Marc, I didn't see any links or hotwords within the content of the article at that address. I went into the forums, too, and didn't see any there either. Those forums seemed pretty dead, for whatever reason.

Michael, have a look at sites like avsforum.com and howardforums.com. AVS is an add-driven site like this one with a very clutter-free look, yet they're advertising supported. Granted, they do pull in a lot of high-end companies to buy space. Howardforums deals with cell phones mostly, and brings in a lot of business from smaller e-commerce sites. Both of these forums are about the same size as RCU, yet don't resort to obtrusive advertisements.

Have you guys done any studies on how well this will work? If I were an ad buyer I'd be skeptical, because I know as a consumer I won't participate in it. When I read a post, I look for underlining to mean emphasis, not advertisement.

I think it's great that you guys are making a go of this as a business, and I'm not about to tell you that looking for innovative new ways to generate revenue is a bad thing. I'm your customer, however, and I'm telling you that this is the type of thing that bothers me. It's the equivalent of walking into a familiar hobby shop and noticing a new, unpleasant odor. Instead of hanging around and BSing (and maybe spending more than I intended to), I'm just going to get what I need and head out the door. I hope you guys are thinking about that sort of thing, because I want to see this business be successful.

That would be awesome if it was fixed and I just missed it. Basically, there used to be a link that would only list new and unread posts in my subscribed threads. Further, it would allow you to sort it based on the forums the posts were in. This was a super fast way to check in and see if there were any new responses to my subscribed threads. Nothing more, nothing less.

The closest I can find is the Subscribed Thread Activity link, but it shows all thread activity in chronological order only, shows both read and unread threads, and no sorting at all. So its a disorganized mess if all you want to do is to see what you haven't read in your subscribed threads. Kind of like having all your new unread mail thrown in the same folder with all your sent, read, unread, new and old messages and only sorted by date/time. Much slower than what we had, and much more work

Thats a bummer. It would be nice to have, but I've gotten used to just skipping the spelling check. I've got a good spell checker between my ears if I remember to proof read and catch the typos. We shouldn't rely too much on computers should we

yes the subscribed activity is chronological making it easy to see what has any recent posts to it. if it has a post since last visit you will see the down arrow on it.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/sear...hfor=subscribe

I've seen that, but its the feature we had that I was describing. Ie, we can't secondary sort it by forums like we used to, and it shows all activity both read and unread all mixed together, and many pages of it (I got 21 pages worth today, even though there was only a handful of unread posts) [:'(].

The feature that was taken away was basically the following logic;

- find all new posts since my last visit
- filter it to include only new posts from my forums
- filter the results to include only my subscribed threads
- filter that result to show only the unread posts
- display this list to the user sorted by chronological order
- allow the user to secondary sort the list based on forum and ???

It might have allowed secondary sorts based on things other than the forum, but I only used the forum sort so I can't say for sure. This gave us a list of only unread posts in our subscribed threads, and sorted by time and forum, and nothing else.

Basically, it was a new mail only button! Its something I used often, and really really miss. I wish I had access to the old board and I could tell you want the link was called and where it was. Hopefully, my description will suffice.

yes. I understand now. I'll see if this can be coded into a future version. we will probably have a major release out in the next 3 months or so. we just got stable with this code so we are taking a small breather and enjoying the fact we are not putting out fires night and day. Once we get through some other code we'll start on some major improvements to the forums. Don't worry we will never sit still for long.

I've noticed It would be excellent to see it in the future. That and the spelling cheker are my milestones for an upgraded membership!

Ok I just clicked thru a Hanger 9 keyword and it takes me to H. P. Pilots, I don't like that. It should link to either Hanger 9 or a RCU page about Hanger 9 not some sight that has nothing to do with them. That's annoying to click a link and find the page you go to has nothing to do with the product name you clicked.

I went to avsforum.com. Hmmmm....if you ignore the impossible colors they have, one has to wonder what the value is of being one of 15 different postage stamp ads at the top (see image below). One of the things we try to do is balance consumer needs for pure content with advertisers' needs to be seen effectively. Also, our survey showed that a vast majority of folks like ads.

