Essentially, the ads pay for the forum. No ads, no forum. As I understand it, anyway.

How much does it cost to run a forum? What costs are involved?

But of course it’d be madness for STW to intervene, because the OP is reposting an ad that their website served him up.

I suspect that’s the only reason this thread is still here – everybody was eagerly anticipating it being closed and getting ready to shout “hypocrite” and they’ve decided not to play that game!

I have absolutely no issue with nekkid ladies, but it’s kinda ridiculous that people can and have got in trouble with the mods for posting tamer pics than the adverts post.

This being the point.

Thermal imaging (bizarre) and sheds, mountain chalets (yes, fair enough) and credit scores (yawn) is all I get this end.

Zokes report the ads then as we don’t see the same ads.

Sure I’ve said that before, many times.

These are the categories I currently have blocked in Google Ads (which account for about 60% of our ad inventory at the moment)..

Dating,
Get Rich Quick,
Black magic, Esoteric & Astrology,
references to sex and sexuality,
Ringtones and downloadables,
Sexual and reproductive health,

These blocks rely on the advertisers categorising themselves correctly in Google’s system. As such some sneak through and for these I need to catch them by entering their website’s url directly into our Adsense control panel.

The interesting point here is that when we tested what would happen if we allowed dating websites the click rates for those ads went through the roof! It seems they were extremely effective.

However, although we have no problem in principal to ads from sites like Fitness Singles and Match.com and the like we sort of shuddered, like many I suspect, at the Asian dating sites and the date-a-granny websites. I tried to block these individually as they popped up but it turns out there are just too many of them. So I disabled the dating category altogether at the weekend. This will lose us a chunk of revenue as it turns out because they really were getting a huge number of clicks, but it’s too much work for us to keep monitoring them and it’s too controversial a category.

That’s a shame, because I have really no problem with dating website in general like Match and Fitness singles. There’s been numerous threads on here from users asking for experiences of using them. Match and Fitness singles are not sex websites. I dare say that if we asked for a virtual ‘show of hands’ from users here who had met their current partners via dating websites there would be a great many surprised readers.

But, as an ad category it seems Google don’t really keep a close enough watch on the types of ads and their suitability for a general audience and until they do I’m going to have to keep the category blocked and try and catch the ones that do sneak through the filters case by case. For those I’d appreciate it if the offended could contact me directly with reports of inappropriate ads rather than posting on the forum as doing the latter is the best way to end up with the ads not being dealt with as I need to notice threads like this before acting.

Hope that explains things.

Raises hand

can you not whitelist ads sources like match and fitness singles?

Stoner, No.
Daft as it seems Google don’t have that facility.
I’ve sent feedback on that to Google along with a suggestion that we be able to set certain categories to time periods. ie let us run dating ads only after 9pm or the like. I’m not holding my breath for a response though.

Zokes report the ads then as we don’t see the same ads.

I would be hard for me to prejudge what is a risqué enough picture to get a post removed, thread locked, or someone banned, so it’s a bit hard to judge what ads would fall in the same category. As there’s no ‘report ad’ button, it’s not exactly a slick process to do so either. This is especially the case when you compare the content one or two threads with clothed yet attractive women in them that went pretty quickly recently (and no, I can’t be bothered trawling back through the search to find them), whilst there’s a big picture of an attractive model in her underwear from an advert that was shown on this site at the top of this thread.

Also, I find it pretty hard to get offended by such things. As I think I have highlighted, it’s the sometimes apparent double standards that I (and it appears others) take issue with.

That said, thanks Mark for the update – it explains things very well.

ie let us run dating ads only after 9pm or the like

Hows that work in different time zones?

Time zones?
Google are reasonably clever, Id’; hope they can solve that.

Our own ad server allows us to target individual countries and set times within those countries when ads should appear. I’ve got two campaigns set up currently doing just that.

As for ads and what you can post. There’s no issue at all. Cry hypocrisy all you like but ads selling sex are blocked by me, as explained above. A user posting an image for the purposes of showing off how sexy they think the subject is are also moderated. You seem fixated on trying to demonstrate some kind of hidden hypocrisy or conspiracy on our part. It’s getting tiresome Zokes it really is.

You can’t post images of a sexual nature but we can run ads as we see fit. Treat both those statements as separate and not part of the same rule and you will be fine. What we see fit to run in terms of advertising I’ve just laid out in considerable detail above – Did I miss anything?

As most of us on here are from the North, shouldn’t the ads relate to pies??? 😀

BTW if you see a little blue triangle in the corner of the ads you safely click this as it doesn’t take you to the ad website but to a Google ads control panel.
Scroll down the page and you will find the tools you have at your disposal that will help you control/report any ads you see.

In particular there this control..

Ad Display Manager – A Google tool that lets you opt out of Google’s interest-based ads or edit the interests and demographics associated with your browser.

