The Strange Case of the Missing Ads

Wait, there's something weird. The ads disappeared from the topics.php and posts.php even though I donated less than $20. Surely this is a bad effect on revenue things?

edited 27th Oct '10 6:27:29 PM by Aoede

On asking for donations:

But as Fast Eddie said, they are a temporary solution. They will only donate once, and if they donate now, they won't a month from now when we actually run out of money.

edited 27th Oct '10 6:28:07 PM by EternalSeptember

@ Rocket Science: You don't need a credit card. Paypal works.

Doesn't Pay Pal need a credit card?

occono: You can connect it to debit.

Yeah, I have mine hooked up to my student checking account. Downside is that it takes a long time to transfer money back and forth if you don't have a credit card.

Used to be a lot of money-related sites required you to have a credit card, but that's changing.

Hmm...I have a Debit Card, but I have never used it like that. I'll try and get my head around it.

I tried my debit card and it didn't work.

They take debit cards now? This is a thing I must investigate.

EDIT: It didn't work for you? What card did you try?

edited 27th Oct '10 6:34:44 PM by RocketScience

I use debit via Pay Pal. I dunno why it not work for others.

So, outside of financial donations, what can we tropers do about this situation?

I love this place, really, I do. I don't want to see it get shut down. So anything that's within my power to do I'd be willing. Suggestions?

From what I could tell, it's probably not going to get shut down, it's just going to have the more sexual and sweary trope pages/discussions moved to another site. At worst the forums will go.

It was suggested that we put an annoying banner at the top of pages, Wikipedia and/or NPR style, soliciting donations. That way we could get more of the base than forumites.

How would something like Most Common Superpower or Boobs Of Steel be handled?

Okay, let's try and clear the confusion here.

From what I've observed:

• NOTHING IS CERTAIN YET. Despite what the announcement says, essentially nothing is happening right now.
• Moving the "offensive" content offsite won't work, as the Google Ads To S does not allow sites to link to other sites with "offensive" content.
• We're unlikely to find an ads provider that can earn as much revenue as Google Ads.
• We aren't going anywhere just yet. We still have enough funds to keep the site going for another month or so.

There. I hope that clears things up for everyone.

edited 27th Oct '10 7:03:42 PM by RocketScience

What I'd like to know is this: If TV Tropes has been an Adsense customer for as long as it has, why has this only become an issue today?

Because nobody filed a complaint with Google until now.

I Yellalot apparently made a huge FUCK YOU GOOGLE thread on their forums.

Grand.

Way ahead of you, buddy. Already reported it.

That is not how you do PR, people.

Questions like that go here, Tomoe.

Wicked: Audit.

Would anyone be opposed to making a page about this? Something like, "The Great Google Ads Crisis"?

edited 27th Oct '10 7:26:53 PM by RocketScience

*stabs*

Not. Funny.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves until this conumdrum is resolved.

Maybe after it is resolved, as a part of our history. Right now the content would be speculative and temporary.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Something to look back upon and have a chuckle about.