Using forums to adverstise

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed posts in various forums that are referring forum readers to ads in Marketplace or to Vendor sites. The concern is that these referrals don't seem to be in response to questions or part of the forum dialogue, but appear to be adverts for a commercial enterprise. Seems to be increasing of late. Is this a permitted activity? I don't mind a suggestion on where to find a particular selection to help a member out, but blatant sales efforts seem to me to undermined what the forums are for.

The only place people are supposed to be advertising is in the classifieds & the marketplace, they shouldn't also be talking about it on the forums. If you run across posts like that, I think the best thing to do is use the "contact us" link that's at the bottom of every page. There you can send a link to the questionable thread/post to the admins and they'll check it out and if someone's breaking the rules they'll take care of it.

Yes, please do. With the thousands of posts each day, it is impossible for us to keep posts like this out. we do depend on each of you to let us know if you see any. We'll take care of them right away.

Call me clueless, but one of my posts in the Pacific Northwest forum asking for info on gardens to visit in the area, now has some kind of advertising "link" tied to key words trip,vacation. Is this new?

I haven't seen anything like that at all. Next time you see it, please take a screenshot and post it here.

It seems to only be happening on one computer I use at work.The "popup" is through GameVance for Princess Cruises. I guess somehow it is scanning for keywords..

I'm very interested in learning more about this, as you shouldn't be seeing anything of the sort. Please, if you see it again, take a screenshot.

Not encountered this advertising at all but am curious ~ how does one take a "screenshot"?

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/558417/

Thanks!

We had trouble with those pop ups a year or two ago. I remember reporting them and they did get them stopped. Exactly what teacup is talking about.

I like when someone posts about a good deal on the classifieds kind of gives me a heads up about plants that I might otherwise miss. Or makes me think about trying something a bit different. Never really thought of it as an issue, no different than talking about a new Co-op starting. I have only started browsing the classifieds lately as I got a lot of my plants from the Co-ops and didn't use the classifieds much.

I went back and looked it was July of 2008 when I had trouble with those word pop ups.

This message was edited Jan 19, 2010 8:22 PM

Some members seem to always post a link to their personal blog under their name at the end of their posts. Is that allowed or is it considered advertising?

We tend to remove them, just because they can become an abused (and irritating) habit ;o)

Should we report someone if we see them doing it?

Yes, please do - probably best to route it to our helpdesk. You'll find a link to "Contact us" at the bottom of each page of the site.

Ha, one more thing that I've learned from DG -- I never could figure out how to do that "print screen" thing!

:-)

Well, now that someone else has brought it up....when I open Dave's I notice that almost all the ads at the top of the sign in page are Austin, TX specific, including the most annoying Austin Lyric Opera ad that fills the screen at times. I accepted that this was the price to pay for being on a great site. But...last week our front door entry lock and hardware needed replacing and I looked at some on Overstock.com. Two days later.....when I opened Dave's, right under the welcome banner was an ad for front door entry locks at Overstock. And the right side panel, above where I sign in.....showed the very page and specific locks I'd chosen to compare days earlier. The same ads were there for a few days. I found that a little creepy......

bigbubbles, that's how online advertising works on many sites. Here's an explanation http://www.cookiecentral.com/cm002.htm

You can turn the ads off, if you'd like. The setting is somewhere in your profile preferences.

My guess is that you have spyware on your computer, so you are right about feeling creepy ... when you log into a site, they flag your IP address and then can bombard you with advertisements. You need a spy sweeper program ... that is my guess. I have one on my computer and don't see that issue very often. But I used to get it a LOT before I added a spy sweeper/cleaner program to my computer. I wonder if this happens more using Internet Explorer than when using Firefox?

This message was edited Jan 24, 2010 11:57 AM

bigbubbles, I checked your profile and you already have ads turned off.

So if you are seeing ads on DG, they aren't put there by us. It would be a spyware problem like beckygardener said.

Thanks, it's something I'll have to check into. And I'll let you know what I find. I thought we already had spy sweeper. Being that the ads come up under the "Welcome to Dave's" banner, I just assumed they were from the website.....

When is the last time you saw one?

The ads are on the opening page, where I log in. We ran our adware scan and it just finished. Found two and deleted them. Went back to Dave's and two new ads....Wall Street Journal's FIN.com under Dave's banner and Clear Choice Wireless along the right side above where I log in. Closed out of everything and came back to Dave's and the same two from this morning were there again, 5 minutes ago. Those have "Google Ads" logo under them. I tried to copy and paste, but the Google logo wouldn't copy. I did copy the ads into a Word doc....

Are the ads there after you log in? From your description it sounds like your computer doesn't automatically log you in and you are doing it manually when you come here. If that's the case, the site has no way of knowing that you're a subscriber and shouldn't be seeing ads until after you've logged in. But once you've logged in they should go away.

You're right, they aren't there after I log in. I didn't know my computer could "automatically log me in." I guess I need to learn how to do that.

This is what I saw this morning when I opened Dave's, before I logged on

I never log out!

I never log out on my home computer, so I never see those. When I access the site from work, I see the ads.

What you're seeing looks totally normal for what you should see before you log in. It's only if you're seeing ads after you log in (if you have ads turned off) that it means there's a problem.

Okay...so I'll never log out again! Thanks. I just always log out of whatever I'm doing when I log o ff computer since I work off two home computers, and know DH isn't really "into" Dave's....or other stuff.

Looks like you got your answer.

As a paying subscriber, you have the option to completely remove the ads from the site (and your account is indeed set up that way). But once you log out, the system no longer knows that you are a subscriber and shows you the ads as if you were just a normal visitor.

I understand. And I won't log out tonight. Truly don't remember such targeted ads before a couple of months ago. Thanks to all who had an answer. Such good info and help always.....

BTW, if this is a home computer, there's no reason to have to logout. It won't hurt anything at all to leave yourself logged in all the time.

Thanks Dave, I had no idea I could safely remain logged on.

Yep. Of course, anybody who sits down at that computer will have access to your membership, but if you're not worried about that, then there's no harm in staying logged in.

I see.. Well the only one who'd have access is DH, and as long as he can't find the co-ops I've joined, I'll be fine.

^_^

I remained logged in and my computer didn't implode, so I'm a happy camper. Just wished I'd known this before. Thanks again for good advice.

I have both our desktop machine and my laptop with DG as my home page. I always use Safari and my husband uses Firefox. I never log out of DG so it's always there the minute I hit the Safari icon.

I am sooo not computer savvy and did something to my laptop last week and one night I clicked on Safari and it came up with some weird message saying something in the url line like: http:ii// and nothing else with a message saying safari couldn't locate it or something. Freaked me out! I had to actually type in www.davesgarden.com to get to the site! I like having DG as my home page and when something goes awry with my laptop I usually scream for my husband to come "fix" it, but he was busy with work related stuff on the desktop so I decided to just play around with it myself ... and I fixed it all by myself! Whew ... I really could have screwed it up even worse knowing me and then I would have had to wait for my husband to get a chance to take a look. But, at least I knew I could get here by typing in the DG address ... I'm just so lazy and like things easy. ^_^