Dumb, dumb, dumb, de dumb, dumb.

[HarryKeogh]

Choosing to raise money this way was the second-worst decision (#1 being hiring Phil Plaitt over moi) the JREF made in 2008.

But because I'm always logged on it drops off my radar until I log on at a friends house and an ad for a psychic is at the top of the page. Then I roll my eyes and sigh. We don't let Montel Williams use the excuse "hey, it's business" when he has Sylvia on. The JREF knows full well what kind of ads this website will attract because of keywords. They should just say "at the moment this advertising model doesn't work for us" but they're taking the money instead. Jeff can do his best to screen out the bad ads but they're still going to get through. There's just too many.

How much does the JREF make each time someone clicks? Are we talking pennies here? fifty cents? Is it worth it? If the JREF gets a check for $500 at the end of the month how many people does that represent who visited the JREF and instead got lured to a site promoting nonsense. And if one of those people gets sucked into it and gives those hucksters money, buys their books, calls their psychic lines, gives up their medicine and starts popping homeopathic remedies...ugh. Shameful.

Sometimes you just want to yell: How could the website of one of the most famous skeptics in the world advertise woo on its homepage!

Remember that open letter Hal Bidlack wrote to Montel about honor? It's great reading.

 

[CriticalThanking]

I concur with TK. These ads can only give disinterested spectators the misleading impression that JREF is a reasonably open minded organisation.

(bolding mine)

Are the two sentences in your post directly related? Do you think Teek believes JREF to be something other than "reasonably open minded?" Would it be fair to characterize you as "unreasonably" open minded?

What kind of ad would you consider so unsupported by evidence and rational thought that you would consider it inappropriate? Or were you simply attempting to throw out an insult at Randi/JREF (or troll - ymmv)?

CT

 

[Morrigan]

Tl;DR.

No, I don't. I gave up reading wall of text posts years ago.

Dear Cthulhu, I was hoping I'd avoid that kind of crap here. *sigh*

I used to be OK-ish with the idea of the ads, until I happened to be logged out one day and saw a huge banner ad here for utter woo, disguised as science. It was 'how to improve your career and intelligence using subliminal mind control like they do in advertising' or some such.

I wrote a pretty long personal email to JREF which I haven't sent for various reasons, but the main gist was:

1) the ads are not aimed at nor being seen by the regular members, but those who come across the site by accident or lurk. These people are, in my opinion, probably more likely to be swayed by the ads than we are. This has the opposite effect to the educational benefits a forum like this has. A colourful, authoritative ad has more impact than a text argument from a stranger. If someone is Googling for a topic and finds 'James Randi Educational Foundation', how are they not going to assume the ads are endorsed? What kind of educational foundation would let ads for the things it opposes on its site? The idea is absurd, so I believe any lurker or fence-sitter who sees the ad is likely to assume it's OK.

2) the members here, those who post, are generating the content from which the keywords our taken. It's JREF's platform, but it's our content, and the 'our content' part is the bit that's being used to generate woo advertising. If most posters here write about things that they consider harmful to society, how is it not a betrayal of our hard work to promote those self same harmful things to the very people we seek to educate?

I don't want to debunk psychics if I know that my words will encourage ads for psychics. I don't want to write here about homeopathy if those posts will attracts ads for alt med.

I have written here about subliminal advertising. It's a topic that even many skeptics are unaware is bunk. I have debunked it here and there have been threads about it where regular posters and newbies alike have learned something. And yet the huge banner ad I saw as per my first paragraph extolled the virtues of subliminal advertising as though it was the truest thing in the world.

I immediately felt guilty for ever having written about it here. My desire to educate others about a pseudoscience actually resulted in a big brassy advert for that very thing.

I'm not posting so much lately, and hardly on 'serious' topics.

I was about to agree with Wolfman, but you actually raise some very good points. Now I'm pretty ambivalent about the ads... not for me personally since I never see them (even if logged out, there's always adblock ), but for the lurkers and chance-found visitors. Hmmm...

 

[gentlehorse]

The JREF website advertising woo-- Oh well, business is business. Anything for a buck--Wouldn't a thunk it--

As an aside: plumjam, you crack me up.

 

[The Atheist]

If anyone ever sees such an ad as per the opening post, then send an e-mail to Jeff Wagg giving him the URL and he can stop it. No point in starting a thread.

