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Stack Exchange sites that have graduated can add community ads to the rotation of ads shown on the front page (that place where you sometimes see ads for random other SE sites). These ads are voted on by members of their communities, and if enough voters agree that the ad would be welcome on their site, it's added.

Over on Worldbuilding we've had some success advertising our community to members of other SE sites. I suggest that we do that too.

On this question I asked which sites are our strongest candidates for this -- what other sites have users who might also be interested in aspects of community-building? So far the suggestions have included:

  • Arqade (gaming), because this often involves people running game servers)
  • Workplace, because of the interpersonal/group aspects
  • Security
  • Game Design
  • Cognitive Science (but they're in beta so we can't yet, oops)

On Worldbuilding we were able to make one ad that works on all the sites we've pitched it to, but that might not work here -- we might need custom ads for some of these sites to make the connection more clear.

Here's the required format for ad submissions:

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

All answers should be in the exact form of:

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

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

The link should usually be to our main site, but consider whether linking to specific tags or specific questions would be appropriate for some ads.

I suggest that we use this question to collect ad designs that we might submit elsewhere. Please use one answer per design and indicate what site(s) you think it would be good for. Please don't feel limited by the list above; if you can think of another graduated SE site whose users would welcome our ad, please propose it.

(My own graphics skills are at the level of "my red freehand circles usually aren't too wobbly", so I'm not going to be much help with that.)

Let's get ourselves some publicity. Can you help?

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  • Add Skeptics? That site itself seems to be going strong, but I think many people visiting there may be involved on other communicaties (physical and web-based)
    – user732
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 9:13
  • @JanDoggen thanks. I don't know a lot about the Skeptics community; do you have thoughts on designing an ad targeted to them? Or do you think one of the ones posted here would be appropriate there?
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 13:06
  • 'Trolls' could apply, but in a broader sense: also people asking really weird questions - something along the lines of "A fool may ask more questions in an hour than a wise man can answer in seven years". The site has questions that I think "Why on earth would you think that has any truth to it?". Well, at least the OPs take the effort to post the questions ;-) But people can ask any question without any proof and placing the burden on the community to debunk them.
    – user732
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 13:41
  • @JanDoggen could you take a look at this meta question with Skeptics in mind?
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 14:00

8 Answers 8

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The CMS related Exchanges probably have overlap, in that they need a community to thrive on, once they've ironed out their technical issues.

Blog Ad

I think would be relevant on

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  • Maybe also Craft CMS... we could slightly modify this to also accommodate World Building if we think it'd be on topic there.
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 4:19
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    Worldbuilding is in beta so it doesn't get ads.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 4:35
  • I'm pretty sure Craft CMS is still in beta. They got their pro tem mods only a few weeks before we did. They do have a nice fancy favicon though.
    – Andy Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 5:06
  • I don't know why I thought Worldbuilding was a beta site (I got fooled by Craft CMS's favicon...)
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 22:35
  • This ad has reached 6 votes on WordPress so should be live there.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 16:04
  • This ad has reached 6 votes on Drupal Answers.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Aug 23, 2015 at 2:41
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A revision to Monica Cellio's answer:

Sites:

Feel free to add a comment to suggest another site!

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This was an early draft. Ignore it and see this answer instead.

Here is a starting point for the "got trolls?" ad suggested here. Anybody want to take this and run with it? Should I just make it the right size and submit as-is? I'm not very good at this, but in the interests of having something...

got trolls?

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    I had Gaming in mind when I made this, but it might also fit on Webmasters, which has a forums tag (h/t Alex for pointing this out).
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 20:04
  • Another possibility is we don't need to have an actual picture of a troll. A picture of a "computer hacker" could work, also.
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 23:07
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    FYI if we want this for the final image I can take the original and clean it up some digitally so the lines look smoother (not extremely hard to do so). It looks like your program didn't use anti-aliasing so stuff looks choppier. Also, we'd need to resize it to fit the specs for the ad
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 23:14
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    @AnnonomusPenguin thanks! Yes I know it needs to be resized, and as for anti-aliasing, well, it's a low-end free program and I took the defaults. I'll be happy to supply versions with and without the text+crosshairs.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 23:18
  • Posted another "Troll Hunter" AD here. Cheers!
    – blunders
    Commented Jan 29, 2015 at 22:00
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Although one ad is easy, there seems to be two major groups: gamers and professions. Those groups don't work well together.

Gamers: the slogan "got trolls?" has a clear message and it gives an example of what you could ask. Downside: people might think it's only about moderation, but hopefully our new name will suggest a broader scope.

I'm not quite sure to approach the professional side since I don't think anything with "conflict resolution" would get voted for on The Workplace when it might take traffic away from them.

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    A gamers-focused ad built around "got trolls? we can help!" or some such sounds like a great idea! A group of trolls sitting around a table with laptops, caught in crosshairs, maybe?
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:19
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    @Monica <strike>Great idea with the crosshairs: now we just need to figure out how to break into SE's headquarters to get a few pictures of the employees! Ideas?</strike> A public domain stock photo would suffice, I guess.
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:25
  • Could be just one troll with a computer, like this one I found via Google, except that one's not public domain so not that in particular. But something like that, plus crosshairs, plus the "got trolls?" text, could work. We just need a troll we can actually use...
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:33
  • @MonicaCellio I don't know if it would paint a better picture if we posted a picture of a real troll in the game, like a person placing a ton of TNT in Minecraft (the only game I've played in the past year). Thoughts? Licensing might be hard, but some games allow you to have ownership of the screenshot but not many.
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:39
  • Hmm, good question. I'm not a gamer (of that sort of game), so we should ask people who are.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:40
  • Agreed. We should also get a halfway decent graphic designer to help us here, since I have extreme difficulties with any form of art (besides music). No offensive if you're an expert at design, but you mentioned that you weren't in the question.
    – Anonymous Penguin Mod
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:44
  • Definitely not an expert designer. :-)
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 2, 2015 at 5:50
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    Despite my not being anything like an expert, I took a stab at something here: meta.communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1227/83
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 11, 2015 at 23:47
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We can probably get away with something non-picturey (it's a word now...). I have seen several for UX.SE that are very simple. I can't find their recent ads on their Meta, but some of their older ones, here, are just boiled down versions of their questions with links back to the relevant question.

Do we have specific questions we'd like to link to?

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  • That's a great idea! And apparently I'd seen those posts on UX 'cause I have votes on some of them, but in the meantime I'd completely forgotten about it. Now, to identify some specific questions... (Where should we collect those suggestions?)
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 17:57
  • I suppose a new meta question is best. It'll make it easier to vote on one's we'd like to have linked to ads
    – Andy Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 17:58
  • meta.communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/q/1232/83
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 22:59
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Here's another for the specific question How to deal with a stubborn person who thinks they are perfect?

(Suggested here)

Perfect Coworker

Proposed on: The Workplace

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  • This ad has been live on Workplace for a while.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Aug 23, 2015 at 2:42
  • We've been getting some negative feedback on Workplace about this ad. I suggest we withdraw it for the coming year. If we submit a different ad, let's see if we can find an appropriate tag instead of a specific question.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 0:28
  • Sounds good @Monica.
    – Andy Mod
    Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 0:44
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Here's one for the specific question How to say "We miss you, please come back!" properly?

(Suggested here)

We Miss You!

Proposed on: UX

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  • This ad is live on UX.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Aug 23, 2015 at 2:42
  • The UX community seems to like this ad (+20/-1, and a couple positive comments to offset the one complaining one). One commenter did suggest that the color scheme could use some work, though.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 2:02

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