SRL Archive - Senior Discussions and Debates

With a certain frequency, I receive requests from sites like gold4fun to put a banner on top of SRL. They seem to be willing to pay us €500,- per month. Now I dont have any interest, both financial and estethical, but I can imagine €500 per month being more than sufficient to save human of animal lives. Yes, I am talking charitiy… but only micro charity that has a direct measurable result. I dont have a clear view on this, but imho that would be the only way to do business with gold4fun.

Thoughts please.

I like that. Are you meaning the type of charities that you can directly buy items for people? Like buy 3 mosquito nets for $30 or like a cow for $40 type deal?

Indeed. Not even sure if it exists, and most are scammers or 99% overhead. I donated to many in the past, but none survived.

Go for it :)

I would also let Gold4RS know of this little idea, along with our userbase.

From: Daniel
Go for it :)

I would also let Gold4RS know of this little idea, along with our userbase.

Yes, ofcourse :)

I'm all for charity. BraK donate's annually to Alsheimer Research Foundation and a Lopus Research Foundation. Those are research only sole purpose is to find a cure or slow it down. They don't pay out to specific people or to health-care cost for others.

I quite like the idea, Fakawi. It would only add to the amount of good that is already done here. :)

I like the idea :)
Maybe we could use the money to support a child? I believe it is close to $40/month per child.

From: cause
I like the idea :)
Maybe we could use the money to support a child? I believe it is close to $40/month per child.

Yes, nice… but nothing high profile. No international organisation with lots of overhead, managers draining all funds, with full color print brochures or flashy adverts. Hyperallergic to those.

From: WT-Fakawi
Indeed. Not even sure if it exists, and most are scammers or 99% overhead. I donated to many in the past, but none survived.

There is one that is actually reputable and has been around for a number of years but is not high profile. I will try to find it.

Although I like the charity aspect of it, I really don't like gold4fun. They've always been shady in my book.

Also, if there is a gold4fun banner at the top of the site, wouldn't that give people the wrong idea of who we are?

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/oxfam-unwrapped

Yes I have heard oxfam is good Hobbit, and a google search doesn't turn up anything too horrible about their rep.
Kyle: Our user base is pretty young…do you think it matters? I don't really but I do agree that gold4fun probably isn't the most…"legit" business.

If someone has been scammed by them, which I have seen it happen, and they come here and see their banner on top of our site, what do you think their reaction will be? We will drive them off before they even have a chance to see what we are.

I fear that their history will be the downfall of this. Even if they are young, we should do what we can to protect them. I mean, look what happens when someone gets hacked or scammed on here. Why give someone the chance to get hacked/scammed in the first place?

I can agree with Kyle here at least. We only allow buying and selling in the BM. This would violate that very rule by advertising buying and selling everywhere. Also it would undermine our own users trying to sell here legit.

If we are going to do ads I'd prefer them not be game related.

From: Kyle Undefined
Although I like the charity aspect of it, I really don't like gold4fun. They've always been shady in my book.

Also, if there is a gold4fun banner at the top of the site, wouldn't that give people the wrong idea of who we are?

And thats exactly what has been bothering me. I too dont like gold4fun and I'd hate to see it on top of our forums. But 500 euros every month for a good cause? Thats worth thinking about.

Starting to feel more like selling our users to them. granted we don't have a super huge users base. heck I don't even think they can get 500 cash from us a month that they will pay back to us.

But if they scam one person that we have on these forums that person would then feel that we are responsible. Hence the We sold our users comment.

From: BraK
I can agree with Kyle here at least. We only allow buying and selling in the BM. This would violate that very rule by advertising buying and selling everywhere. Also it would undermine our own users trying to sell here legit.

If we are going to do ads I'd prefer them not be game related.

From: BraK
Starting to feel more like selling our users to them. granted we don't have a super huge users base. heck I don't even think they can get 500 cash from us a month that they will pay back to us.

But if they scam one person that we have on these forums that person would then feel that we are responsible. Hence the We sold our users comment.

Gold4Fun shows up on our banners all the time regardless because of googles lovely customization of ads to keywords on a page. So really we are just getting some money out of them for it.

