6

In What can we do to advertise Latin.SE?, I mentioned the possibility of creating community promotion ads for other sites. An ad for our site is currently one of several ads in the rotation on Christianity.SE, and is generating an average of about 4 visits/day.

Sites can only accept community promotion ads if they have graduated, so sites like French, Spanish, and Linguistics are unfortunately not possibilities. However, English Language & Usage.SE is a good option – many of its users have an academic interest in English and etymology, and it gets nearly 20 times the traffic of Christianity.SE.

So, who has an idea for an ad? It ought to appeal to English language experts and enthusiasts, especially those who might also have an interest in Latin. Here are the technical instructions, along with some existing examples. Two key parameters are 300x250 or 600x500 pixels and either a colored background or a border.

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
5

This ad is posted on ELU's meta, and has started generating hits for us.

Here's a similar option, simplifying the second text block and making the main text easier to read:

enter image description here

5
  • This is good, too, but I feel both are slightly verbose. What if the second text was simply "Learn more at Latin SE"? Or would the shorter text give too little context?
    – Joonas Ilmavirta Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 8:30
  • @JoonasIlmavirta With the shorter text we can afford increasing the text size a bit; see what you think of this version.
    – Nathaniel is protesting Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 12:08
  • 1
    Very good! The size difference makes it look much less like a wall of text and makes the main point "come to our site!" stand out more. This is the best one so far.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 13:44
  • Can you update the ad here to the final version that is in use?
    – Joonas Ilmavirta Mod
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 3:12
  • 1
    @JoonasIlmavirta Done.
    – Nathaniel is protesting Mod
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 3:14
3

Here's an ad possibility I've created. All the words in the background come directly from Latin – no Romance intermediaries. Of course, the 30% number is more general. Feedback is welcome!

enter image description here

5
  • 1
    The main black text should have a drop shadow or something to make it pop out more. It kinda blends into the other words behind it and adds to the business rather than emphasizing the important words. But otherwise thumbs up for the simplicity.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Aug 31, 2016 at 22:43
  • 1
    Great! And nice words. By the way, knowing more about Latin will also help you learn more about those words that English has borrowed from French. And, if you add up French and Latin, you get ~58% (unweighted).
    – Cerberus Mod
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 1:57
  • @animuson Of course! I've updated; see if this is sufficient. I find that it's easier to ignore the background words when it's in the actual half-size ad block, but I don't have a retina display handy to test on that.
    – Nathaniel is protesting Mod
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 2:07
  • @Cerberus I wondered if it was safe to use the numbers from French I saw on Wikipedia as well, but I imagine that many of the French words in that 29% ultimately come from languages besides Latin. I'd love to know how many, though.
    – Nathaniel is protesting Mod
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 2:14
  • @Nathaniel♦: Ah, well, that also depends on the same issue as with English: we're counting words from some dictionary, without weighting for frequency of use. However, if we ignore frequency and assume an unmentioned dictionary, about 86,53% of French word are from Latin. I happened to post my only answer on French.SE about just this topic: french.stackexchange.com/questions/21737/… P.S. I like the drop shadow; it is indeed clearer.
    – Cerberus Mod
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 2:47
1

To be really honest, the quality of the questions and answers on the Latin site is immensely superior to that of those on the English site. Are we sure that we want to invite the sort of questions that are debated there? Also, rather than attracting the narrow-minded Christians who populate the "Christianity" site I think we ought to lure the better class of users who populate the "Biblical hermeneutics" site.

5
  • I'd certainly like to get an ad running on the biblical hermeneutics site, but unfortunately it's still in beta, so it doesn't host these ads. As for ELU, an ad there would likely bring more beginner-level questions, but I think that's okay. Truly bad questions can be dealt with by downvotes and closure, and I suspect that we'll have to deal with them no matter how we grow... and I do hope we grow.
    – Nathaniel is protesting Mod
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 20:26
  • 1
    You certainly raise a good point – if an ad for our site is approved by the ELU community, we'll all need to pay careful attention to site moderation, so that we continue to provide high-quality content.
    – Nathaniel is protesting Mod
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 20:28
  • Is that "narrow-minded" restrictive or non-restrictive? I first read it as the latter, which would be gratuitous and uncalled for, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
    – brianpck
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 1:43
  • @brianpck: Well, how many non-Christian Biblical hermeuticians(?) do we think there are? I'd expect them to be mostly Christians?
    – Cerberus Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 22:53
  • 2
    @fdb I truly understand your concern; it's better to have more interesting questions than elementary questions, ceteris paribus. But we're not an academic site, and I don't think we could be one: we need to have a steady influx of users and questions, lest SE delete us at some point. Our audience just isn't big enough to be too picky, I fear.
    – Cerberus Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 23:01

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .