IvorW wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: openguides-london-bounces(a)openguides.org
[mailto:openguides-london-bounces@openguides.org]On Behalf Of Kake L
Pugh
Sent: 16 November 2004 12:44
To: openguides-london(a)openguides.org
Subject: [OpenGuides-London] Adverts on the London site
I see that the London OpenGuide now has Ads by Gooooogle on
it. Comments?
Kake
I agree with others that some discusion on the list was warranted.
Can Earle please clarify if Lon.OG has entered into some contractual
arrangement with Google, and if so, what the terms and conditions are.
If the site was going to give some revenue kick-back, it would be nice
to know how this is calculated. Also, is there a penalty for abandoning
the adverts if we change our mind (which looks likely from this discussion)?
The ads are quite unobtrusive and I'm not too bothered about them. I'm
more bothered about the lack of previous discussion (or even
notification) - like some people said, if it's running costs to be dealt
with, then fund-raising might raise more.
Someone else did point out that the ads are easily blockable on Firefox.
Then again, people running Firefox with Adblock are probably in quite a
minority. (Firefox users are about 10% on my own site, which is much
more than the average, but still a minority).
The alternative is a fork: "The Free guide to
London". I'm not sure this
would be such a good idea.
I think that would be pretty disastrous - future contributions would be
diluted across two sites, and a lot of contributors would probably just
choose the free site as it's more "morally acceptable". But then the
"free guide" might just come across the same funding troubles as the
current site. Better to sort it out at the source.
Dave