A new trend

[shiningheart]

There's been a trend amongst new sites being made to not have an advertising board. Has anybody else noticed this? Can somebody help me understand WHY this is a thing now?

[Kami]

May 6, 2023 21:49:01 GMT -8 shiningheart said:

There's been a trend amongst new sites being made to not have an advertising board. Has anybody else noticed this? Can somebody help me understand WHY this is a thing now?

As someone who has been here since before advert boards were ever used, it's a combination of things.

1. Advert boards must be open to guest posting, which means more spam and a more constant need to keep on top of moderation.

2. Advert board rules got too complex for something that is supposed to be a drop and leave activity; splitting content in advert boards based on "first time" or "link back", have a long list of rules on how to post, how to exchange links that varied on a per-forum basis, and so on.

3. Unless a forum is well established and significantly active, advert boards wind up becoming the most-posted section of the forum. A lot of folks dislike that (I think this mainly applies to new sites that have minimal membership).

4. Forum use is much less popular since social media took off. Advertising is a huge time sink with no guarantee of success.

5. Lack of reciprocity — unlike affiliations, ads don't require the two communities to interact or manage a relationship between them (eg: Forum A can recommend their affiliate, Forum B, if they get a member who doesn't quite fit their community but would fit B's).

There are probably other reasons, but these are the main ones that I have observed over the years.

*Personally* I can't stand advertising boards. My forum is a community, not a highway billboard, and I literally have no interest in the whole advert process. My forum doesn't need help on the search engine front, and I would rather keep my content focused on what my forum is about.

I don't mind affiliations as much, because they're easier to control due to having higher standards of what constitutes an appropriate affiliation request — the key word here is *request*: the receiving forum has the right to decline the affiliation; this is unlike advert boards, where the expectation is that all as threads remain visible unless they violate some massive rule.

Even with affiliation though, I mostly recommend it for folks with niche content or who are trying to improve their search engine results.

So TLDR: a lot of work for very little result and the downside of potentially spammy content.

[bigballofyarn]

I apologize if this sounds extremely negative, but this is my opinion. I've never liked the concept of an advertising board and I never will. In 20 years of having my forum, I never had an advertising board and I never will. They are spammy and add nothing of value to a forum. I let my members put all their links in their profiles and signatures. They are more likely to get clicks that way after they have built up a good reputation in the community and I feel like I am helping out my friends. I don't want people joining my forum just to post in an advertising board. I'm not desperate for spam posts.

[spiceelicious]

May 7, 2023 1:32:36 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

I apologize if this sounds extremely negative, but this is my opinion. I've never liked the concept of an advertising board and I never will. In 20 years of having my forum, I never had an advertising board and I never will. They are spammy and add nothing of value to a forum. I let my members put all their links in their profiles and signatures. They are more likely to get clicks that way after they have built up a good reputation in the community and I feel like I am helping out my friends. I don't want people joining my forum just to post in an advertising board. I'm not desperate for spam posts.

I have to agree with bigballofyarn.
I find they benefit no one but the forum that is offering the service. 

[Kami]

May 9, 2023 5:26:14 GMT -8 spiceelicious said:

May 7, 2023 1:32:36 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

I apologize if this sounds extremely negative, but this is my opinion. I've never liked the concept of an advertising board and I never will. In 20 years of having my forum, I never had an advertising board and I never will. They are spammy and add nothing of value to a forum. I let my members put all their links in their profiles and signatures. They are more likely to get clicks that way after they have built up a good reputation in the community and I feel like I am helping out my friends. I don't want people joining my forum just to post in an advertising board. I'm not desperate for spam posts.

I have to agree with bigballofyarn.
I find they benefit no one but the forum that is offering the service. 

We aren't talking about forums that are advertising forums, but rather forums about other things that have a section for guests to advertise — no "service" is being offered.

[spiceelicious]

You are saying it is a place for guests to advertise their boards meaning they do not have to join in order to do so. I believe bigballofyarn was stating the opposite to which I am in agreement with.

[bigballofyarn]

May 9, 2023 5:26:14 GMT -8 spiceelicious said:

May 7, 2023 1:32:36 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

I apologize if this sounds extremely negative, but this is my opinion. I've never liked the concept of an advertising board and I never will. In 20 years of having my forum, I never had an advertising board and I never will. They are spammy and add nothing of value to a forum. I let my members put all their links in their profiles and signatures. They are more likely to get clicks that way after they have built up a good reputation in the community and I feel like I am helping out my friends. I don't want people joining my forum just to post in an advertising board. I'm not desperate for spam posts.

I have to agree with bigballofyarn.
I find they benefit no one but the forum that is offering the service. 

I don't think people are even that likely to join from those types of posts on most forums other than ProBoards Support. On ProBoards Support, people are more inclined to be looking for an advertisement thread. Even so, almost every person who joins my forum from ProBoards Support does so by clicking on my signature rather than by seeing my post in the advertising section of ProBoards Support. I don't bump that thread often because it takes at least a month to fall off the first page, but still, it's there and seems to have little effect.


I assume by service you mean the free advertising. Yes, it benefits the forum's post count by allowing others to spam. However, when I see a forum where the majority of the posts exist in the advertising board and counting game threads, I don't feel like they have much to offer me.

[Josh Average]

Personally, I love a broad self-promotion space in communities. Coming from Discord, having a channel on my server where my pals can say they're live on Twitch or fundraising for a friend or they posted a new video or someone made a new TTRPG on itch.io is really nice. As the admin, or even regular member in other spaces, I love to peek through and see what's going on in the community and what everyone's working on.

Obviously it's a little different in a message board setting, and I really think it depends on the community. I feel like it can work really well in spaces built around fandom, for example if I'm part of a message board based on a podcast that reviews TTRPGs it would be nice to talk to that community about how I'm working on a TTRPG. However, that's something that has to be curated really well otherwise it falls into people coming in just to advertise.