Title says it all. Considering Google ads to pay for forum upgrades, CONTEST PRIZES, etc. Anyone opposed to having Google ads on the forum pages?
tis ok with me, but I never knew we’re short on monney, anyways might as well also stick a donation button on there while your at it.
voted yes . cos you aint gettin no dam money outa me.
ads are generally disgusting, but if they are discreet i could do with a couple of them.
Google is quite evil, despite their motto.
They will push ads for anything, they most certainly collect all of the terms that you search and track you so that when you go to a site that uses Google ads you will see ads that are suspiciously related to your recent searches.
I’m particularly peeved with them for pushing ads for bogus cures for cancer, despite that exact example being touted in their adwords terms of service as something that is not allowed. I argured with an adwords rep about it and they basically talked around the issue claiming that the actual Google ad didn’t claim they had a cure for cancer, you only got that message after you clicked on the add and got to the slime ball’s site. But basically Google is feeding these ads to guillible desparate people, providing victims for obivous scam artists, and Google doesn’t care because they get paid.
So, no way man… keep Google Ads outof here.
One option would be to only show ads to “guests”. That way you won’t bother community members but you’d still be able to make some money.
But why would you pay for forum upgrades? SMF is free (as beer).
Well, the last time I checked, the servers themselves cost money 
Seriously, I want to keep this forum here and operate with the services that everyone has come to expect. I don’t want to move us over to Jive forums (uggh!) and the revenue would allow us to host our own competitions on JGO’s terms, not Sun’s.
-Chris
Just curious… other than the obivous hassle of changing forum software (again), is there another reason for the “uggh!” with respect to Jive? Jive seems reasonable from this end. It would also fit with the look of the other Java forums from java.net and javadesktop.org… or is that something that we specifically don’t want?
Oh, and while my above post clearly shows that I’m miffed with Google about their bogus adwords policies, I actually don’t care that much if having the ads here will benefit the community as a whole. Just give us a secret theme that we can set in our preferences that makes the ads black text on a black background or something 
When java.net opened there was uproar here about not changing the forum system to that steaming pile available elsewhere.
Ads are fine - but swpalmer’s suggestion is a good one. Would it be posisble to add the google html to a seperate theme so we could opt out of seeing ads
Kev
[quote=“kevglass,post:10,topic:27860”]
When java.net opened the forums there DID suck chunks … but they weren’t using Jive it was some Collabnet garbage.
Javadesktop was the first Sun Java site to use Jive, I think… It seems that java.net switched at some point. Jive looks decent, I would argue that code posted on the Jive forums looks better because it has syntax highlighting. It also seems to support an email list access to the forums so you don’t even need to visit the site… (bad for the ads of course ) e.g.: http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=15859&tstart=0
Fix the header graphic issue while you’re at it.
Hm. Jive is arse-ugly.
Using themes as opt-out solution is a very good idea. Well, I dont mind google (text) ads. I only dislike flash (yay for flashblock), animated gifs, popups, popunders, layer ads and those javascript thingies which replace certain words with links… so basically all kinds of advertisement except (google alike) plain text ads.
+1 for the text-ads.
There is another benefit to the google ads: since google tends to relate the ads to the content of the site (and the visitor), the google “rank” for this forum might get upgraded, so you may attract more visitors.
Ads would be fine, but how about putting them at the bottom of the page rather than the top?
just my 2 pence:
Ive becomed accustomed to ads everywhere, my mind automagically doesn’t notice them anymore; so it doesn’t bother me at all. But if its for something worthwhile, i’ll keep clickin on em till the late hours of the evening
As for what forum software, i dont particularly give a flying duck about em either, as long as I can search and its laid out reasonably well, i dont mind too…
DP
gogle adds ara bad and jive sucks
yes, text ads please. we need prizes for contests such as the upcoming 4K later this year! ;D
Hi
I’ve just looked at the jive link swpalmer posted, it’s fugly, and for that reason alone I vote yes for text ads. Images are ok as long as they are discrete. And for the love of all things geek, none of those damn floating pop over type ads that you have to close to read what you came to see.
Endolf
If no-one sees the ads, no-one clicks on them, if no-one clicks on them, JGO gets no money, and we end up where on jive. I’m quite happy to click on random ads once a month to generate some cash for JGO
Endolf