Skimlinks trial on MSE forums

rejsystems

What a load of cobblers! Last word not first choice

This is a site that got airtime on GMTV contrary to OFCOM regulations due to the money making status.

For you to plead poverty when the boards are administered by fantastic and unpaid board guides is disgraceful.

Can I assume that a percentage of the click throughs will be paid to the admins of the appropriate board?

THOUGHT NOT

One-Eye

2) "there have been no reports of it actually happening" and i doubt that there will be. They will just disqualify entrants coming from mse and they will not inform us of it. The best we can expect is a vague clause in the terms & conditions. Note that some already have such a clause eg. "if you have come directly to this page from an external site then your entry to any competition will be invalid". (reading an earlier post it seems the same thing could happen with bookmakers)

from martin

apologies - i went in to reply to your post and clicked the wrong button and have edited it by mistake. I am very sorry - i havent copied your original post (which to help was quoting my stuff about competitions and making two points - the first was about how comps track - the second is above) i will paste my reply below instead. Sorry

reniannen

Is anyone else on Firefox not seeing the skimlinks at all? I don't know if it's just Firefox or if it's one of my add-ons that's stopping it from working (although I'm not sure it's entirely a bad thing). I don't have noscript or anything like that.
If I click on a skimlink it appears to go straight to the site. I've kept an eye on the address bar and the url at the bottom of the screen and I don't see any redirect. Also if I right click on the link then hover over it, or right click and copy the shortcut, the redirect doesn't appear. If I switch to Internet Explorer I do see the redirect in each case.

For my part, I can't help but find their hidden nature a little uncomfortable. I think most internet users would be instinctively wary when a link redirects somewhere funny sounding, especially if it's not made clear that it's a skimlink and what that is. Since you've added the new social media buttons presumably there's more non regulars coming onto the boards. If they click a skimlink on a shared post they might think it was spammy and be put off the site. I would prefer a more transparent form of advertising, which doesn't meddle with users posts and which doesn't potentially have a negative impact on members interests e.g. the compers and those on the GIOL board

jamesd

Horlock, yes, I agree that AdWords in the side of the page would be less objectionable than Skimlinks.

rejsystems, Martin and his team aren't pleading poverty. Rather the initial post indicated that it could provide a revenue stream clearly linked to the forum that might be used to provide increased forum-related staff. I assume that there's already some tracking of indirect revenue such as clicks through links to other site content pages that then produce revenue. And also that there's some consideration of how often people might visit the site, since I would seldom visit the site if it wasn't for the forum, visiting only for specific tasks instead. If people aren't visiting, there's less chance that they would end up following any of the existing revenue-producing links.

The site making money for Martin is a good thing, not a bad one, in my opinion. It's my view that he's doing a socially very useful thing and deserves significant financial reward for it.

MSE Arachna, thanks for the update. There will be some changes. I'll be modifying how I give links to use forms that Skimlinks doesn't process, though I'll also be considering using at the foot of posts a form that it could process, for those who don't mind the risks that Skimlinks introduces. To mitigate my own risk exposure, the Skimlinks site will on my own computer resolve to localhost, so nothing that first goes to the Skimlinks site can load. I'm refraining from doing these and assorted other protective measures during the trial, though.

edgex wrote: »

2) if the redirect can be processed on the MSE servers, why cant the javascript file be downloaded from their, instead of a third party site?

Some of us already are getting it from an MSE location, followed by links that look like this:

<a class="skimlinks" onclick="mugicPopWin(this); return false;" oncontextmenu="mugicRight(this)" href="http://www.ryman.co.uk/competition" target="_blank">www.ryman.co.uk/competition</a></font><br />

It's not always best to load from the main site for a variety of reasons, including that it can cause page loading to be slower. For example, in some page source that I see, the script is loaded as part of the head of a page.

There are two rules that cause this to potentially be slower:

1. The general http/1.1 specification that content from only two URLS per site should be downloaded at the same time. Easy to circumvent by using more than one site.
2. The script in this case is in the head part of the page, so the browser also has to wait until it's all downloaded before it can do the rest of the page display work. Sometimes this can be circumvented by putting the script at the bottom of the page instead of in the head.

Bottom of the page, not in the head part of the page, and loading from a different site can combine to improve page display speed. MSE Ian might already have considered this. Or not, I don't know. Or the differences for different people could be part of testing to gather statistics on which works best.

furndire

One-Eye wrote: »

"c. Competitions Board



2) "there have been no reports of it actually happening" and I doubt that there will be. They will just disqualify entrants coming from MSE and they will not inform us of it. The best we can expect is a vague clause in the Terms & Conditions. Note that some already have such a clause eg. "If you have come directly to this page from an external site then your entry to any competition will be invalid". (reading an earlier post it seems the same thing could happen with bookmakers)

Probably the way round it on the comp board is to get rid of the clickies, so that at least you can see where the comp is from. (hovering over the clicky doesn't show up the site for me, so probably doesn't for many more)

I can't believe how so few people are concerned from that forum.