We are listening. This morning, I'll be working on an approval queue for all links and promo descriptions used in any keyword available on our site (suggested by another member). This will ensure the relevance and usefulness of the link. In the end, the links are far less obtrusive than most ads (remember, if a user decides to highlight or link a word, it will supercede the keyword underline). You don't have to click on the link and if you want to peek at what the link might be, just mouseover. I view these as mini portals to other resources -- available, but not mandatory. Once we begin filtering where they go, they should prove to be useful for many many members.

If we are wrong, I'm sure the members will let us know!

Thanks for your constructive comments.

and the remove all the !QUOTE!'s

i'm still not aginst the idea of the keyword thing, tho even now the dashes annoy me, but that it can be brought by any tom dick or harry.
it was said this is an alternitive to the more expensive adds, which is exactly why some disgruntled user can buy the keyword for a few pence and have fun slagging off the product.
still think there shouldn't be keywords at all right now.. but that a company can say, hey Marc, what about making this one of your keywords.. $$$
right now most of the keywords do nothing and will probably do so for a while to come, so whos gonna bother clicking them when we all know they go nowhere, and if that changes how would we know? it's still dashed, nothings changed..
have no keywords until a company agrees and signs up to the word/words they choose, THEN dash it.

Where will these "mini portals" be popping up on my screen?






If the answere is anywhere but bottom left corner of my sceen, I am so out of here
[&o]

all keywords go into a queue. we approve only if they are contextual to the word. no bashing and no irrelevant terms. the keyword base will build over time. this was just launched a day ago so like the marketplace which had zero listings on september 8th this also started at ground zero but will grow over time. it will ensure the success of rcu. many users have firewalls or ad blockers. this is one of the only things we can do to monetize those users and ensure our survival as well as our ability to constantly improve and add all those things which have been requested.

One thing that strikes me about this is the contrast between how hard we used to work to keep blatant advertising out of the discussion forums, and this push to subtly insert it directly into the discussions. When your paying advertiser who's renting the word Bugglebee starts many different threads about Bugglebees, brings old threads about Bugglebees back to life, and mentions Bugglebees at every opportunity, how will they be dealt with? It's certainly possible to do that while staying within the bounds of community policies. I don't see a way to keep this from being abused in that manner, and it would be a nightmare to moderate. You can't close or remove a valid thread about Bugglebees, and if you do you'll have someone who's paying good money to have the word Bugglebee seen kindly explaining that fact to you. If there ever was a time to start paying mods, this may be it.

I bid $10 (U.S.) for the Keyword "Philly".

I also think MikeL. has gone over to the dark side, I like it!

Sfaust, you shouldn't place conditions on upgrading your status, your love for RCU should be unconditional. I am still waiting for the search within a thread feature to come back but that didn't stop me.

i probably shouldn't tell you this, but i do think there is an option in your forum software which disables the dotted underlining...i don't see any dots, dashes or underlining under any of the keywords mentioned previously in this thread (such as futaba, tower hobbies, saito etc) although they are still clickable links, have the "bubble" upon mouseover, and automagically capitalize themselves...nuff said on that as i agree that having every other word underlined would be ugly, cheap and distracting...a better solution would be to have the keywords in a slightly lighter/darker color (my 2 cents)

while playing around, i was pleased to find that you did not break the normal hyperlinks with this keyword nonsense ie: i can still use the word futaba as the text in a hyperlink without the keyword system taking precedence...yes, i was actually concerned about this...hehe

My love is always conditional!! For example if my wife wants my love she can't, run off with the dentist or plumber, beat me senseless everything she's angry, nor put marbles in my shoes. I'd leave her if she did. My airplanes get conditional love also. If they don't start, fly properly, or have things falling off them in flight, I step on them. If I'm really mad, then I jump on them.

I don't put RCU above my wife and airplanes, so its definitely conditional. But if the spelling checker was fixed, well, it might be unconditional after all

You and your wife should go see Dr. Phil or you should call Dr.Laura or you, your wife and your wife's dentist should go see Jerry Springer.

