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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
  • 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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  • If you want to toss something together and need an image editor, here's a free online one that is fairly featureful and easy to use. Jan 1, 2015 at 20:30
  • @GraceNote Apparently 2015 ads are still showing. Shouldn't there be a 2016 thread? Jul 3, 2016 at 21:38
  • There... should be. Huh. I'll get to fixing that. SO's cycling their ads this week so it's some kind of timing (still bad, on account of the part where the new thread never went up)
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jul 5, 2016 at 19:32

22 Answers 22

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Programming Puzzles & Code Golf Stack Exchange

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  • 1
    Courtesy of @squeamishossifrage from PPCG. (This ad replaces the ads from last year, in order to add a bit of variety.)
    – Doorknob
    Jan 1, 2015 at 6:44
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Ascii Flow Infinity

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Software Recommendations Stack Exchange - finding the tool for you

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  • 3
    I'm on the fence on this one. I want SR to grow and do well. But I worry about blind recommendations to there from the community ads. I fear that this would generate more garbage posts there that also happen to be cross-posted on Progs.
    – user53019
    Jan 2, 2015 at 1:26
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    Despite still being on the fence, I have upvoted this ad. We can always pull the ad later if we think that it's creating too much noise for SR.
    – user53019
    Jan 6, 2015 at 14:19
  • I think it would be safer if ad link referred to SR Help Center - on-topic section
    – gnat
    Jan 6, 2015 at 21:49
  • @gnat: Would that be just for SR, or also for the other cross-SE ads, like for CR, robotics and codegolf? Jan 7, 2015 at 9:41
  • @BartvanIngenSchenau good question! I'd say for SR it's rather very important, more important than for the rest. Since you mentioned CR, it would be beneficial for their ads, because their help/on-topic is really great, with that "six-yes criteria". For other sites, maybe it would be good too, but I am less concerned about these
    – gnat
    Jan 7, 2015 at 11:38
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    @gnat: I have changed the link. Jan 7, 2015 at 12:10
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Git — fast and easy branching

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  • I've revised the Git ads for 2015 – be sure to check them out.
    – bwDraco
    Jan 4, 2015 at 19:42
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Computer Science

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  • 1
    Credits to Wandering Logic Jan 2, 2015 at 11:29
  • FYI this one is displaying skewed now with the new ad sizes :)
    – Tim Malone
    Jul 3, 2016 at 21:10
  • @TimMalone This is the 2015 thread. I don't know if anyone has made an appropriately-sized version for 2016 and I don't have the time or skill to do it. Jul 3, 2016 at 21:13
  • No problem. I just mentioned because it came up on the live site still.
    – Tim Malone
    Jul 3, 2016 at 21:22
  • @TimMalone That's odd: it should only be showing ads from the 2016 thread. But there's no 2016 thread! That may be the problem. Jul 3, 2016 at 21:37
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How to be a Programmer by Robert L. Read

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Reading the SICP is a valuable exercise for programmers of all levels

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  • 1
    I'm not sure this will work. Quoting the “question”: “Image requirements: The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels. Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)”
    – amon
    Jan 1, 2015 at 20:17
  • @amon sorry I figured sense a few of the others are non-standard size that they would all just be standardized by whoever's actually putting these in the system, I'd resize it but I suspect mspaint's resize would make it look crap and I haven't photoshop onhand Jan 1, 2015 at 20:21
  • @amon actually I just found an online image editor thing, I'll jigger it Jan 1, 2015 at 20:22
  • @amon fixed, that should work yeah? Jan 1, 2015 at 20:45
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    @JimmyHoffa The display part forces it to 220x250. If its double size, it scales nicely (and high res screens show it nicely). If it's not the right size, it scales funny. You could make it 440x500 and it would work nicely.
    – user40980
    Jan 1, 2015 at 22:54
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    For the record: nobody manually adds these ads into the system. It's all automated, so unless the ad is sized correctly, as @MichaelT points out, it'll just look weird.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jan 2, 2015 at 1:21
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Engineering SE Beta

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  • The gears are not aligned and have no contact. Also, the biggest gear has its leftmost tooth too narrowed-down.
    – 9000
    Feb 27, 2015 at 17:25
  • @9000 Please don't shoot the messenger. :-) And on behalf of Engineering.SE, we'd be happy to accept an updated logo from you for the community ad.
    – user53019
    Feb 27, 2015 at 17:58
  • I'm not criticizing the messenger at all — any reasonable contributor is welcome! But the message could use some work. When I have time, I'll return to this.
    – 9000
    Feb 27, 2015 at 20:02
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Coffee Stack Exchange

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robotics stack exchange

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Git — keep working without worrying about downtime

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How to be a Programmer by Robert L. Read

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  • The original svg for this is from gist.github.com/shagie/97ae06564ad50ee77dce with the modification to scale to to 440x500 for high dpi screens. This still works correctly, but will look nicer on other screens.
    – user40980
    Jan 1, 2015 at 17:23
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Debian -- The Universal Operating System

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Widely used free for personal use and easy source control

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    IMHO let github purchase their own ads - and use community ad slots for our own causes (yes I know it is just money flowing from one VC to another.)
    – dcorking
    Feb 11, 2015 at 13:18
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    @dcorking These ads are supposed to be less about supporting what they advertise than supporting the programmers who visit our site by advertising resources which may be helpful to them. Go ahead and downvote it if you would rather not support it, but most people agree github is a useful tool for the lot of us which is why it's got upvotes Feb 11, 2015 at 16:20
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Support the FIRST Robotics proposal on Area51.SE!

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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
    Jan 1, 2015 at 3:29
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    WYTIWWC (What You Tweet Is What We Close). How completely brainless a bot should be to advertise this -- a blatant resource / where-to-start request that was posted less than an hour ago and gained just a single upvote
    – gnat
    Jan 8, 2015 at 20:43
  • ...wonder if it is expected for close voters to monitor every friggin question 24x7 just to prevent this from happening? As far as I know, this is not how system is expected to work
    – gnat
    Jan 8, 2015 at 20:48

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