Why does skimlinks have to be on every forum?

There was also a site which specifially foul mouthed people coming from MSE - a couple of weeks back.
Its ok saying it won't happen, but no-one will know if it has.

MSE_Martin

2) "there have been no reports of it actually happening" and I doubt that there will be. They will just disqualify entrants coming from MSE and they will not inform us of it. The best we can expect is a vague clause in the Terms & Conditions. Note that some already have such a clause eg. "If you have come directly to this page from an external site then your entry to any competition will be invalid". (reading an earlier post it seems the same thing could happen with bookmakers)

This is interesting - could you substantiate that please (not a accusation - a question as I am not a comper)

reniannen

furndire wrote: »

It happens already, can't remember which site, (will try & find it tomorrow)but no doubt there will soon me more.


Probably the way round it on the comp board is to get rid of the clickies, so that at least you can see where the comp is from. (hovering over the clicky doesn't show up the site for me, so probably doesn't for many more)

I can't believe how so few people are concerned from that forum.

Why does skimlinks have to be on every forum?

There was also a site which specifially foul mouthed people coming from MSE - a couple of weeks back.
Its ok saying it won't happen, but no-one will know if it has.

Yes there are a few, but I think it's only a minority of sites that are really against mse users, and although it's annoying I'm more of the opinion that it's their loss. I think getting rid of clicky links is a bit extreme. Many sites are happy for the exposure that mse provides, as shown by the number of self promotion posts we get. I also get pm's from some site owners.

MSE_Martin wrote: »

This is interesting - could you substantiate that please (not a accusation - a question as I am not a comper)

Hi Martin - I think this site is one of the ones that furndire is thinking of:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2646531 ->
http://jonn.co.uk/movies/modules/news/article.php?storyid=887

16.ONLY entries that have come from this page will count, entries from money saving forums, competition websites and so on will not count.

furndire

MSE_Martin wrote: »

This is interesting - could you substantiate that please (not a accusation - a question as I am not a comper)

The below is a site that already does this from this post

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2629179

You beat me to it Reniannen,
The most probable reason MSE compers will upset people is that the answers get posted on here.

The site that foul mouthed MSE was from face book, but it came up in the discussion board post 1932 (sorry, don't know how to put a link directly to the posting)

Amilucky?

furndire wrote: »

Probably the way round it on the comp board is to get rid of the clickies, so that at least you can see where the comp is from. (hovering over the clicky doesn't show up the site for me, so probably doesn't for many more)

I can't believe how so few people are concerned from that forum.

Why does skimlinks have to be on every forum?

There was also a site which specifially foul mouthed people coming from MSE - a couple of weeks back.
Its ok saying it won't happen, but no-one will know if it has.

I am concerned and have been for some time now and I would support the links being posted in an unclickable form,

most compers on MSE don't understand how Skimlinks works and before Skimlinks appeared most compers didn't even know about referral links and that sites where able to see that you where coming from MSE

even if Skimlinks was disabled on the comps board the sites would still see that you had come via MSE because of the referral link being sent

getting rid of clickies on the comps board would stop Skimlinks and the referral link from being sent but I'm not sure that many compers would like the idea and support it

there have been a few who have openly said that they do not like compers from MSE and there are many that secretly don't like compers from MSE and I fear that they maybe secretly deleting entries

The site you mention was the I Heart Cosmetics blog this was posted Aug 1st

http://www.iheartcosmetics.co.uk/2010/08/late-late-gifts-competition-update.html

I have had to delete the original post as I was getting so much grief from people who had posted a link to my blog on a money saving forum, so many hate emails after I made it clear that they were not welcome to enter as they were not legitimate blog followers,

although the blog has deleted the post you can still read the full offensive post here thank god for Google cache
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OsxV--hJJKMJ:www.iheartcosmetics.co.uk/2010/07/who-wants-to-win-free-deluxe-manicure.html+site:www.iheartcosmetics.co.uk+Win+a+deluxe+manicure&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

jdsaint

Note that some already have such a clause

The site mentioned above seems to suggest that they want visitors to go to their competition page though.

On their entry page (sorry can't link to it) it says..

"If you have come directly to this page from an external site then your entry to any competition will be invalid.

All we ask is that before you enter the competition you see the competition page, read the details, watch the trailer and so on"

which kind of puts a different slant on things.

Perhaps by trying to hide activity it'll be seen as more of a "negative" thing for compers than a "positive" one though?