I don't see any problem with companies sponsoring tags that are products/proper names, like flex or flash being sponsored by Adobe or android being sponsored by Android. However, I just noticed that the performance tag is sponsored by Red Gate.
Does it really make sense to let someone sponsor a tag that represents a general concept? I mean, if they're willing to pay for it, so be it. But it just seems silly to think that someone might be able to sponsor tags like file or memory.
Based on the feedback received, we evolved our tag sponsorship policies and at this point in time finished winding down all campaign obligations under the previous policies. Therefore, you can now expect all tag sponsorship's to fit within the following framework.
Sponsored links and brand logo at the top of the "questions/tagged/[tagname]" page (below the navigation bar, but above the tag summary description)
Upper Leaderboard, Mid-Leaderboard and Sidebar static display ad inventory that associates with the questions that are tagged with the sponsored tag. (Note that users with a reputation over 200 don't see the leaderboard ads).
Brand logo on the tag itself throughout the site
The core of the tag sponsorship product is item #1 and this is what differentiates it from a normal display ad sale. As a general condition of tag sponsorship, most especially with tags that aren't obviously associated with a single brand, we require a large share of voice of the available static display inventory (#2) in that tag to be purchased in combination with the tag sponsorship piece.
In other words, the brand must commit to buying ad space on questions within a tag before they can sponsor the tag itself. This will really only make sense for the advertiser if there is an endemic connection between the content associated with the tag and their brand message and/or products. This requirement has proven to strike a nice balance relative to if/how/who the more generic tags can be sponsored.
Finally, element #3 is only available to the tag sponsor if they are the owner of the name or trademark associated with the tag name or, if no actual owner, an entity that is clearly highly associated with such tag. Generic tag names that do not associate with any particular brand, company or entity, have no sponsorship icons.
gpgpu tag have an Nvidia logo? I quote: Generic tag names that do not associate with any particular brand, company or entity, have no sponsorship icons.
I don't like the red-gate icon next to sql-server as it is not their product tag, likewise for the performance tag.
Selling them clearly labelled space at the top of the tag page is not a problem, if they choose to put links in that space so be it.
I think tag sponsoring without the tag icon is the way to go for tags like performance.
Just had a thought…
What will happen if Microsoft Sponsored the iPhone tab and put lot of link on how to developer for the Windows 7 Phone?
I think companies should only be allowed to sponsor tags that are products/proper names they own. Otherwise, it opens the door to all kinds of abuse and problems.
Update to this, a more annoying set of tags just appeared for Devexpress, due to the sheer volume they appear, they're sponsoring some of the most common tags on the site now. I'm not for blocking ads on SO, but with this change I'll be actively blocking the tag icons, this is a big (at least to me) visual change to the site (as it would be with any batch of popular tags).
Here's a list of the Devexpress tags:
Though they're fewer in number of tags, they're higher in volume, and their icon stands out a great deal more than others, at least Telerik's colors weren't a big visual impact, since their main color was already the same as the site background.
Previous content: It may be me, but Telerik seems to have one-upped Redgate with their recent tags, they have picked up the following (out of tags with over 50 questions, as of the time on this posting):
If the Silverlight team from Microsoft offers to advertise with that tag, what happens? It's their product and a trademarked name (as most products would be), so I'm curious what happens in this case...or are there no restrictions, first come first serve?
My main problem with this: If I'm a user looking for help, this doesn't help me find an answer, if it's related sure, it might. But...doesn't letting a sponsor claim a general tag, or worse, another company's product tag confuse the users? I don't see how it helps, but it could definitely do the opposite....isn't that counter to the goal here?
As an aside, a little funny to me are the unclaimed tags: devexpress, telerik (and all the telerik-xx) adobe (and all the adobe-xx), redgate did claim their tag at least.
asp.net and barely even supports mvc. Tags still "owned" by DevExpress: asp.net,asp.net-mvc,asp.net-mvc-2,asp.net-mvc-3.
Yeah. Specifically, the file tag should be sponsored by Jeff himself, with a single link pointing to the International Backup Awareness Day. I propose a floppy disk icon for it.
