On many ad-supported websites, the information in the database profile can be used to target advertising.
It appears that The Straight Dope makes use of DoubleClick’s DART ad management system. Set up properly, DART can target ads to whatever data point you wish. In other words, if the board DID somehow collect the kooky information heretofore described, and if that information was being fed to DART, I could call the Chicago Reader and purchase banner ads targeted only to the users that leggoed their Eggoes.
I dunno why this is relevant, but I just thought I’d share.
If you keep records on the total number of
compact discs we own, could you please let
me know my count? People are always asking
me, and I have no idea. About 400 is my guess.
Please include the four I have coming from
ebay, and the ones I’m buying this Sunday
in NYC.
You were being rude yourself (although that’s your “style” I guess). Starfish had asked twicely nice and gotten nowhere.
But this other fellow’s point has puzzled me for some, as well.
The forum listing says: “About This Message Board
For technical questions and concerns about the SDMB.”
And when people do, they more often than not get joke answers from the moderators.
Maybe eventually another regular poster will supply the actual answer.
You should have some place where your board questions are taken seriously first, and sure, then jokes can follow.
I think it goes to one of our key problems on the board, where moderators are surprised when new posters don’t show them proper respect.
They might be surprised to recognize whenthey haven’t been giving proper respect either.
A little civility all around would do wonders for this forum. Many of the forums have a tone of civility and seriousness: *Comments on Cecil’s Columns, Comments on Mailbag Answers, General Questions, Great Debates, * and even In My Humble Opinion. This could be one of them, as well.
BTW, what did you all find with that last survey? And no joke answers! I mean it! I have info on all you mods and admins stored in my server, so watch it!
Not true. Yes, we handled this in a somewhat humorous way (and what’s wrong with that?), but I think the question was answered to most everyone’s satisfaction.
That’s not true at all, we answer a lot of questions and most of them without any humor at all.
None of our staff has quite managed to figure out how to be on top of a board 24/7 and it’s quite possible that someone that’s not a staff member replies before the moderator gets a chance to even see the topic.
If someone has covered the subject ahead of me, I’m damn grateful, the question got answered in a timely fashion. Or would you rather everybody just sit and wait until I can get to it? That’s not being disrespectful of the original poster, that’s being pragmatic. If something’s been answered to everybody’s satisfaction they don’t need my two cents on the matter.
Interesting that you approve of all the forums and their moderators, with the exception of those who have responded to this thread. I’m sure that’s coincidental.
I respectfully disagree. If anything, ATMB is one of the more civil forums around here, it’s the nature of the beast.
Are you confusing About This Message Board with The Pit? There is a tiny bit of overlap in that while ATMB is the place for questions about the board and policy and moderation and etc., The Pit is where all the venting about board and policy and moderation gets filed.
As far as “respect” goes, when a poster does something that violates forum rules and we point that out to them, I think we have a right to expect that said poster will not compound their error by being ugly and getting in our faces over it. We’re had quite a bit of that lately and frankly, it’s uncalled for.
No moderator likes to see commercial solicitation in their forum . . . or copyright violations . . . or links to sexually explicit sites. (To name just a few of the problems we’ve had to deal with recently.) We fight all these things vigorously. It’s because we hold our members in high regard and want to make this the best possible place for them that we take this stance and it’s most respectful of the people that truly matter.
The surveys were collected by the online advertising guys at the Reader and they have not been seen or heard from since. It’s been months since that survey and none of us that work on the site have any idea how it came out.
Whilst I have no problems with the answers or the tone of answers given in response to this question, it is interesting that this thread has over 14 hundred views.
The next on the page has only 120-odd. And it has the word “testicles” in the title.
Fanny May, dear, that wasn’t rude. That was annoyed. When I’m rude, I assure you, you’ll know it.
If Starfish feels his/her questions weren’t answered, I’m sure s/he can reach the keyboard. And if barflyer has a grudge, I’m sure s/he can express it just fine. Nice of you to chip in and all, but I don’t know that it’s all that necessary.
If you don’t like the way questions are handled, I’m sorry. Echoing Tubadiva the Great and Terrible, I don’t agree with your observation about the dearth of straight answers in ATMB. But ya know, even if every thread were met with humor, so what? You might have noticed that the denizens of the MB, from Unca’ Cecil on down to us mere mortals, are usually flippant, often irreverant, and occasionally caustic. It’s the nature of the beast. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but if you don’t like baseball, you don’t go to the games.
Actually, TubaDiva, while the Chicago Reader may have dropped their contract with DoubleClick for ad sales representation, it appears that they are continuing to license the DART ad management system. Roll over one of the ads on the home page and check the click URL.
The DART ad management system and DoubleClick’s ad rep business are two different things.
BTW, I didn’t mean to imply anything about the Straight Dope’s data collection initiatives or lack thereof. I just wanted to make the point that if you did collect data, it is possible to target ads using that data. Just one of the things I know as the result of being an Internet marketing geek.
