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Changes to Commercial Announcements

Mike Greene said:
there’s been a long-standing rule on the forum that you're supposed to buy advertising if you’re going to post Commercial Announcements
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What about two tiers of membership, a free one for artists and a paying subscription model for developers (with a tier structure for different developers depending on their size)? That way they can post commercial ads as much as they want having paid for the privilege - and it could also be indicated in their avatar/signature that they are a developer in the interests of transparency?
 
Mike Greene said:
If you're a member here, you probably won’t notice a difference.
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Well, I guess if I was just viewing posts by looking at the Latest Posts sidebar, yes, there'd be no difference. On my phone, I have had two Firefox tabs open at all times for the Commercial Announcements and Deals Deals Deals (and other tabs for other topics of interest). Now, if I want to see the same content, I get to check four tabs. That's a noticable difference.

I'm not whining, and I think I understand the challenge before you, Mike. I just think it's a bigger change for members than you think.
 
Using the two tier membership idea I posted above, you wouldn't need the commercial sub-forums....
 
khollister said:
And so where are we suppose to post deals we discover when we aren’t the publisher? I appreciate what you are trying to do but this is making the forum a bit less friendly to the users along with rewarding the advertisers IMHO.
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Post in either one. If you know whether the company is an advertiser or not, post in that one, but don't sweat it. It's easy enough for me to move them if you guess wrong.
 
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Kony said:
What about two tiers of membership, a free one for artists and a paying subscription model for developers (with a tier structure for different developers depending on their size)? That way they can post commercial ads as much as they want having paid for the privilege - and it could also be indicated in their avatar/signature that they are a developer in the interests of transparency?
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While it may sound simple, that would be a lot of work to maintain. Also, some developers have been known to try to get around that sort of thing by pretending to be a regular member (shill or sock puppet.)
 
Mucusman said:
Well, I guess if I was just viewing posts by looking at the Latest Posts sidebar, yes, there'd be no difference. On my phone, I have had two Firefox tabs open at all times for the Commercial Announcements and Deals Deals Deals (and other tabs for other topics of interest). Now, if I want to see the same content, I get to check four tabs. That's a noticeable difference.
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I could be wrong, but my guess is that for most people who don't use Latest Posts, the tabs they keep open would be Sample Talk or other topic oriented forums, rather than Commercial Announcements. Not that I'm trying to downplay your situation, but I have limited options here.
 
Mike Greene said:
Admittedly, that is a downside. In fact, it's now two additional forums, because I did the same thing for the Deals, Deals, Deals forum.
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Oh I did not realize there was another one coming. Well... As a relatively new forum member with no track record of super-useful posts, I don't feel like I even have a vote in the matter. But I must say, all this does strike me as rather user unfriendly. Bloated forum list, useful information scattered all over the place in a seemingly arbitrary way... I mean hey, I've posted on countless forums over the years, but I can't even remember a single other example where things were organized like this. And although you say that we can post the deals anywhere and this will get sorted, personally I will be much more reluctant to post anything in Deals forums again. I don't like to do things in a wrong way and create additional work for others.

I understand the challenges you are facing, and given technical limitations of forum software it might be hard to come up with a better solution (maybe it's a sign that the design needs to be changed instead ;) ). But in the end, even if your users appreciate these difficulties, they will seek options for deal monitoring which are more convenient for them. When Deals forum was reformed not so long ago, the premise was to have all deals in one place (great idea!), and now... ouch!
 
It might help to put in the forum description for tier 1 that it's only for paying advertisers and change the tier 2 to say non-paying advertisers (if I'm "advertising" a product am I not already an "advertiser"...) in order to make it clear. A lot of people probably won't read the "Please read" thread so it could help.

Personally, I was always confused since some people said it was paying only yet there were other people posting and the description never mentioned it being paying only. The "Please read" clears it all up now but for those who don't bother...
 
the tier naming is a bit confusing, this also doubles the amount of forums etc.
Can't the non-paying members be tagged in some way so their Threads (not posts) in CA and Deals are invisible to guests? That way the CA and Deals forums will show only payed threads for guests and all threads for members.
 
Yeah really dont like the duplicate bacon. Already too many subfora.

This is negative to usability and will decrease eyeballs on everyone's posts.

Go back to the original problem: you want to give advertisers some added value.

How about, go back to one commercial announcements subf including all deals -> and give posts from ad partners a highlight colour. And include a list of (10) ad partners' most recent posts at the top of latest posts, and in your newsletter and on the .com front page.

