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Should we make some to help get some more traffic here from other stacks? Does anyone have design ideas?

For clarity, I am asking if we should make an ad for Astronomy.SE to put on other stacks. Astro is not ready for its own community promotion ads yet.

What are Community Promotion Ads?

Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.

Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?

This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

  • the site's twitter account
  • useful tools or resources for physics research
  • interesting articles or findings for the curious
  • cool events or conferences
  • anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

Why do we reset the ads every year?

Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.

The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.

How does it work?

The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

  1. All answers should be in the exact form of:

    [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

    Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.

  2. The question must always be tagged with the magic tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

  • The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels
  • Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
  • Must be GIF or PNG
  • No animated GIFs
  • Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
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    $\begingroup$ I think it's definitely the time to do that. We had nice success with Space Exploration community ads placed on other, graduated and suitable Stack Exchange sites for promoting our cause that have this feature enabled. I've been gathering a few ideas for Astronomy too, so I'll post my suggestions as soon as I get the time to (it does take quite some time to fiddle with, optimize for size and get the texts right). ;) $\endgroup$
    – TildalWave
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 21:23

3 Answers 3

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Backyard astronomy: "Reflections"

The idea is to present astronomy as an activity available to everyone. The Moonrise is exaggerated in size to suggest magnification of even the hobbyist grade equipment like the ones depicted (refractor, reflector and binoculars), the numerous observers represent the helping community of people sharing same passion, and reflections in water represent experience. Strong, contrasting colors and shadows are intentional to help improve ad's visual impact. The main font used is "Rockets" in golden color of Moon's reflection and white "Man on the Moon" O's decor.

Ad hypertext:

[![Astronomy Stack Exchange][1]][2]

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/HQ5S2.png
  [2]: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/

Main image:

                                                Space Exploration Stack Exchange

                                                Click for poster size (880x1000 px)

Posted on:

These are the Stack Exchange websites that the ad is currently competing for rotation frequency with other advertised community promotion ads:

Additional locations where Backyard astronomy: "Reflections" will compete will be posted as the list updates. If you'll be adding this ad to any other location that could use our community support with votes, please mention location where you posed it in the comments below. Thanks!

Alternative variants:

These are some of the prepared design previews that are a product of the work in progress. Feel free to use them for Astronomy.SE promotion at your discretion:

                                                enter image description here

                                                 https://i.sstatic.net/VEEG9.png

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Ask the Universe

Bottom line: emphasize the balance between enthusiasts & professionals: it's not that hard to observe such a large Moon, but if you want to get any more details, better ask professionals and their big toys.

"Ask the Universe": come on astro.SE to ask any question about the Universe. And these radiotelescopes are also, in their own way, used to ask the Universe fundamental questions.

  [![Astronomy Stack Exchange] [1]][2]

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/44G6J.png
  [2]: http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/

                                                Image

  • Font: Linux Biolinum (plus an home-made "A").

  • Moon: adapted from a picture I took of the full Moon on December, 2012

  • Radiotelescopes: adapted from this APOD picture

Posted on:

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Discover our universe

Updated ad:

enter image description here

Up on these sites (2019):

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    $\begingroup$ Would you post on Skeptics? meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3498/… $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented May 26, 2016 at 14:38
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    $\begingroup$ @called2voyage Yep, done! $\endgroup$
    – Sir Cumference
    Commented May 26, 2016 at 16:34
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    $\begingroup$ Would you mind running the ad on the usual sites again? $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Aug 29, 2018 at 12:59
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    $\begingroup$ @called2voyage I actually ran a newer version on Physics, Chemistry, Academia and CS, though they need more votes. Math seemed to hate it though. $\endgroup$
    – Sir Cumference
    Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 17:42
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    $\begingroup$ Well, I voted for the Physics and Academia ones. The other sites I'm not a member of. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2018 at 16:32
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    $\begingroup$ I've posted this on Worldbuilding for the 2019 ads. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 16:57
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    $\begingroup$ @HDE226868 I've posted them on other sites and updated the links here. $\endgroup$
    – Sir Cumference
    Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 19:59

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