Request for Comments: Advertising on wesnoth.org

[Dave]

We receive a substantial amount of traffic to wesnoth.org -- in excess of 5000 visits per day.

As a means of raising revenue to fund Wesnoth, I am considering the concept of advertising on wesnoth.org. The advertisements would be simple, textual, and unobtrusive (something like Google AdSense).

Also, I think there would probably be a simple way for users to permanently 'opt-out' of seeing advertisements.

Money raised could be used to pay for any hosting we need, should freely-available hosting not meet our requirements, as well as fund the needs of developers. Perhaps it could even be used to assist developers in travelling to a Wesnoth development conference.

I would like to hear comments on this. Are there any concerns regarding it?

David

[DEATH_is_undead]

Its a good idea. Could raise a lot of money. I'm in on it. Though it shouldn't be pop-ups, most people have a pop-up blocker.

[Eleazar]

The advertisements would be simple, textual, and unobtrusive (something like Google AdSense)

That kind of things sounds fine to me.

[Dave]

Though it shouldn't be pop-ups

Oh absolutely. Nothing obnoxious. No blinking text. No images. Nothing animated. Certainly no pop-ups.

[wsultzbach]

I'm in, as long as registered users can block it.

[Stilgar]

My two thoughts:

A) If the funding makes the site more stable/reliable, then I'm for it. Though I don't know if the seemingly-weekly forum outages are due to the server, or the forum software itself.

On the other hand,

B) I usually block all ad servers anyways (even the "unobtrusive" ones), so it's no skin off my nose anyways.

[Herduk]

Though it shouldn't be pop-ups

Oh absolutely. Nothing obnoxious. No blinking text. No images. Nothing animated. Certainly no pop-ups.

I like the idea.
Images or something animated i don't think that are a problem if they aren't to "invasive" (???)

[Melbourne]

I support this idea.

I also suggest that you add a Donate link to your navigation at the top of the page, so that on every page we are reminded about how to support the project.

I saw some information about donations, but I'm having trouble finding them again. You should let people know your running costs (a rough idea of what each bill costs), because sometimes people will come up with the cash you need to pay for a certain item.

[Viliam]

If it is easy to block with Adblock, I don't care. And I trust Dave to make it decent for those poor people who do not use Adblock yet.

[allefant]

For what it's worth, I dislike ads of all kind, as I get easily distracted - but I'm not reading the forums a lot anyway. And if it's something blocked by one of the adblock lists, I won't even notice

[Shadow]

Why not. I got a good Ad Block and if it saves money. I can imagine worse.

[DDR]

Sounds fine... where were you thinking of putting them? I have three suggestions, as follows. I gather that these ads will be on the forum, so we can specify "No Ads" in our profile? Or, will they be on the main page?
http://www.exong.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25#25
http://www.exong.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26#26
http://www.exong.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27#27

[Velensk]

I don't care as long as the adds don't bug me.

[PingPangQui]

I'm not a real fan of advertisements, but who is ?

Seriously, if there are going to be ads on the wesnoth homepage I would prefer seeing there related stuff in the sense of other open-software, books, projects in general advertised. The problem with this is that those guys haven't money easer in most cases.
However there are some companies (IT, printed-media-publishers, etc.) that are related to those, i.e. we could have ads that mention open products in connection to those companies.

Good Examples:

Sun Microsystems, Open Office
Galileo, openbooks

Bad Examples:

Microsoft, MS Office
Harper Collins Publ., Lord of the Rings

[bert1]

I'm still grateful that the game is free. I'm certainly not going to complain about an unobtrusive ad if it helps the devs and volunteers to maintain the game.