There, less fora, more promo for ad partners.
 
mc_deli said:
How about, go back to one commercial announcements subf including all deals . . .
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The separate Deals section has been a success IMO. It's nice having sales separated from announcements. FWIW, it wasn't my idea, but I think it was a very good one.

mc_deli said:
... and give posts from ad partners a highlight colour. And include a list of (10) ad partners' most recent posts at the top of latest posts, and in your newsletter and on the .com front page.
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Advertisers aren't going to be motivated by a highlight color. Putting a list of the 10 advertisers at the top of the Latest Posts would be annoying for people checking latest posts. Plus I don't know how to do either one of those.

The bottom line is this - the new format worked. I got two renewals on the day I instituted it and one more since, plus a couple advertisers told me I incorrectly moved them to Tier 2. (I moved them back.) Developers definitely took notice.

That's a help, because running this forum has cost me. Every complaining PM I have to answer (you have no idea ;) ) is time taken away from Realitone or composing. Every thread like this I have to get involved in is time taken away from Realitone or composing. Every hour I spend updating and emailing developers to tell them their ads expired is an hour taken away from Realitone or composing. Every hour I spend trying to see if there's "a better way" is an hour taken away from Realitone or composing.

I can appreciate that there's a downside for some members who check Commercial Announcements and Deals separately, but with all due respect, I don't think I'm asking that much. For Commercial Announcements, instead of Option-Click, it's now Option-Click, Option-Click. Even if you check both Commercial Announcements and Deals, it's now, Option-Click, Option-Click, Option-Click, Option-Click. Here, I'll do it right now and time myself ...
...
Took me four seconds. Then, to actually scan the posts takes no additional time, since it's the same number of posts whether they're in two forums or four.

With all that said, I am looking into to seeing if can merge the formats. Again, that's more time and money (I'm in communication with both André and Claudio about it), but to try to satisfy those troubled by the two extra Option-Clicks, I'm going to try.

Or ... anyone here is more than welcome to see what they discover. This is a XenForo forum, so whatever you find has to work with that. I'm serious about that, by the way. Start looking into what's actually involved in making XenForo changes and I suspect I'll see a lot less "Mike, it should be easy to ... " Even something as seemingly simple as color coding posts from paying advertisers, or modifying the Latest Posts feed to make the top 10 posts from advertisers are not trivial tasks.
 
No problem here clicking on a few additional conferences, but what surprises me are the number of well known developers in Tier 2 who aren’t paying and have been getting a free ride. Boo! :)
 
khollister said:
And so where are we suppose to post deals we discover when we aren’t the publisher? I appreciate what you are trying to do but this is making the forum a bit less friendly to the users along with rewarding the advertisers IMHO.
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I have the same question. A few weeks ago, I posted a question about a brand new product with an introductory price that had not appeared in Commercial Announcements. I forget whether I put it in Sample Talk or Deals, Deals, Deals. A moderator moved it to Commercial Announcements, even though I'm not a publisher of anything.

Apologies if I just committed a thread hijacking.
 
Rudankort said:
Oh I did not realize there was another one coming. Well... As a relatively new forum member with no track record of super-useful posts, I don't feel like I even have a vote in the matter. But I must say, all this does strike me as rather user unfriendly. Bloated forum list, useful information scattered all over the place in a seemingly arbitrary way... I mean hey, I've posted on countless forums over the years, but I can't even remember a single other example where things were organized like this. And although you say that we can post the deals anywhere and this will get sorted, personally I will be much more reluctant to post anything in Deals forums again. I don't like to do things in a wrong way and create additional work for others.

I understand the challenges you are facing, and given technical limitations of forum software it might be hard to come up with a better solution (maybe it's a sign that the design needs to be changed instead ;) ). But in the end, even if your users appreciate these difficulties, they will seek options for deal monitoring which are more convenient for them. When Deals forum was reformed not so long ago, the premise was to have all deals in one place (great idea!), and now... ouch!
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Very much this!
 
brynolf said:
Very much this!
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...and i agree as an older user. Much harder to scan the forum now. Especially on mobile where every click is precious!

My previous suggestion (colours) wasn't serious. Just feel bad commenting without suggesting something! Of course any solution needs to work with the forum CMS and save the admin time.

The current solution with far too many sub fora is really odd and will surely lower traffic and be bad in the end for all parties. Overall it seems like a bodge. Good luck with sorting it out. Happy xmas!
 
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