Utterly pointless exercise, and possibly self-defeating.

Pointless, because the real purveyors of "woo" have a million ip#s and urls each. At the top of the fuel price increases last year, I gave up counting the different links for run-your-car-with-water when I got to 50.

The way it's possibly self-defeating is that they will know from web stats that JREF keeps disappearing off their reports. If the numbers have been worthwhile, it wouldn't be hard to write ads which won't get deleted, but which will bring in punters from a busy discussion board.

I wonder how much revenue is generated by these ads?

Obviously enough.

I recall that when the first psychic ad campaign was run, the income over a period of a couple/few weeks was in the low hundreds.

See, with the ads having tacit approval under a "Notice" banner rather than "These ads are by Google Adsense , over which we obviously have no control. Be aware that many of the ads will be for blatant rip-offs and feel free to discuss them right here!" or words to the effect which I would have been able to use if Chill had left it in Management. I'm sure that had no bearing on its move.

I used to be OK-ish with the idea of the ads, until I happened to be logged out one day and saw a huge banner ad here for utter woo, disguised as science. It was 'how to improve your career and intelligence using subliminal mind control like they do in advertising' or some such.

Was the bloke whose name is actually "Wu"?

He's one I've chuckled at several times along the lines of what you describe.

I wrote a pretty long personal email to JREF which I haven't sent for various reasons, but the main gist was:...

Nominated, copied onto hard drive, CD and the code for it etched in titanium, packaged and put into a time capsule so your wisdom will last forever.

I've read a few posts in my time; nowhere near as many as I've written, of course, and I can't ever recall seeing one which is a such a vision of clarity and from someone whose opinion is absolutely valuable on the very subject. Not to mention the degree of sadness at the way you feel.

I'd hardly expect you to call me a pal, but whatever we feel about each other on a human level, I respect your honesty, integrity and intelligence.

Remember that open letter Hal Bidlack wrote to Montel about honor? It's great reading.

Jesus, yes.

What a perfect analogy.

________________________________________________


Nothing sluts me worse than people making better points than me, by the way.

Did anyone else have points worth noting?

No?

Excellent.


(H3LL - the numbers you're quoting are exponentially higher than reality. Lots of different ways of paying for ads on Google Adsense, but cents per click is a max.)

 

[The Atheist]

Dear Cthulhu, I was hoping I'd avoid that kind of crap here. *sigh*

So was I. Wall of text posts drive me nuts. Especially when it's one which you know from experience will be boring, irrelevant and trite. Still, you take the good with the bad.

The JREF website advertising woo-- Oh well, business is business. Anything for a buck--Wouldn't a thunk it--

Yep, that's the exact equation, I think, a nice dichotomy of whether JREF is a business or a not-for-profit organization founded in 1996, whose aim is to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today.

If it's a business, then hell yes, all's fair. I certainly have higher ethical standards myself, but is it fair?

Definitely.

If, on the other hand, it's the description as above that comes direct from the JREF then I would say it's a fail.

 

[plumjam]

Are the two sentences in your post directly related? Do you think Teek believes JREF to be something other than "reasonably open minded?" Would it be fair to characterize you as "unreasonably" open minded?

I don´t know what she believes on that matter. I´d hazard a guess she believes JREF to be reasonably open minded. Myself, I believe JREF to be reasonably open minded provided that what you´re saying can fit into the prevailing JREF worldview (philosophical naturalism, give or take).
So, for example, for the most part one´s political position will not be so narrowly defined by adherence or otherwise to philosophical naturalism. Thus in the politics forum here we typically have a wider range of non-automatically-leapt-upon viewpoints than we do in, say, Philosophy and Religion, and General Skepticism. In its favour I´d say that JREF values freedom of speech highly, and I commend it for that.

Now, are the ¨woo¨ ads examples of free speech? As a non-orthodox JREFer I´d say they are, and am therefore in favour of them being allowed to be hosted here.
But if I were an orthodox JREFer I´d be quite justifiedly crying hypocrisy. This due to the fact that quite a significant part of JREF output, including the forum, consists of attacking perceived fraudulent ¨woo¨ activities such as mediumship and homeopathy. A main line of criticism of these latter activities is that they are conning gullible people out of their hard-earned money.
But then for JREF to happily accept funding, via these ads, from such enterprises, amounts to JREF effectively profiting from that which it believes, and seeks to ´educate´ the public into believing, to be fraudulent.
Such a situation can only damage JREF´s integrity.

