How Much Advertising is Too Much?

S

shaman

Check out this site: [URL removed per forum charter.]

Now please try to find just 1 pictures of any celebrity.
It's impossible. This site is one huge ad. It bombards you with so many pop-up that it has no use whatsoever to surfers. You arrive at the site and get slammed in the face with 2 pop-ups, then you klick on a link that should lead you to celebrity pictures and you get more pop-ups, then you choose your celebrity listing A-C, D-F, G-M, N-Z and get more ads, then you click on a celebrity name and get more ads...and it never stops.
Now tell me, is this agressive advertising or not ?
IMHO this site has no value whatsoever for the surfer. Even if it has some original content its so hard to use this site that i would rather close it down and go try my luck someplace else.
So, does DMOZ have some ad policies ?
 
M

motsa

Curlie Admin
Joined
Sep 18, 2002
Messages
13,294
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

In general terms, the presence of popups (even two per page) wouldn't result in a site being rejected from the directory.

For this site in particular (what I could see before I accidentally shut down the site's browser window while killing popups), there is an awful lot of affiliate content (amazon.com, allposters, hotbar, elibrary, celebfanmail, etc.) on the site (the only non-affiliate stuff I could find were the pics and puzzles).
 
S

stevesliva

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2002
Messages
80
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

Content, Content, Content-- We have affirmative content policies instead of negative ad policies. A site with both lots of ads and lots of content may be listed, but a site with all ads and no unique content will not be listed. Also related is the policy against listing sites that are exclusively affiliate links. These sites are merely ads for other sites that mirror content, instead of offering additional unique information.
 
A

apeuro

Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2002
Messages
1,424
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

I personally reviewed the site.

After nearly crashing my computer with the amount of pop ups (all of them are set on a timer so that after 2 or more seconds each pop up spawns a child and so on), I could find absolutely no unique content on this site.

As such it's gone.
 
R

rfgdxm

Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

This thread raises an interesting point. When reviewing sites as an ODP editor, I do this with my browser in the usual configuration. Which happens to be to kill all pop ups. As such, if I review a site with a bunch of annoying pop ups, many which are affiliate ads, I'll never know it because my software blows all that away by default. Thus, is it appropriate for an ODP editor to review sites with a pop up killing browser?
 
M

motsa

Curlie Admin
Joined
Sep 18, 2002
Messages
13,294
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

Personally, I think you shouldn't disable anything that will affect your ability to view the site as it is.

With regards to pop up ads, though, we don't generally judge a site's listability by the number of pop up ads. It's the actual content of the site that matters (the site mentioned in this thread had neglible content as well as really annoying pop ups). If the content is borderline acceptable then the quantity/annoyance factor of the pop ups may have an effect on the listability but otherwise, it doesn't really matter.
 
R

rfgdxm

Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

I can disable the pop-up killer with one mouse click. All the other aspects that would allow seeing the site as it is, such as the ability to view flash trash, are on by default. Although as you say for the most part pop-ups are not a factor that should be considered. Having pop-ups enabled would just raise my threshold of minimum acceptable content, as the annoyance factor would make me want to find more reasons not to list the site.
 
D

dfy

Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2002
Messages
2,044
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

More of the allposters affiliate sites thrown up by ugo.com. Both deleted.
 
C

cjtripnewton

Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2002
Messages
136
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

Shaman,

You never know. There just might be some minors here. Can you just send your notes directly to dfy, since he seems to be responding to them? That way you won't have to post links to porn sites in this forum.
 
G

giz

Member
Joined
May 26, 2002
Messages
3,112
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

>> Personally, I think you shouldn't disable anything that will affect your ability to view the site as it is. <<

It would be rather nice for ODP editors to have a special edition of something like Mozilla where in a separate window the browser produces a list of everything it has blocked from a site. One quick look at the kill window would give a suitable judgement on the number of pop-ups and banners and where they came from, without having to actually suffer them.
 
totalxsive

totalxsive

Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2002
Messages
2,348
Location
Yorkshire, UK
Re: DMOZ policies on advertising ?

Mozilla 1.3 now notifies you when it blocks a popup, and allows you to add the site to a white list so that you can view popups in the future. It's currently in beta, and will be released fully within a month, I expect.
 
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