What is “Forumosa After Dark”? Any idea? Do I dare click on it?
Wow. Using an image of the King in such a fashion is rather naughty.
Heh. The caption was originally supposed to be “Are you lonesome tonight”.
Anyway, the affiliation with F.A.D. (AdultFriendFinder) is supposed to be lucrative, so that’s good. It should be able to help pay for substantial improvements to the site. (Fingers crossed)
I just don’t like the “in-your-face” positioning of the ads right now. You can expect to see them removed from the index page, and put on more out-of-the-way places in smaller, more subtle banner sizes. Sorry for the overkill - it’s only temporary.
We don’t expect most people to be interested in sites like that, but it is our experience that a significant portion of people are, and we’d like to see if the advertising revenue is actually worth it, so you can consider this an experiment. We’ve tried to make the ads as non-risqué as possible, and of course the “NSFW” in the corner of the banners should also be a clear warning to people on the site.
Did anyone see the ads for afterdark.forumosa.com? I really think these should be turned off because it looks like Forumosa is promoting
and
If you are going to display links to sites like this, you may have to revise your TOS and bar those from under a certain age for visiting this site, which is something F. doesn’t do right now. Some of those images could be offensive to one or more groups of members in Forumosa’s community of members.
I’d suggest STRONGLY reconsidering advertising this on Forumosa because of the posibility that it may alienate one or more of the groups of members for whom Formosa has been a real blessing. It may really discourage new members from joining. Is it really necessary to associate Forumosa directly with Various Inc in this way.
I realize that this may mean income for F.com, which is a good thing, but it looks like Forumosa’s role in the community is being ‘cheapened’ and discredited by making such a direct connection. I would suggest that you use another domain name instead, or limit the ads to the appropriate forums, rather than blasting them all over.
Somewhat mortified.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, KenTaiwan98
We took care that the ads we made were specifically not lewd, profane, pornographic, nasty, or mean-spirited. Why do beleive they might encourage comments like that? The forum posting rules do not change.
We even made sure to add an NSFW label on the banners to warn Forumosans about what they are clicking into. This seems more than sufficient, but I’m interested to hear why otherwise if you feel strongly about it.
I’ll discuss the idea of limiting the ads to certain forums. For now, feedback like yours (and opposing) is helpful for us – pls keep it coming.
I never paid much attention to that Forumosa after dark ad. Now that it has that NSFW tag on it, I’m suddenly intrigued. I’m at work, but I want to click on it so bad.
[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]Did anyone see the ads for afterdark.forumosa.com? I really think these should be turned off because it looks like Forumosa is promoting
and
If you are going to display links to sites like this, you may have to revise your TOS and bar those from under a certain age for visiting this site, which is something F. doesn’t do right now. Some of those images could be offensive to one or more groups of members in Forumosa’s community of members.
I’d suggest STRONGLY reconsidering advertising this on Forumosa because of the posibility that it may alienate one or more of the groups of members for whom Formosa has been a real blessing. It may really discourage new members from joining. Is it really necessary to associate Forumosa directly with Various Inc in this way.
I realize that this may mean income for F.com, which is a good thing, but it looks like Forumosa’s role in the community is being ‘cheapened’ and discredited by making such a direct connection. I would suggest that you use another domain name instead, or limit the ads to the appropriate forums, rather than blasting them all over.
Somewhat mortified.[/quote]
It’s an experiment. Everything in life is a trade-off. We’re curious to see how many of our viewers sign up at their site. If none of you do, then we’ll know. If a lot of you do, then it’s a service to the community that rewards Forumosa, the medium through which they discovered the service. We won’t make a dime off of it unless Forumosans are using it. We’ll know we’ve badly misjudged our demographic if we make nothing off of it. 
In the meantime, we took great pains to make the ads as inoffensive as possible whilst clearly showing what one might expect if one were to click through. There’s also a very conspicuous NSFW on every banner. That being said, I’m thinking about removing the banners that show on the index page, but I have to talk to Goose Egg about that.
As far as the purpose of the site, well that’s pretty clear. It’s there to provide two consenting adults a way to hook up for a shag. It’s really no different than “language exchange” on other sites, and probably better than the daily newspapers that offer dozens of massage ads in the “service” section of the classifieds. I’ve got a Taipei Times in front of me right now and I’m looking at the : “Unforgettable Service!” “Special Angels” “Attentive” “Feel like a King!” “Gentle and satisfying”. Obviously those ads aren’t just personals but are in fact a very unsubtly peek at the sex industry in Taiwan. I’ve got no problems with that, either, though, and if it helps pay salaries at the Taipei Times and the China Post, then that’s fine by me. I’m not about to start a boycott.
One thing to remember is that everything is always in flux, and nothing is forever. We appreciate feedback because it gives us a chance to voice our own reasons and respond to your concerns. We sometimes reverse ourselves too, and we don’t take our mistakes or criticism of them too personally - or at least we try not to. Forumosa is a unique community, it’s still growing (!) and we want to make it better. We care about it deeply and obviously you do, too, which is VERY gratifying to me us. We’ll continue to do some things right, make some mistakes (and hopefully correct them promptly) and above all do our utmost not to screw things up. Thanks for all of your support, suggestions, and encouragement!
[quote=“Northcoast Surfer”]Questions to ponder. 
Why is it that the female is a young pretty Asian girl, but the male is a young white man and not a handsome young Asian man?
Why is it that the young Asian girl looks like a normal run of the mill “girl next door” type and not some famous super model or actress?
Why is the white male Elvis Presley and not some regular “guy next door” type?
Why isn’t there an attrative white girl with an attractive Asian male?[/quote]
The short answer is that I just haven’t bothered to make more We wanted to promote the service and see how it goes, and not spend more time than we have to making a lot of banners. But the questions still stand: if you are going to make only two, why a young Asian girl and a young Caucasian guy?
AFF has a banner maker in their control panel (very clever stuff). We decided not to use any of them for now. There is one section that uses only text – you might see those kinds of banners in the future.
On that note: if you send me photos to make into Forumosa AD banners, I’m game – just make sure they are as inoffensive as Maoman described earlier