What exactly are they asking for in terms of ad space? Single banner? Multiple banners? Sidebar? Top banner? How specific are they?

lol Funny enough I've never seen it ;)

Wonder what I did to see the things I get :p

That's just a Google Adwords banner, which goes off your history. They can also target this website and pay more to have it shown here more.

I'm sure it would be a fairly prominent ad at the top, much bigger than that.

Lol Hobbit buys loads of gold you can tell by his Ads. ;)

I generally have IT and programming ads :p

From: Kyle Undefined
If someone has been scammed by them, which I have seen it happen, and they come here and see their banner on top of our site, what do you think their reaction will be? We will drive them off before they even have a chance to see what we are.

I doubt that.

Ya I'd say that's a bit of a jump Kyle…there are adverts everywhere for beautiful russian women…mine still hasn't arrived and it's been 2 years.

But those aren't placement ads, those are Google Adword ads. Total difference.

Placement Ads are way bigger, and never change. They are prominent so they can be seen.

If I was scammed by a site, and went to another site and saw they had a banner at the top that was prominent, I wouldn't even come back. It's not that far of a jump.

What kyle is saying is because of the porn you look at they are trying to set you up witha mail order bride.

Mine are all about Information technology and Programing as it's what I do for a living so it's my most searched thing.

These ads are also smaller than what a dedicated ad would be. Also a dedicated ad would never change it would be a permanent banner for them at the top of our forum's in big bold letters.

Like a Racecar driver or a soccer player wear's the icon of their sponsor we to would have a Icon notating them as our sponsor regardless of wether or not the Money is used for our site or a charity.

And yeah after a few days deliberation over this. I'm definitely against having them sponsor us. If it was something programming related I'd probably reconsider.

tl'dr I'm against this.

From: WT-Fakawi
sites like gold4fun

What other sites?

Also, non-high profile? Donate to me =p jk…

This is rita from Gold4Fun, I work in the Marketing Dept. We sell Runescape Gold and Items on that site.

I'm writing this email because we're interested in advertising on your site villavu.com, can you please tell me if it's possible for us to pay a monthly fee for putting a banner on your site?

Please let me know so we can talk details. Thanks!

Regards,

Gold4Fun.com

PMed to me today. @Gold4FunRita
@Gold4FunRita

I wouldn't do it.

From: Kyle Undefined
I wouldn't do it.

I would. People here are kids. They don't care.

Otherwise, why would Sythe still be so big?

Man I dunno… Putting those kind of adds on Villavu gives us a label, drawing us closer to the low level of Sythe/Powerbot/ect… While actually this community has nothing to do with virtual trading nor does it, atleast, directly encourage RWT.

On the other hand, exactly like what Daniel the noob is talking about, the chance of a visitor giving two ….thoughts about it are slim to none. While only a few of us pay attention to details like that. In the meantime we'll be drawing in money for a better cause than any of the other sites are. But if we do decide to do this, I really urge we make an official announcement on why we chose to do it, and what the money will be used for. That's my only condition, make the cause aware.

From: Flight
But if we do decide to do this, I really urge we make an official announcement on why we chose to do it, and what the money will be used for. That's my only condition, make the cause aware.

Well duhh, Flight the Silly.

Yes, if we do this it will be officially announced as a charity act. One of my close friends (cinematographer and program maker) is one of the founders of this project in Zambia:
http://www.mukambicommunityschool.orinocoinfoware.nl/intro.aspx?lang=en

Progress will be reported here, of course. I wll make a nice forum corner for this :)

Meanwhile we ar still negiotiating the terms of delivery from gold4fun. As wizz wisely phrases: money first…banner next. So maybe we coud negotiate a payment on weekly base first. I will give them a week to pay us, and the banner will be here for one week. If no payment is recieved, the banner will be removed.

From: Daniel
Well duhh, Flight the Silly.