The one that most irks me is Red Gate sponsoring performance. It is clearly a general tag, intended to be used for any question related to improving performance. Most of these questions have nothing at all to do with Red Gate related tools or products. Red Gate does not own performance. I'm sure they would love to have their name associated with it in the minds of developers, but so would every other software company on the face of the Earth. Every time I see the performance tag with the little "rg" in front of it I think of "Red Gate Performance". It makes me think the question has something to do with a Red Gate product. It's very misleading, and I believe it is inappropriate.
It's one thing when a company is paying to sponsor a tag about a product they own - such as Microsoft sponsoring the various .NET tags or the SQL-Server tag, or Oracle sponsoring the Oracle tag, or even Java sponsoring the java tag, etc. It's a whole different deal for a company to sponsor a general tag like performance, optimization or object-oriented design patterns. And it'd be even worse if SO were to allow companies to sponsor tags for products they don't own. Can you imagine the cognitive dissonance that would result from Apple sponsoring, and having it's little Apple logo on, the Windows tag?
I believe that having the tag sponsoring system work as it now appears to is inappropriate, misleading and downright offensive. SO Team, any chance you guys can change the way this is done? Posthaste?
I think it's fine. Just think, next time I'm searching for an answer to a C++ performance question, I'll see Red Gate's sponsored links and follow them to find tools that'll... um...
When I first came to SO, I figured out what was going on with the icon'd tags pretty fast, and found it quite off-putting to see advertising injected throughout something so basic and fundamental as tagging. Being able to Adblock |http://sstatic.net/so/img/tag-*.png probably kept me from leave the site at that early point.
While seeing a company logo when dealing with specific technologies is kind of cute and all (though it clutters the UI a bit), having an arbitrary logo on anything related to performance seems so wrong!
I don't have a problem with Red Gate sponsoring SQL Server tags. They don't sell SQL Server, but they do sell products which enhance SQL Server.
However, I don't think they should be sponsoring the "performance" tag. That's too generic.
If a future version of the SO software permitted them to sponsor (sql | sql-server | sql-server-2005 | sql-server-2008 | tsql) + performance, then I'd have no problem with that. They would, in effect, be sponsoring "SQL Server Performance".
The main problem is it is decreasing SNR
I am considering boycotting all tags that don't make sense like "rg performance"
This is a sad day. Stackoverflow is one of my favorite sites, but I'm not going to stand this "advertising in tags" abuse.
Who are you to tell me I should relate "C#" and "DevExpress" !? With normal ads I can make that choice, I can say DevExpress sucks, or DevExpress rocks. I won't let you brainwash me.
So, goodbye Stackoverflow, I hope it's worth the money.
As long as they pay, and are first to ask for it, what's the problem?
It's like creating a new tag and earning the Taxonomist badge, you just gotta be first!
Actually I don't mind performance with Redgate. Redgate on sql-server and Telerik on Silverlight bother me more. Things like performance can go with whoever, but it's confusing to see the wrong icon with a product.
I'd suggest some sort of "conditional tag branding" - show the branded tag only in combination with other tags, that is relevant. For example [testing] + [c#] could have [testing] branded with Telerik's logo, but [testing] + [java] should not.
Then, on the page for the [testing] tag, the sponsored links can be displayed depending on a GET parameter, supplied with different values by the two different tags (branded vs unbranded)
Iconified tags look much nicer than non-iconified. I used to dislike it, but now I think that they're pretty. Unrelated? Perhaps. But it makes the site look more... cozy.
Why not have a full-sized banner on top or side (or both) of every page which is sponsored by someone who purchased association to tags shown on the page. It has multiple advantages over these tag icons:
DataGrid tag.c# is, but like Earlz and Daniel Bingham mentioned above performance with some weird tag next to it appears like some software package. On the other hand everyone knows what banners are and they are visually separated from other content.c# tag I had to right-click/view-image-info on it.Can we put the sponsors icon on the right?
Surely the key thing is the actual tag text and not the sponsor image. Putting the image to the right of the text will make it much less of a distraction.
performancetag away from Red Gate.optimizationand notperformancebecause I thought performance might have been some new product that I hadn't yet heard of, and thus was sponsored by the owner.unit-testingtag is sponsored. I have nothing against Telerik, but I have nothing to do with them and their stuff is useless for Unit Testing in the fields I'm active in. This really sucks.