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The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!

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:

  • the site's twitter account
  • useful tools or resources related to the English language
  • interesting articles or findings for the curious
  • 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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  • Would a memorization tool be on-topic here? I was thinking of adding Anki, a tool that helps me remember rare words like obstreperous, cynosure, atavistic, etc.
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Commented Feb 4, 2015 at 8:06
  • Try posting an ad and seeing what the community thinks of it. That's probably the better way to see what people feel.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 4, 2015 at 13:08
  • Do the new community ads go up in January? I forget.
    – Kit Z. Fox Mod
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 16:40
  • @KitZFox There's going to be an announcement about that actually.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 17:11

9 Answers 9

Reset to default
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No general reference, please!

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  • 4
    I like the idea of this advert, but I'm not keen on the fact that it promotes one particular dictionary and that dictionary isn't included in the actual image part of the ad.
    – starsplusplus
    Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 11:41
  • 4
    @starsplusplus I specifically chose onelook.com because it's not a dictionary itself but a dictionary search engine: "19,633,003 words in 1061 dictionaries indexed". For example: search for idea.
    – Hugo
    Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 12:55
  • 12
    But to me there's still a difference between what the ad is saying and what it's actually linking to. If you want to advertise onelook (which is not a bad idea - a dictionary search engine is handy, and very relevant to ELU users), why not actually advertise onelook - say that it's a dictionary search engine, what it's called, and something promotional about it? At least include the name and logo. At the moment this reads like a meta site guideline but goes on to link to a specific tool.
    – starsplusplus
    Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 13:02
  • 4
    @starsplusplus and that's precisely why it's so good. It works both to advertise a useful resource and to educate new users on how the site works and what we expect from them. As far as I'm concerned, I'd have upvoted this even if it had no target and was just a banner suggesting that people look up words in dictionaries instead of asking here.
    – terdon
    Commented Jan 24, 2015 at 17:44
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    If a links out is the right thing to do, onelook is probably the right place, but I clicked on this ad thinking (based on the branding) it might link to somewhere on meta or some other ELU page and was surprised to be taken off Stack Exchange completely.
    – user52889
    Commented Aug 1, 2015 at 20:29
  • It would be better to link wiktionary.org, which is both freely licensed and non-profit and can provide definitions of English words in 170 languages.
    – Nemo
    Commented Oct 17, 2015 at 19:31
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    @Nemo Onelook indexes Wiktionary's coverage along with lots of others, so you're more likely to get a good result that way. Wiktionary still has quite a few gaps.
    – Hugo
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 6:30
  • @Hugo few parse Wiktionary correctly, hence it's usually better to link it directly. Are there details on how they crawl it? Wiktionary currently has 25 millions of entries.
    – Nemo
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 9:06
  • Excellent...should be bigger and should be included in the "Ask a Question" page right next to the text entry box
    – 7caifyi
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 15:26
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Tagline to show on mouseover

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Come visit English Language Learners!

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    This is the result of a discussion about migrating questions to ELL - perhaps we can head these questions off even earlier than that.
    – jimsug
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 11:21
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Writing exercise chat

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See all questions with active bounties
(source: herokuapp.com)

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  • This is an adaption of Community Promotion Ads - 2015.
    – Martin Schröder
    Commented Mar 1, 2015 at 15:40
  • "The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels"
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Commented Mar 5, 2015 at 14:33
  • @AndrewLeach: Not a problem here; see Community Promotion Ads - 2014 and Community Promotion Ads - 2012.
    – Martin Schröder
    Commented Mar 5, 2015 at 14:36
  • What if there are 100+ bounties?
    – Elliot A.
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 11:51
  • 1
    @Glorfindel Was it really necessary to bump an out-of-date/obsolete question, one that has been replaced by the 2019 version? Yes, the image has returned but how important was it? This post will stick around for weeks giving visitors the unfortunate impression that nothing happens here for weeks on end...Oh wait, that's actually true
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 10:49
  • It's an automated process, and its bumping is rate-limited (and anyway, on EL&U Meta it's finished). It's a somewhat useful edit if somebody wants to copy it for the next Community Ads post ...
    – Glorfindel
    Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 11:11
-1

Would you like to learn Korean? Join Korean Language and Usage

-5

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 Jan 1, 2015 at 3:03
  • Any website with its own means of commenting has little use for social networking relationships.
    – wallyk
    Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 15:18
-10

ELU: because you say 'tomato' ...

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    Love the idea, but I think it's better suited for ELL...
    – oerkelens
    Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 14:47
  • 2
    How about change it to link to ELL?
    – Hugo
    Commented Jan 11, 2015 at 16:15
  • 2
    @oerkelens I think pointing it to ELL would be a bit tongue in cheek. I really meant it to show that all English dialects can be discussed here, and they are all equally valid in their own right. There is no such thing as a native English speaker, every who speaks English natively does so in a dialect, and phrases that define a dialect are neither 'wrong' nor 'pidgin' and that all dialects should be treated equally at EL&U.
    – Frank
    Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 3:23
  • @Hugo - see comment above
    – Frank
    Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 3:24
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    @Frank In which dialect of English do native speakers routinely call questions 'doubts'? It's a very common mixup for ESL speakers, but not one I've ever heard native speakers make.
    – curiousdannii
    Commented Jan 17, 2015 at 4:17
  • @curiousdanni I'm not entirely sure; this Q&A suggests Southern India english.stackexchange.com/questions/2429/…. It may be a 'mistake' in some dialects but the prevalence of it's use suggests to me that it is, or is becoming, standard in some. Dictionaries record usage, they don't define it. I'm sure it won't be long until some of the major dictionaries show doubt, n. 6. question (most frequent in Indian English) and then using doubt to mean question will be pukka.
    – Frank
    Commented Jan 17, 2015 at 8:58
  • 2
    Oerkelens said "I think it's better suited for ELL". You responded: "I really meant it to show that all English dialects can be discussed here, and they are all equally valid in their own right". Nevertheless, I think Oerkelens has a reasonable point: the tone of "Helping people with English [...]" is perfectly consistent with ELL, but at variance with EL&U's self-description as "a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts".
    – Erik Kowal
    Commented Mar 1, 2015 at 19:12
  • 1
    @ErikKowal Helping people with English not Helping people learn English.
    – Frank
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 8:31
  • @Frank - Reread my comment: I never said "Helping people learn English". That is your invention.
    – Erik Kowal
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 8:33
  • @ErikKowal ELL is for helping people learning English, ELU is for helping people who already know English.
    – Frank
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 8:51
  • 1
    @Frank - OK, I now understand what you were getting at three comments ago. My point is that the tone of your ad seems better geared to the ELL site. The very use of the word 'helping' creates the misleading impression that the EL&U site is intended for beginning or basic learners to ask basic questions. That's not what a Q&A site "for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts" is about.
    – Erik Kowal
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 9:23
  • @ErikKowal I'm not sure abetting, assisting, supporting are any better, but I doubt any change to Helping will make it a popular community advert.
    – Frank
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 9:59
  • What do you think of "The site for all varieties of English"?
    – Erik Kowal
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 10:09
  • 1
    Well, we'll see. I've upvoted it.
    – Erik Kowal
    Commented Mar 2, 2015 at 10:49
  • 2
    -1 You seem to be "making fun" of the way Indians speak.
    – Aquarius_Girl
    Commented Jul 20, 2015 at 8:43

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