<3

From: WT-Fakawi
Yes, if we do this it will be officially announced as a charity act. One of my close friends (cinematographer and program maker) is one of the founders of this project in Zambia:
http://www.mukambicommunityschool.orinocoinfoware.nl/intro.aspx?lang=en

Progress will be reported here, of course. I wll make a nice forum corner for this :)

Meanwhile we ar still negiotiating the terms of delivery from gold4fun. As wizz wisely phrases: money first…banner next. So maybe we coud negotiate a payment on weekly base first. I will give them a week to pay us, and the banner will be here for one week. If no payment is recieved, the banner will be removed.

Smart thinking. The part about Wizzup? made me chuckle. :d

From: Daniel
I would. People here are kids. They don't care.

Otherwise, why would Sythe still be so big?

We are not Sythe nor Gold4Fun. Why should we bring ourselves down to such a low level. People all know they both are scam places.

So going by your logic, I should bring my gun into work, because everyone is a gun enthusiast, so they won't care. Right?

I say go ahead with it. Their ads show up through adsense anyways.

Sounds good, if it goes to charity + maintaining the site (I don't mind if you Fawki buy yourself something either :D)

~Home

I am not to fond of the idea of a big gold4fun banner on this forum. It looks unprofessional and harms our 'we are not goldfarmers but a learning community' imago. By placing the banner we will also directly connect us with goldfarming. It will just bring us one step closer to becoming one of those cheap as crappy bots you can find all over the web.

So I would say no.

I agree with masterBB

Thanks for your input guys. Weighing all pros and cons, I came to the ultimate conclusion that I am not going to affiliate us with gold4fun, so there wil come no banner.

If we could find another person wanting to advertise thats not related to gold farming and so much scamming this could still be a viable idea. Maybe someone related to programming or something? Maybe like FreeLancer?

Maybe we can donate a better website to that mukambi community school charity?

From: WT-Fakawi
Thanks for your input guys. Weighing all pros and cons, I came to the ultimate conclusion that I am not going to affiliate us with gold4fun, so there wil come no banner.

Seems to be over-all the wisest decision. :)

From: masterBB
Maybe we can donate a better website to that mukambi community school charity?

I would be willing to help out with something like this. I could honestly see us having a "Charitable Projects" section added to development for ongoing 'donations' like this. Could be fun.

From: masterBB
Maybe we can donate a better website to that mukambi community school charity?

From: NCDS
Seems to be over-all the wisest decision. :)


I would be willing to help out with something like this. I could honestly see us having a "Charitable Projects" section added to development for ongoing 'donations' like this. Could be fun.

That's a great idea!

Yes, we would still need to contact them if they want it of course. Maybe @WT-Fakawi could ask?

From: Hobbit
I say go ahead with it. Their ads show up through adsense anyways.

This.

Also, my rent is a good cause isn't it? j/k =p

I'd go ahead with it, they're offering some good GP…it might make our own black market get smaller though.

Not sure what's with the whole "let's not bring ourselves down to the level of sythe / pb", does that go for every site with ads on it?

From: n3ss3s
Not sure what's with the whole "let's not bring ourselves down to the level of sythe / pb", does that go for every site with ads on it?

That was directed at Gold4Fun exclusive ads rather than just Adsense.

Have read all posts, my only input, is, if you decide to and as far as a charity, how about the people here that are enrolled in college and offering a small tuition (with application process to demonstrate need) to help cover books or offset costs of materials, i think some good can be done IMHO.

~RAM

From: RAM
Have read all posts, my only input, is, if you decide to and as far as a charity, how about the people here that are enrolled in college and offering a small tuition (with application process to demonstrate need) to help cover books or offset costs of materials, i think some good can be done IMHO.

~RAM

SRL Scholarship, I like that.

From: Hobbit
SRL Scholarship, I like that.

Okay, but who will we make the grants out to? SSRL+? SRL Member+? I would imagine we'd run out of money pretty quickly if it were the latter.

You would have a fixed number per year. Most people that have scholarship funds have like 1 or 2 scholarships per year. Typical is like $250-500 (Canada anyways). There are some bigger ones but those are often put out by bigger companies rather than like a trust fund or local society. Mind you, even that I dont think we would be able to keep up for very long. I never said it would necessarily be feasible, I just said I liked it :p

I like the idea ;) but maybe that's because I'm in school