Should Ubuntu Forum put ads to increase income?

[aPello]

You should add advertisements to the forums. Like Google adsense, http://www.google.com/adsense/ I help manage a forum with around 2k users of which 1.3k or so are active and we make around 1grand USD a month off of google ad sense, Google adsense ads are nice and non graphical so it wont really increase loading times. and its by content, so if your in a post about Gnome GUI it the advertisements will be about Gnome etc. I think that the forum could benefit with some extra revenue.

Edit:

For example you could have it display 468x60 ad banner right below the user cpanel thing on every page. (Im not familiar with vbuletin code, but for PunBB every page uses a header.php file and you can easily modify it to display the ads.

[xequence]

Ads wont stop people from doing DOS attacks, the things that make the server run slow and not work sometimes.

[earobinson]

xequence, there has been a lot of things that have been going wrong latley, mostly HW. Also in to months we will be on a Canonical server.

The add's topic has come up before and the admins decided not to do it.

[towsonu2003]

just my thoughts: As a forums user, I wouldn't care at all about ads on forum, as long as they are text based (google is going graphical soon), relevant, and the income goes to maintaining this forum or ubuntu in some way (no profit, as in .org).

[majikstreet]

Most users wouldn't see them... I bet that the majority of people here use adblock w/ firefox or similar.. I know I do..

[nameiwantistaken]

I was having a discussion in one of the site forums today and it seems some nice chap foots the bill for this out of his own pocket. The site administrators seemed to feel that people would be very upset to see a small banner of ads here to pay for things like the hosting for the site and improvements to the site. Would anyone be mad at this idea? To me it seems like a great way to generate revenue for those who work hard at maintaining the site and bringing money back into the Ubuntu community. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Adamant1988]

I see google ads everywhere else I go, I don't think seeing them on the ubuntu forums would rain on my day. Just none of those annoying flash ads that talk... That *will* ruin my day.

[_simon_]

Just a standard banner would be fine, I hate it when things pop up in front of me or move accross the screen and block what I was reading!

All I'd say is, try and keep the adverts technology related.

[OrganicPanda]

i hate ad's in every form, if money is tight they can hire me, i would work for free 8)

[hellmet]

hmm...i don't want 'em..
Sorry for the apathy towards the forum maintainers
but ads really annoy me to hell..
Even static ads like google.
Ads in general give a rather cheap idea of the
forum itself and the ppl(here OS) supporting it..

The forum now is very nice..and I don't want changes to it!!