tbstone's avatar

[beset7]

http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/7861/done14vv.gif

Site isn't up yet. I PM'd him asking if it was going to have commercial banners and he was a little defensive. Somebody who knows him want to talk to him?

edit: He pm'd me back and didn't realize I was a mod when he was defensive. He said that he originally planned on not having any advertising as it's just a free service he wishes to provide to the 2p2 community. But, he's having problems with his web service provider and is considering having ads to pay for a better ISP and other costs.

[Surfbullet]

right now it's a free service he's hosting(albeit crappy one since he keeps exceeding his bandwidth allocations and then dl's stop) for players to upload videos for 2+2.

There are no ads there now, so I see nothing wrong with his avatar, since he doesn't stand to profit / compete with 2+2. If he puts up competing ad banners then I'd guess we have to tell him to take his avatar down?

Surf

[beset7]

Ahh. Ok. My PMs with him let me to believe he hadn't put the site up yet but that when he did it might or might not have a commercial element to it. If it's been up and running ad-free then seems fine with me.

[B Dids]

TStone's doing this free and despite some urging seems to be thinking about paying for it out of pocket (I suggested he solicit donations if bandwidth gets high).

I think part of the reason for his avatar is that based on a thread in here, but Commodus and myself told him that we couldn't put his site in his title or loc.

[beset7]

I think it's pretty gray area. If he generates a lot of traffic thanks to his avatar and then decides to commercialize the site...

But it sounds OK to me at this point but a consistent no url's in your avatar might be better.

[Greg J]

If/when he decides to commercialize the site with ads then I'm sure he will voluntarily take down the avatar (though a mod should certainly prompt him). He seems to be a pretty reasonable guy.

[Lloyd]

I cannot imagine that with URLs not allowed in locations that they are allowed in avatars. And that rule was not just for URLs that were commercial but any URL. I believe allowing this is contrary to current policy.

[beset7]

[ QUOTE ]
If/when he decides to commercialize the site with ads then I'm sure he will voluntarily take down the avatar (though a mod should certainly prompt him). He seems to be a pretty reasonable guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah. He told me that he had no gripes with taking it down if we felt it was improper. That's a great point about the LOC field. I can't put the URL for my blog in my loc field but I could stencil it on my avatar? (mine has banners but just assuming it didn't).

[Surfbullet]

[ QUOTE ]
I cannot imagine that with URLs not allowed in locations that they are allowed in avatars. And that rule was not just for URLs that were commercial but any URL. I believe allowing this is contrary to current policy.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't realize that there was a blanked "no urls in locations" rule. I'll keep an eye out and start enforcing that, I thought it was a "no commercial urls and the rest is to the discretion of the mod."

Surf

[beset7]

The latest on URL in loc (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=moddisc&Number=4006952&Se archpage=2&Main=3988864&Words=Mat++Sklansky&topic= &Search=true#Post4006952)

[Schneids]

Is it a good idea for 2p2 to be allowing people to use their site to let other people get free publicity, even if it's not for a commercial site?

I mean, there have been a few times I've thought about starting a poker site/magazine, but one of the things that've held me back is knowing how much effort it can take to get people to come and consistently come (I've done web magazines before, one that eventually achieved 1M pageviews in a month, I know how hard it is to get to that point though). If I knew that I could use 2p2 to advertise it via my avatar and/or location, then I could just do that until my daily hits reached an acceptable level for me, then take down the info in my 2p2 name and make it commercial once critical mass has been achieved.

I guess that's a thought outloud for Mat, since I really don't personally care either way if this stays allowable or not.

[Lloyd]

It's not allowable. URLs have been banned in the location field. While not specifically addressed by Mat I'm sure that they are also not allowed in avatars.