Unwanted Ads

[jsmith948]

I have to tell you, I find the ads a little tiresome.
Was there a change made and we will now be seeing ads?
Just checking, don't know if the ads are like the green underlining from a few days ago?(tx)

[Festus2]

jsmith1948 and all members -
The ads that are appearing are now going to be a part of the forum. The placement of selected advertisements at the top and bottom of the screen have become necessary to make the forum self-sufficient in meeting operating costs.

As you know, the software and other operating costs of this forum require funding and, up to now, Courtland, our forum administrator has been paying for this out of his own pocket.
You should know that he turned down quite a generous offer from someone to purchase the forum. The forum would have seen new ownership and other changes - including advertising on a larger scale than what you see now.

After much discussion amongst the moderators and Courtland, he decided to retain ownership and keep the forum within our Keystone "family". We all thought that the atmosphere and sense of community that exists on the forum are very important to him and to us and we wanted to keep those qualities.

Some advertising will be a part of the forum and we hope that it will not deter from what we have all built. There may be other minor changes coming and we will continue to strive to make the forum a better one for you.

Courtland will probably be making some announcement on his own about what is happening. In the meantime, we ask for your support and understanding.

Cheers and have a good day.
Festus2

[cmssorrell]

You have my support and understanding. Great forum !!!!

Mark

[Courtland]

I have to tell you, I find the ads a little tiresome.
Was there a change made and we will now be seeing ads?
Just checking, don't know if the ads are like the green underlining from a few days ago?(tx)

I totally agree about ads, they can be annoying, intrusive and in general I don't like them either. So I can assure you I am trying to minimize their impact on the forum and be as less intrusive as possible.

Richard provided you some insight as to why we are doing ads now and I wont go into that further, but I will tell you I am trying to keep the forum with that family feel we all like so much and not impact our user community. Unfortunately this forum does costs money to run and operate, its not free and I have footed the bill myself for the last 6 years.

I decided to go with a minimal amount of ads and I had little choice of where to place them unless I start to re code the forum software (this is never a good idea). I can tell you I will not be placing any more ad placements anywhere else in this forum. So what you see is the extent of advertising I will put on the forum.

I know this it not what everyone one wants, but unfortunately for me to keep the forum running and not sell it this needs to happen. As Richard said, In the meantime, we ask for your support and understanding.

Courtland

[azlee56]

You know I am not against pitching in a few dollars donation here or there if you need it. I hope the ads generate some funds for you and I read Courtlands other post, I figured it was to generate cash flow. That is how it is any more....or to pay a subscription cost.

Again, I wouldn't mind donating a couple of bucks here or there.

(and yeah! now I know the owner is a HE. I am never sure on boards and quit quessing a long time ago!)

[SteveC7010]

I spend time on other forums that provide me with advanced technical information on a variety of topics. About half of them have ads.

Most of these forums started out as someone's hobby. But with almost everyone online these days, even the most specialized forum can reach thousands of users in a very short time.

Running a forum that allows multiple users to access all of the features at the same requires bandwidth far greater that we are accustomed to in our homes. Large servers are also necessary. What starts as a hobby can take on a life of its own very quickly. I know a number of folks that have literally gone to full-time operation of their forums, giving up their day jobs.

Someone has to pay the piper for all of this. The general feeling among internet users is that they won't pay money for access to most things. So ads are an attractive alternative to forum operators to stay afloat financially. Donations, while admirable in every sense, rarely provide enough money to pay the bills to keep a forum alive and well.

So, if you want a free internet (dollar wise for the users) ads are part and parcel of the situation. I've learned to ignore them. I am neither insulted nor annoyed by their presence.

Courtland and Festus, keep on trucking.