What kind of ad would you consider so unsupported by evidence and rational thought that you would consider it inappropriate? Or were you simply attempting to throw out an insult at Randi/JREF (or troll - ymmv)?

Well, I missed the memo telling us from now on that advertisements needed to be supported by evidence and rational thought.
I was mainly making a joke.
From Teek´s point of view JREF will probably be reasonably open minded. From my point of view it clearly is not.

 

[The Atheist]

...justifiedly...

Good post; I thought the joke was tres funny - I'll just take issue with this one word, with my Grammar Tyrant hat on.

"Justified in" or "justifiably".

Don't you go making up more words for me to be irregardless of.

 

[plumjam]

Good post; I thought the joke was tres funny - I'll just take issue with this one word, with my Grammar Tyrant hat on.

"Justified in" or "justifiably".

Don't you go making up more words for me to be irregardless of.

Thanks TA, and may I be the first to wish you a Happy New Year, even if that year has to be spent in NZ
Perhaps I can improve your grammar tyrant rating and move you up to 3rd place in the Russian people's affections by promoting you to Grammar Stalin. Justifiedly is indeed a word.. and different from 'justifiably' in that it's a bit more definite, less contingent.. already notionally established, rather than having merely the future possibility of establishment.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/justifiedly
http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/JUSTIFIEDLY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/justifiedly

 

[The Atheist]

Thanks TA, and may I be the first to wish you a Happy New Year, even if that year has to be spent in NZ

Yeah, hell, I can hardly take much more of this weather, sea conditions and fishing, cleanliness and lack of people - I think I'll move to some over-crowded, polluted hole instead.

Perhaps I can improve your grammar tyrant rating and move you up to 3rd place in the Russian people's affections by promoting you to Grammar Stalin.

That's how I started, but Darth Rotor came up with some good reasons to change, so I did.

Justifiedly is indeed a word...

Don't be silly.

 

[sthomson]

This thread reminds me of a blog post I read recently, which of course I can't find right now. Anyway, the main point was to observe this curious but common set of events:

1) Website/forum/blog is created that services a Community.
2) Eventually, Creators realize that website is a money drain, as it costs money for hosting and Community is unwilling to donate money for what they perceive as a free service.
3) Website is also a time drain, as it requires (unpaid) moderators and (underpaid) coders and (unpaid or underpaid) email-answerers and so on and so on.
4) Creators institute some method by which their website can earn money without becoming more of a time drain.
5) Malcontents complain because they want perfect service with unlimited attention and oh yeah, it should be free! And don't forget the perfect part! Spend more time to make it perfect with little to no compensation!

The solution to Generic-Targeted-Google-Ads is, of course, to pay a salesman to go out, solicit ads for the forum, and screen out the inappropriate ads after they are submitted. After all, that's what newspapers do, right?

Except people pay for newspapers. Perhaps if the Generic-Targeted-Google-Ad Haters collectively donated enough additional money to cover the salary of a part-time advertising representative, JREF could consider hiring one.

 

[I Ratant]

I pay NO attention to ads or popups. Anywhere!

 

[Dunstan]

This thread reminds me of a blog post I read recently, which of course I can't find right now. Anyway, the main point was to observe this curious but common set of events:

1) Website/forum/blog is created that services a Community.

I'd say this step alone makes your analogy inapplicable. The JREF's web site should not be viewed as serving a community; it should be viewed as a major method of carrying out the JREF's mission.

An educational foundation that doesn't have a significant web presence in 2009 is probably failing at its mission. How do you expect to reach people?

An organization devoted to skepticism should be doing things to address the concerns of skeptics, and it seems to me that a frequently voiced concern is the need to build a community, so that skeptics don't feel so much like lone voices in a sea of woo.

I really hope the JREF doesn't view forumites as a bunch of ingrates who don't pay their way. I have detected a whiff of this attitude in the past, but I would think Phil Plait of all people would appreciate the importance of building an internet community.

 

[Uncayimmy]

Quite the opposite - I click on woo-woo Google ads whenever possible. It costs them money with zero chance of them getting a farthing from me. That's a good thing IMHO.

