sponsors

I know that you have to be careful about who you trust these days.A However, this site seems to be quite legitimate.A Although they do accept donations, it does not appear that they get a lot of them (in one of the posts, Xandtar said that it was something like last fall when they received the last donation) and I doubt that a few dollars will cause anybody in charge to alter the purpose of, or actions on, this site.A I am still a relative newbie, having only been a member here for about one and a half months, but I have been quite impressed with the caliber and general integrity of the posts and the people involved, both the members (although, of course, not including the trolls) and the staff. Although I don't want to disparage any other site as such, I will give my personal observations regarding one other site that I am involved with.A It is called "Daily Strength" and it has over 500 communities, one of them being for Video Game Addiction.A However, this community has relatively few members (only 64) and not many discussions as well (only 9 active threads now, with a total of 28 replies, although they do offer additional features like personal journals that some people use quite a bit as well).A As such, it has less in total that what happens here in one relatively busy day.A The reason that I mention it is that my first post there was to a new member who said that she could not find anything on the Internet for support for video game addiction.A In my reply, I mentioned several other sites, including this one of course.A This thread was there for at least a couple of weeks until it mysteriously disappeared.A I originally thought that it could be because that site did not want me to explicitly discuss their competition although I did not see anything anywhere on the site that prohibited me from doing that.A However, I am not sure since the lady who posted that thread is no longer a member of that community so it is possible that they just cleaned up all of her threads when she left.A Alternatively, they may just simply delete threads after a certain time or for some other reason.A However, other threads that I responded to at the same time are still there, so I doubt that, although if I stay a member long enough I may notice other threads that disappear and see a general pattern that has nothing to do with what I am worried about.A Unfortunately, I don't see anything on their site that could explain why this thread may have disappeared.A I could try to confirm whether or not my suspicions are valid, but I have not bothered since it is not that important for me to know plus I would rather be unsure than have my worst suspicions be confirmed (i.e., as the saying goes, "ignorance is bliss").A I am not very active there, just checking once every few days to see if there has been any activity and what is going on. Please note that I am not trying to put down this other site in any way but, rather, just pointing out my observations and suspicions as I do not particularly trust it now, even if I am mistaken to not be trusting it.A If anybody knows anything about this other site that can clarify this situation, I would appreciate it they would post that information here or PM it to me so that I can anonymously summarize it here instead.A If this other site is innocent of my suspicions, I want to explicitly clear it here. This original thread was regarding sponsors.A I did not see anything in the "Daily Strength" site about sponsors, although they do have a part of the screen filled with "ads by Google" (I guess that is where part or all of their payments come from).A I certainly hope that they don't have sponsors with purposes that run contrary in any way to their Web site's goals. As for Yahoo's WoW_Widows, I am sorry to hear about their corporate sponsorship and that you have been banished.A You may wish to contact Yahoo itself regarding this since it is a big company and their corporate management may not be aware of the situation.A If Yahoo wants to maintain good corporate and public relations, they may decide to change who sponsors that site or, at the least, restrict what these sponsors can do, including things like banishing you just for questioning them about paying real money for fake gold.

"wasMamby " wrote:

Seems that yahoo puts sponsors where the words match up...the trigger word being WoW...so all the WoW products stick to the WoW Widows site.A Shame that happens.

It would not be very difficult, I do believe, for Yahoo to implement the ability for their various groups to provide exclusion lists of Web sites that are inappropriate for advertising there. That way, the WoW products can be excluded from advertising on the WoW Widows group. Although it may marginally decrease Yahoo's advertising income (since not many of their groups would even use that feature), it will help to improve their corporate image. You, wasMamby, should make that suggestion to the appropriate person at Yahoo (as I am not a "WoW Widow" or even use any Yahoo groups, I am doing that myself as I suspect that my opinion will have very little weight). In addition, you may wish to write a post on the WoW Widows group making the suggestion that the people who participate there do that as well (after all, there is strength in numbers). Finally, it would be quite effective if the persons in charge of the WoW Widows group do that too (I assume that there are people in charge of it as I know nothing about that Yahoo group or even how Yahoo groups work in general).

