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We're now at December 2013, which means that we get to see our first cycling of the Community Promotion Ads here!

What are Community Promotion Ads?

Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.

Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?

This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

  • interesting reads and resources for skeptics
  • the site's twitter account
  • cool events or conferences
  • anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

Why do we reset the ads every year?

Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.

The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.

How does it work?

The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

  1. All answers should be in the exact form of:

    [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

    Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.

  2. The question must always be tagged with the magic tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

  • The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels
  • Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
  • Must be GIF or PNG
  • No animated GIFs
  • Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB

Score Threshold

There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.

You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

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  • Last year, we only had one eligible upvoted advert. So, it got put on high rotation, and I got very bored of it. I'm hoping this year we will get a few more approved, just for the variety.
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Dec 7, 2013 at 0:38
  • 1
    Is there any way to make this post a "sticky"? I had a bit of a time finding this and wanted to promote it.
    – JasonR
    Commented Jun 26, 2014 at 20:14

18 Answers 18

Reset to default
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Google Scholar Web Search: Stand on the shoulders of giants

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  • Direct copy of advert voted up in 2013.
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 15:24
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Space Exploration Stack Exchange

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Facebook group dedicated to stopping the misinformation about vaccinations spread by the Australian Vaccination Network

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Follow us on Twitter!

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  • This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 9:48
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Current Skeptics Stack Exchange bounties http://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/skeptics.stackexchange.com/bounty.png

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  • This is a magic image, shared by Kyle Cronin, that automatically updates based on current unanswered bounties. It breaks one of the rules, as it is not hosted by imgur, so it won't surprise me if it doesn't get put into rotation even if it gets the votes, but cool, huh?
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 22:42
  • Not entirely sure of the rules it uses - seems to exclude some featured questions. It also seems too large... (but maybe it adapts or something?)... but cool, huh?
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 22:42
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    The image is double resolution, so that it looks great when scaled down on retina devices
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Dec 7, 2013 at 3:11
  • @KyleCronin - Any solution regarding this issue?
    – Himanshu
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:30
  • I saw this add on skeptics and it was claiming that it had an invalid referrer. The page it was on | Source code on that page (also, it was a pain in the ass to make this comment because every time I logged in, I was redirected to the skeptics homepage and pasting the link of this page would somehow log me out)
    – Kat
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 0:33
  • That's odd. Looks fine to me. @KyleCronin?
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 5:55
  • 1
    @Mike Are you using a browser setting or extension that prevents referers being sent when fetching resources on another server? The ad looks for the referer to determine which SE site it's on.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 15:01
  • @hims056 OK, I responded to that. I'll see if Nathan can make an image to handle the case where there's no bounties.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 15:08
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    @Kyle, I figured out what the issue was. It appears that the HTTPS version of the site (enforced by the extension HTTPS Everywhere) doesn't like the ad. The ad works fine on the HTTP site (my solution was to disable HTTPS Everywhere's rule for Stack Exchange).
    – Kat
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 23:17
  • Also, HTTPS seems to have been the cause of my login issues. I'm guessing Stack Exchange doesn't play nicely with HTTPS at all?
    – Kat
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 23:19
  • 1
    @Mike The image has been updated to display a message when there are no bounties. I have also added a route where you can specify the SE site in the URL so that it doesn't need to rely on the referer: stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/…
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 2:42
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A reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.

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  • 4
    Let's give our Web 1.0 competitor some traffic.
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Jan 5, 2014 at 3:38
  • 2
    I'm still upset they didn't get back to me on the spider eating question...
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Jan 5, 2014 at 21:29
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    Snopes is incidentally not a great example of sceptical inquiry. Many of their articles lack adequate references and are entirely opaque to double-checking (as Sklivvz has noticed himself). Linking to them is in many instances a pure appeal to authority, which worries me.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 10:04
  • @Konrad: I sometimes avoid their articles that have inadequate references (or explicitly call out their weakness), but if seems to be a minority. I certainly agree that Snopes can be a false authority and their claims need to be verified, because it says so on Snopes!
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 15:38
  • @Oddthinking “Do as I say, not as I do”, clearly. Snopes is notorious for not replying to emails requesting details on sources.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 15:40
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rbutr is a browser plugin that tells you when the webpage you are viewing has been disputed, rebutted or contradicted elsewhere on the internet.

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  • This is a great tool! Skeptic Action uses this extensively.
    – Larian LeQuella
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 17:58
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WOT is a free website reputation, rating and review tool that helps find trustworthy websites and protects against online scams, untrustworthy links, and unreliable web stores. Free add-on for Firefox, IE, Chrome, Opera and Safari browsers.

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Skeptic Action

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    By the way, for those interested in what this is, basically it's a confluence of WoT and rbutr. Each day a website is highlighted on the facebook page, or the twitter account, and you are asked to evaluate it as a skeptic with WoT and to use rbutr on it. Sometimes, pro-skeptic sites are featured too.
    – Larian LeQuella
    Commented May 21, 2014 at 1:35
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A large, active website for people who try to think rationally.

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The mission of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is to promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.

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  • Why CSI instead of CFI? I don't quite understand the relationship between the two.
    – user5582
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 19:59
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The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.

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  • 1
    Dawkin's misogyny and rape culture is repugnant. Also, while I want Muslims to become non-practising or atheist, I am worried about his attitude towards Muslims. We can't condone his behaviour by promoting his foundation, especially in an ad which includes his photo. (I could have merely said that Dawkins is an embarrassment to skepticism and atheism and left it at that, but I felt I ought to give the real reason I'm downvoting it)
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Sep 27, 2014 at 23:53
  • 3
    I agree with @AndrewGrimm not about the Muslims (all law-abiding people should be entitled to religious freedom, including Muslims, and Jews like me :O) but because that big photo of Dawkins is like tacky hero worship. In light of his not so congenial attitude toward women, alluded to by Andrew, it is extra distasteful. Any input from other women would be helpful. In general, I'd prefer not to see anyone's face in SE advertisements! ~>If this ad were used in 2015 sans photo, it would be a lot less obtrusive.<~
    – Ellie Kesselman
    Commented Nov 28, 2014 at 9:45
  • 4
    The accusations of misogyny, rape culture and xenophobia are wrong, and largely stem from a dishonest campaign against him. That said, I agree that a personal avatar – of whichever kind – has no place on an ad displayed on Skeptics.SE and that, if we want to advertise the RDF at all, we should do so in an entirely different way.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 10:01
  • @KonradRudolph who's behind the "dishonest campaign against him"?
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 23:05
  • 1
    @Andrew I’m not sure anybody is behind it, I think it’s more of a mutually enforcing circle jerk: Dawkins is currently a favourite person to bash.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 23:10
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Arqade: Q&A for players of video games

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Chemistry - Stack Exchange

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Academia Stack Exchange

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Support the Pastafarianism Proposal!

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