As someone who pays for Google ads, runs campaigns on behalf of others, and makes money from Google Adsense, I find that unethical and childish. In the long run it *could* create headaches for the JREF.

The way it's possibly self-defeating is that they will know from web stats that JREF keeps disappearing off their reports. If the numbers have been worthwhile, it wouldn't be hard to write ads which won't get deleted, but which will bring in punters from a busy discussion board.

If that's the case, then it seems pretty clear that the JREF *should* be running these ads. After all, if enough visitors coming to the site go spend their money with these businesses, then who is the JREF to interfere?

Thing is Google lets you block advertisers, but it's a lot of work.

You can do it up front by blocking a domain (StopScooby.com), which would effectively prevent any ads from that domain. Or you could get more specific like StopScooby.com/Psychics.

You can also choose to "pre-approve" all ads that appear on your site, but they are automatically approved if you don't mark them good or bad within 24 hours. Of course, you can go back later and block specific ads, but this a manual process.

So, really, the best solution for the JREF is to find volunteers they trust to periodically review the ads and mark them accordingly. Or just acknowledge that the world's an imperfect place.

 

[athon]

I don't understand the fuss.

Quite the opposite - I click on woo-woo Google ads whenever possible. It costs them money with zero chance of them getting a farthing from me. That's a good thing IMHO.

I see it from a different angle.

These people make that money through pseudoscience, or plain lies and dishonesty. They range from the ignorant to flat-out con artists. In any case, they make their money through less than honest means, taking them from people either through exploiting emotional states, naivity or through feeding out lies and misinformation.

The entire point of groups like the JREF makes a stand against this. Obviously they have a different moralistic view of the situation than I do, because I'd feel damn uncomfortable taking what I see as being little different to blood money.

As for 'where is the JREF going to get the cash from?', I think it's a nonsense question. It does what it can with the money it gets from honest means. If it can't run the forum without compromising its values, it doesn't run it. If the forum is that important to its message (which, IMO, it is), then it compromises on something else that may not be as efficient at reaching its goals, such as dropping the scholarships. Hell, if it were me, I'd personally probably take a pay cut if I felt it was all that important to the goal - JREF is about values, after all. It's not about making Randi's wallet fat.

Athon

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Just my 2 cents (per click).

The ads don't show up for me, since I'm automatically logged in whenever I visit, hence they don't bother me.

I personally find those ads hilarious. They're a lot like those ads that showed up on a fanfiction site I used to visit, advertising things that nobody had actually been talking about, like sites hosting Sesame Street slash fics. Try not to think about that too hard, or something inside you might die. Of laughter.

Anybody that those ads are going to fool if they see them while visiting this site is probably going to miss the point regardless. They've already got an inclination to let that stuff fool them, after all.

Almost all advertisements, regardless of what they're selling, are a form of sophistry intended to persuade viewers to suspend their critical thinking and make subjective judgments. i.e. "Oh my god, I REALLY need to run out and buy that stupid product! I don't know how I could have lived without it before!"

An argument could be made that those ads serve to demonstrate exactly what it is JREF is setting out to debunk and why it's considered important.


So I don't really let them bother me.

 

[rjh01]

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Notes.
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2. I have sent an e-mail to Jeff about these ads and this thread.

 

[Wowbagger]

I just got a cute, little booklet from the Skeptic Society, describing 10 steps to "become a psychic", based on material gleamed from cold reading books; attached to a donation card.

Last year, they mailed out sheet of paper to build a glider and an optical illusion, in commemoration of Paul MacCready and Jerry Andrus.

Why can't JREF come up with something cute, like that, for donation cards? Maybe they could raise a bit more money that way.

And, for the record, I am also a loud critic of the Forum ads. But, I am willing to compromise: I will complain less often about the ads, if they can somehow manage to make the Forum more reliable with the income they generate. Is that too much to ask?

 

[sthomson]

I'd say this step alone makes your analogy inapplicable. The JREF's web site should not be viewed as serving a community; it should be viewed as a major method of carrying out the JREF's mission.

A forum that is created to "carry out a mission" rarely thrives the way this forum does. It is undeniable that the JREF forum attracts skeptics and promotes a sense of community.

The www.randi.org website is a different matter, of course. However, the only ad I see there is for "The God that Never Existed".

 

[jj]

Woowoo advertisements...

IF we click on them and then close the page, does the forum get money?