Ad Display Manager – A Google tool that lets you opt out of Google’s interest-based ads or edit the interests and demographics associated with your browser.

it’s the sometimes apparent double standards that I (and it appears others) take issue with.

Bear in mind, there’s more than one moderator. There’s no hidden “moderation bible” we adhere to, we’ve got the same Forum Rules you see. Overtly sexual threads obviously get moderated, but there’s an often subtle difference between a thread which contains ‘appealing’ tasteful pictures and ones which degenerate into “phoar, look at the jubblies on that” and back door references. See the ‘Friday Kylie’ paragraph in the rules.

What gets closed ultimately comes down to a judgement call by whichever moderator happens to be around at that moment. Often borderline cases will be discussed but that’s not always possible. So what I’m getting at is, these “apparent double standards” are just that – apparent. “Inconsistency” might be a better word; but as I said, it’s a judgement call and rarely black and white.

Ad Display Manager – A Google tool that lets you opt out of Google’s interest-based ads or edit the interests and demographics associated with your browser.

right-oh.

Mark – thanks for the update. I’m glad that you switched off the dating ads as they seemed to be the only ones I was getting and it started to get a bit tedious looking at them (not interested in clicking on them!).

Your comment about them being popular is interesting, it reminds me of you comment about the old flash ads – the busy annoying ones were the ones getting clicked on.

Now’t so strange as folk I guess. It seems that people’s actual web behaviour doesn’t match up to their own view of what they think they have clicked on. A bit like a doctor asking how much someone drinks and the patient saying “not much – 10-15 units a week I guess”, but if they then keep a diary they get quite surprised by the real amount consumed.

I’m getting whey protein ads with pictures of steroid filed blokes. Why can’t I look at women in underwear on the side of my STW page?

I have never searched for body building products either.

How much does it cost to run a forum? What costs are involved?

If the ads were not there earning us money for the time we spend keeping this site running then we simply would not bother with a website at all

its not just about the site running costs.

Handbags gentlemen? from over there >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I’m glad the dating ads have been turned off.

Now only half he ads on the right hand side of this page are for dating and singles etc, before they were “turned off” pretty much all of them were.

Or sheds obviously.

(I’ve never looked at or bought a shed online, and I don’t go to dating sites either)

I’m currently seeing an ad for Bad Idea tee shirts, with an attractive young lady showing a greater amount of cleavage than several photos of Alison Hannigan which I got berated for. Still, at least it isn’t the bloody singles advert with the quite extraordinarily proportioned young lady which I kept seeing with quite monotonous regularity.
I’m really glad that’s gone.

Our own ad server allows us to target individual countries and set times within those countries when ads should appear. I’ve got two campaigns set up currently doing just that.

Does that mean you change them for the “I’ve had a few beers and my credit card is here” time of day??

Sometimes I wonder if people here have been on any other commercial websites recently, the STW ads are fairly tame, on a par with the BBC from abroad. (I occasionally see some when I have to relogin)

In the end I pay for 3 sites (here, vimeo & flickr) as they give me something in return. I even get a magazine posted across the world with STW)

Hmm, i just logged out to see what the fuss regarding the adverts is about and all i got was a saddo match.com add, an ad for a forex trader site whatever that is, a carphone warehouse ad for an iphone (got one thank you very much), a shed ad?, and an ad for a bothy near to dalbeattie, my mac has always been 100% pron free though coz i’m sad n’ boring like that, i’d rather look at tool catalogues or mechanical machinery than a bimbo wi her t***s out as they all look the same after a while but every machine/engine/car/bike is different.

Ho…hum…I’m off to browse through pics of “whitworth spanner pin-up of the day”……..Phowaaar!…here’s an interesting fact – Whitworth’s new standard in 1841 specified a 55° thread angle and a thread depth of 0.640327p and a radius of 0.137329p, where p is the pitch.

Who’d have thought they are both classed as 5/8″ , if we wish to confuse folk i guess we could throw a metric 16mm in there and have a “menage a trois”?, If that’s not size’est i don’t know what is.

I must admit some of the ads are a bit distracting. Having said that, though, the ‘not unfeasibly beautiful super model, more like fittest bird in the pub’ agency a lot of these t-shirt companies seem to use really does it for me!

I’m not buying one of the shirts, though.

Once again.

However, although we have no problem in principal to ads from sites like Fitness Singles and Match.com and the like we sort of shuddered, like many I suspect, at the Asian dating sites

Yeah, the very idea of mixed relationships! It’s against nature!

CharlieMungus – I assure you the objection was not to the ethnicity of the ladies in question. Let’s just say it was a very loose definition of dating.

Oh, sorry, you mean it was a specific site? That wasn’t clear

No you just assumed I was being openly racist.

For that i apologise. I had forgotten that you are never openly racist

I see what you did there.

So do I.