[ohiocougar]

X2 - "So, if you want a free internet (dollar wise for the users) ads are part and parcel of the situation. I've learned to ignore them. I am neither insulted nor annoyed by their presence"

[jsmith948]

Hello Courtland and Festus2,

Thanks for answering my concern regarding the ads.
I totally understand the need to cover the costs (my personal dislike of ads notwithstanding)
I would have to agree with Lee though, I would gladly pay a reasonable subscription fee to keep the "family atmosphere" of this forum.
The DW and I thoroughly enjoy the forum and have learned a great from the other members.
You certainly have our support and our thanks.:)

[Courtland]

I tossed around the idea of a subscription fee, but I really dislike making or having our user community pay for the use of this forum. I really appreciate that users like you and others are willing to do that, but putting undo burden on a few users is not my style. I have gladly paid all the expenses for many years and would continue doing so if I had no choice, but circumstances have arisen where I had to make some changes.

Some of you may not realize this, but this forum started out as a way to get Keystone to respond to some warranty issues I had with them, it worked. But then this quickly grew into something more and I found myself helping users that had questions and answering emails, tons of emails about support and warranty issues. I found that I enjoyed helping these people as best I could and thus the forum has grown into what it is today. It was not all my doing, the moderators (Festus2, antiqfreq, hankpage and FlyGuy) of this forum really deserve the credit and they helped make this forum into what it is today. In case you didn't know, the moderators are the sounding board I use when making changes, they know the pulse of the forum and can tell me what will work and wont work with our user community. We strive to maintain that family feel here and although you may not know the person on the other side of the keyboard you feel like you do. We knew ads would not be well received by all, that is why we tried to minimize their impact and be as unobtrusive as possible. Everything happened so quickly that I didn't even have time to post a message letting everyone know what changes were about to occur. When Google said days for the ads to show up, they showed up in hours.

But back to the point, I really have a hard time with our user community paying for anything when a couple ads on the website will simply do the trick. It makes more sense to me to add the ads so the forum becomes self sufficient, if we decide to change any of this in the future we will let you, our users know in advance. Hopefully they are not to annoying and our community can keep growing more and more everyday and maintain that family feel we all like so much.

Sorry for the long ramble its been a very long work week.

Courtland

[hoffbrew]

Keep up the awesome job!!! If there is a donation pot, let me know.

Thanks again for the forum.

[CUFFS054]

If you're taking votes, I'll throw some $$ in also. Another forum I frequent went that way and I believe it made it better.

[AnnaK]

I don't see any ads because I use an extension within my various browsers that blocks them. Should you open up a venue for donations in the future, please count me in as contributor.

[poochy]

we'll donate too, we love this forum and our fuzion thanks guys :):)(tx)(tx)

[Bob Landry]

Banners and sidebar ads are easy enough to ignore. Unless you click on them. they simply scroll away with whatever you just read. The real irritation are the embedded links, you know.. the little green ones, that when you accidentally run your mouse over them, they pop up with an ad, usually totally unrelated to the material on the forum. I've bailed off of forums because of those. Fortunately I havn't seen them on any of the RV forums, so maybe the current generation of forum operaters have figured out that they just aren't worth the loss of readership

[geo]

I too support you, Courtland and the Moderators, in your decision to allow a few ads to offset the costs of the Forum. It's not that I enjoy the ads, because like you I think they are a pain. But a necessary pain. Advertising pays for a whole lot of "things" we have in everyday life. I gripe at commercials on TV! (Like hankpage, I'm old enough to remember when "cable TV" didn't have any commercials!) But the advertisers foot the bill, so I support your collective decision to utilize them. I think we should consider that there are many Keystone RV owners out there who might not join the Forum if it also had a membership fee - and many of those owners are ones who benefit from our help. And likewise, there might be valuable members who would never have been members if an upfront fee was charged to join.

Kudos to Courtland and the Moderators for keeping the Forum free and open to all! (tx)

Ron

[chris199]

Have no complaints from me on the ads. Just ask my DW....she says I can zone out anything....selective something or other I think she calls it. I probably wasn't listening too well when she told me what it was called :D. Selective reading should be easy too!

I'd be open to paying something for the forum but, frankly, feel it would discourage new users. It isn't until you get here, look around, chat, and spend some time before you realize the value of this forum. If I would have had to pay up front...I suspect I would have gone somewhere else.

To the forum organizers: Well done! (tx)