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On the home page of Skeptics.SE, I just saw an ad saying

There are currently 00 active bounties, worth + 0

While the statement is true, and has correct pluralization, it's kind of … useless. Can such an ad not be shown while there's no active bounties?

Screenshot of issue

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    One might argue it's useful for encouraging someone to set a bounty somewhere...but the superfluous zeroes seem...superfluous...
    – Nick Stauner
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 3:01
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    Where exactly did you see such ad?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 7:51
  • @ShadowWizard screenshot added. Godzilla ate the freehand circles.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:10
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    Seems like a fun site!
    – devnull
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:10
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    Sometimes it's good to highlight the absence of something in order to encourage changing it.
    – Maroun
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:11
  • Where does it link to?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:15
  • @ShadowWizard Skeptics Stack Exchange
    – Andrew Grimm
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:16
  • It links me to the featured tab (as expected).
    – Himanshu
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 8:25

2 Answers 2

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I am one of the creators of this ad. We don't currently have any logic in place to show a different image when there are no bounties, but we could. I'll ask Nathan Greenstein and see if he'd be willing to make something. What would you like it to look like?

edit: This is what we came up with:

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  • I think the OP means to simply not show the ad when there are no bounties, so it's up to the dev team.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 15:12
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    How about something that encourages bounties? A statement like "Saw an interesting question without any good answers. How about placing a bounty?" or something in the banner. I personally think even when there are no bounties, the ad is good in the sense that it encourages the use of an on-site feature (and bounties in general lead to the generation of better than normal content). (Also, the ad looks great!)
    – asheeshr
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 15:15
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    @ShadowWizard I doubt the dev team wants to special-case this, but one option would be to just serve up a transparent image. The markup on the page forces the size so it'll effectively be a hole on the page.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 15:55
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    @AsheeshR Thanks! Yeah, encouraging users to add bounties is a good idea. I'm not sure if linking to the bounties page still makes sense in that case, but it probably wouldn't be terrible.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 15:56
  • You could link it to the unanswered tab in that case, if that's possible.
    – asheeshr
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 16:02
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    I'm happy either with not showing if there's no bounties, or encouraging people to add bounties (but what if they lack the rep to do so?)
    – Andrew Grimm
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 22:07
  • @AndrewGrimm OK, we'll try and create a special message for 0 bounties, maybe sometime this weekend.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 18:15
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    @KyleCronin I hope working weekends is a normal thing, rather than specially for this feature request!
    – Andrew Grimm
    Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 22:12
  • I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but will the dimensions of this ad be updated to accommodate the new sidebar width?
    – Mr. Bultitude
    Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 16:52
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    @Mr.Bultitude I'm looking into it
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 20:13
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It's a Community Promotion Ad: https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2586/6781

If you dislike it, you can downvote and with <6 score it won't show on the front page anymore.

You can also leave a comment to the author, but I think it's an intended pun.

Last but not least, when you hover the ad you see such thing:

The area in circle is a bug specific to Skeptics due to its black theme, it should say "comment" and "stats" and link to the above post, thus preventing confusion.

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