I went to Jerry Springer. What a crock. Instead of letting us tell it like it was, he asked us if he would play it up a bit more to make it more interesting. He wanted me to call her "trailer trash" and take some swings at her. I just couldn't do it, we declined. We are now booked on the Montel Williams show instead.

(funny side note, one of Springers producers call my business last year to do an interview with someone local to me that was going to be on the show. I passed up on the offer because of the shows genre. Just couldn't bring myself to that level. Funny you picked him in this example! A sign?)

umm just what would you say about me BB????

as long as disgruntled users can't bid on words then it's be ok, but in that case why have to bid for the words??? as with all bidding it's to try and bump up the price, the small companys will still jump on ship with small bids for their words, the big guys might pay more.
Still don't think keywords should show until brought tho, as right now they mean nothing, and after a few dead clicks no-one will bother to keep looking just incase one got sold.

I fixed the capitalization bug on the keywords. also caught another bug which will be fixed but won't be seen since I disabled the thing that would cause it until it is fixed.

the user who wrote that thought we had a bug because Futaba did not appear in post 18 but did in his post 20 was not a bug. we made it to have a maximum of 5 tagged keywords in any post so Futaba did not get tagged because 5 words were already selected for that post which was the maximum.

Now...these examples stretch the limits of this concept because guys are stuffing posts with keywords to excess to make an example but in the real world very few posts will be littered with dozens of keywords that are active in our system.

One other use we are doing with this is to extend our help system. We can link these words to definitions or a glossary and to the specs for specific products and more. Some words that do this may have no underline but will be clickable to get a definition or to learn more from our product guide. Initially the rollout is to test the commercial side of it and a few other possibilities but we are confident that it will work fine and soon users will appreciate it more than they dislike it. We don't do those annoying popup ads here on RCU nor do we do those moving animated ads or java ads. We took flash banners off RCU because guys complained they were slowing them down. This option is subtle and has no hit for speed.

To those who doubted RCU on the changeover and thought we were going bye bye and now realize the advantages to what we have built (after the smoke has now cleared) please have some patience and give things a chance. Any change is a shocker as many learned but this one is very mild to say the least. On a more fun subject did anybody notice I changed the colors a bit on the forum header bars today? Much softer and easier to look at then that muddy color.

i hadn't noticed but i will take your word for it...hehe

you are doing a fine job, having had a little experience with coding i know the amount of time and hassle involved (especially with asp...ugh)...so keep up the good work and know your efforts are appreciated

Hmmm.. there is still room for small banner Ads underneath the poster information on the left side on big messages (like Marc's above) and maybe some scrolling ads to the left of the PM GALLERY SEARCH etc links on each message... Surely we can cram some more ads in there for more revenue and sponsorships! Who knows what the future holds!

Actually the keywords don't bother me that much, but I doubt I'd click on them as they may not take me where I want to go. i.e. Servocity for Hitec Servos etc.

Bill

Bill,

don't be too sure...the links usage has many facets for us.

A) Keyword bidding for large advertisers down to garage/basement advertisers giving anybody the opportunity to get some exposure on a pay per click (pay for performance) basis

B) Links to relevant RCU Magazine reviews. I just linked rolling harriers to team rcu pilot Mark Leseburg's rolling harrier article!

C) Links to products in our product guide to research specs, compare products, read user reviews, read ratings, etc

D) Sellers in our classifieds or auction can link a word to their item for sale in the marketplace directly! For example if you are selling a BVM bandit you could purchase "BVM bandit" and then everytime it comes up in any post it would be a link to your classified or auction ad with your promo text on mouseover.

E) I'm sure I'll think of an E and an F. I just came up with "B" today.

Personally, I would prefer it goes to just one type of place (i.e. a vendor) than just about anywhere (review, classfied ad, market place, university article, etc.). But thats just me, but I can see the flexibility it offers.

Bill

Bill,

Holding your mouse over the link for about 1 second and you will see the message and know where it is going. They are all tagged with delayed mouseover tip messages. Like this one - rolling harrier

So how's the bidding going so far?