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No it would be quite simple for them to do that. However that would mean they would have to list a lower number of "views" for the advertisement and since that is part of the justification for what price you pay for the ad... It might cost them a buck or two in revenue so they will "resist" doing that. When you look deep enough either directly or indirectly it almost always comes down to the almighty buck. I worked in the marketing dept of a computer reseller, and as part of my job I was involved in purchasing ad space and search results. The prices are all based on "views" and then on "clicks". You get charged just for how many people see your ad and charged a second time if the click usually. When you search on google or most of the popular search engines, most if not all the results you get on the first page of the listing are there because they PAID to be there. Hell the home grown PC from that company I worked for won 1st Place in the rating for PC World magazine and it only cost us $250,000 in advertising to secure that spot... Makes you stop and think what is REAL anymore... [/size]

"BigH501 " wrote:

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No it would be quite simple for them to do that.A However that would mean they would have to list a lower number of "views" for the advertisement and since that is part of the justification for what price you pay for the ad...A It might cost them a buck or two in revenue so they will "resist" doing that.
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Keep in mind that it does not make much sense to place ads in places where people will not be using it (people will likely not only find it objectionable, but also will likely rarely click on the ad) since that is where most of the revenue comes from to Yahoo, I do believe (please correct me if I am wrong). As such, it makes sense for Yahoo to only place ads that are appropriate for that group and that people will be then have a more likely chance of clicking on them. Also, as I mentioned earlier, it will help improve their corporate image. Nonetheless, unfortunately, I also agree that they will likely not do it without some pressure due to the cost to implement plus, undoubtedly, concern about a possible drop in revenue even though, as I mentioned, it may even increase it. Note that there is strength in numbers when it comes to getting the attention of and changing policy at bigger companies. That is why I suggested trying to get the people on the WoW Widows group to also raise their voices. Keep in mind that there may also be some other Yahoo groups in a similar position so if they have already complained about it themselves, there is a better chance that any complaints from the WoW Widows group will be successful.

"J. D'Oe " wrote:

Nonetheless, unfortunately, I also agree that they will likely not do it without some pressure due to the cost to implement plus, undoubtedly, concern about a possible drop in revenue even though, as I mentioned, it may even increase it.A Note that there is strength in numbers when it comes to getting the attention of and changing policy at bigger companies.A That is why I suggested trying to get the people on the WoW Widows group to also raise their voices.A Keep in mind that there may also be some other Yahoo groups in a similar position so if they have already complained about it themselves, there is a better chance that any complaints from the WoW Widows group will be successful.

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No real cost to implement all the tools are there to search and put the ad there and not elsewhere. Just a matter of the people implementing the ad to do it slightly differently... But it would mean lost revenue as number of potential views and clicks would drop and that is what they are billing on. It is all a numbers game. [/size]

"BigH501 " wrote:

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No real cost to implement all the tools are there to search and put the ad there and not elsewhere.A Just a matter of the people implementing the ad to do it slightly differently...A But it would mean lost revenue as number of potential views and clicks would drop and that is what they are billing on.A It is all a numbers game. [/size]

I don't want to get into a too long, protracted discussion about a relatively unimportant topic, but I just want to clarify a few things.A First, assuming that this functionality is not present now, there will be a cost, a "real" one although likely not a major one for a company like Yahoo, to implement the database changes to store this additional information, code to read and write these new database fields, a user interface to show and update the information from the user, computer code to interpret and use this new information, testing of all of the changes, etc.A As a computer programmer with over 20 years of experience, I know that what may seem like relatively minor changes can actually take a lot more work than you might expect. Next, there is the issue of the number of views and clicks.A I assume that there will not be any noticeable change in the number of people using the site and viewing the pages, so the total number of views will not change.A As for the number of clicks, that is more uncertain.A If the WoW related links are replaced by more appropriate ones that people there are more likely to click on, the number of clicks will actually increase.A However, if people are less likely to click on the new ones, or even if there are not even enough ones available to fill the screen space that has been allotted for this, then the total number of clicks may decrease.A I don't think that anybody probably really knows, a priori, which direction, and how much, the change will actually be. Even if there is some decrease, I am reasonably sure that if a significant fraction of the people who use the WoW Widows group were to suggest this enhancement, Yahoo will at least consider making that change.A However, even if they do proceed, they will likely only do it as part of the next set of changes, so it may take quite a while before it is implemented.

you all are assuming that there aren't a lot of gamers, read customers, who go to the wow widows site to laugh and troll. they are the target for these ads and some might click them.

... and, of course, ex-gamers who can be tempted back in the fold >:(

"Xandtar " wrote:

you all are assuming that there aren't a lot of gamers, read customers, who go to the wow widows site to laugh and troll. they are the target for these ads and some might click them.

I would hope that the percentage of "customers" that are gamers would be quite small.A However, with the somewhat warped human nature of currently addicted gamers, I would not be surprised if you are correct (note that I have never checked this group in any detail, so I don't really have any idea).A If true, that would make it more difficult to convince Yahoo to change their policies.

"lifeislife " wrote:

... and, of course, ex-gamers who can be tempted back in the foldA >:(

As for ex-gamers going back, keep in mind that this group is mainly for WoW "widows".A Apart from the trolls mentioned by Xandtar, I assume that most of them have never had any problems with games themselves and, for the few that are, very few would go back, but I don't really know for sure.