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Today I noticed the sponsorship for the and tags, it's for DevExpress.

I'm a user of ASP.NET MVC (all versions up to and including 4) and there's not a natural association for me between DevExpress and the platform. I also don't think that this association is one that most people would make.

I know that this isn't necessarily the point, and I'm not complaining about this specific association, but when there isn't a universally accepted leader/player in the field, it just seems awkward (personally, their logo looks strange).

Good examples of what I would consider natural, universally associated sponsors are the tag, or any of the Google tags.

Note, this isn't about a sponsor for a concept as ASP.NET MVC is very much a real thing.

I also know it's removable through a user script (but I haven't tried it yet).

Looking at the accepted answer for sponsoring a concept, I feel the question is, what do you do when it fails any of the conditions of being a tag sponsor (lack of real association, not owner of the name/trademark/controlling entity)?

(Note, I'm fully aware that this is part of how Stack Exchange generates revenue, and there are probably reasons outside of whether or not a fit is "natural" as to why this is).

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  • A similar perhaps relevant question: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/127163/…
    – Bart
    Mar 11, 2013 at 19:23
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    "Download the gree DevExpress ASP.NET trial"? Right…
    – Daniel Beck
    Mar 11, 2013 at 19:51
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    I agree that Dev Express doesn't really fit any of the outlined criteria for having their logo visually associated with the MVC tags. Sponsor the tag sure with links sure, but their logo/brand has no direct connection (owner, association, trademark, etc) to do with Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC technology.
    – Nick Albrecht
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:05
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    That was fast, seems its already been removed?
    – Nick Albrecht
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:06
  • @Yarx I've downvoted the ad in the tag wiki. Don't know if this was intentional, or had an impact. Did you vote down on it?
    – casperOne
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:14
  • No not yet, I was going to and then wondered if anyone ever actually looked at those downvotes. Decided to come here and see if anyone else had posted about it yet and found this question. :-)
    – Nick Albrecht
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:17

1 Answer 1

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Looking at the accepted answer for sponsoring a concept, I feel the question is, what do you do when it fails any of the conditions of being a tag sponsor

Well, let's review the conditions set forth in that answer then:

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.

(emphasis mine)

Ok, so provided DevExpress bought a bunch of ads to show up in [asp.net*] tags, they'd be allowed to get the tag page sponsor block. I haven't seen any of these ads yet, but if they exist there's no violation here.

Finally, [logos on the tags themselves are] 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

This would disqualify anyone besides Microsoft from getting their logo on the tags themselves. Since I don't see any logos on these tags, I don't see any violation here either.

[Edit: apparently, the logo was there for a short time - this was a mistake, and it's been corrected. ]

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  • Have I been imagining things, or was the logo present on the actual tag for a while? Has his been reversed?
    – Bart
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:43
  • I don't know - I didn't see it. It definitely should not have been there.
    – Shog9
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:45
  • Yes, it was visible earlier today.
    – GalacticCowboy
    Mar 11, 2013 at 20:46
  • You're addressing the specific case, but not the general sentiment (what the question is all about). I'd say this is really "not an answer" in that my qualm isn't about this specific tag, but the situation in general. An appropriate answer doesn't address just the example case.
    – casperOne
    Mar 11, 2013 at 21:23
  • What's the situation in general, @casper? If we're violating our own stated policies on this, we should stop doing that - which it appears we did. FWIW, DE has purchased a reasonably large number of impressions in [asp.net*], so I think the general condition is satisfied; we shouldn't normally be seeing icons for anything that isn't a trademark owned by the advertiser, so if you see anything like that again please don't hesitate to report it.
    – Shog9
    Mar 11, 2013 at 23:28

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