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 the mathematically inclined
  • 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.

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

Score Threshold

There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.

You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

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For further info and examples see this blog blurb. –  Bill Dubuque Dec 3 '11 at 3:37
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Some nice examples from TeX on how one can use this initiative. Unfortunately I don't see the idea of community ads working as well for MathSE. Anyone have ideas on what we may even consider advertising? The arXiv? –  Willie Wong Dec 4 '11 at 21:01
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How do people feel about putting useful links in the community ads (encyclopedia of integer sequence, detexify, arxiv, inverse symbolic calculator, etc)? –  Phira Dec 9 '11 at 10:24
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@Phira OEIS is a very good idea, I think. Could someone, please, make oeisf.org/logo.png into a banner? –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 13:00
    
...I'm not sure if detexify is relevant enough, though –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 13:01
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@GrigoryM Note that this is about relevance compared to hot questions of other SE sites. –  Phira Dec 9 '11 at 13:42
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I support linking to any site that helps students answer their homework questions on their own, without needing to post here. Wolfram Alpha, for instance. –  user7530 Dec 9 '11 at 18:09
    
Let's try discuss some ideas in chat maybe? –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 19:01
    
@GrigoryM: AMM you mean American Mathematical Monthly? –  Willie Wong Dec 9 '11 at 19:18
    
@WillieWong Yes. But after recalling that it's not freely available online I'm not sure anymore it's a good idea. –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 19:23
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@user7530 I think a meta discussion is called for before giving free advertising to commercial enterprises such as Wolfram Research. This is not fair to other worthy free alternatives. –  Bill Dubuque Dec 9 '11 at 20:13
    
Is it ok to use (and modify) logos of other websites. Do we need to have their approval of to look if they have something about licensing and stuff on their websites? For example Wikipedia mentions copyright here, I did not find something similar e.g. at proofwiki. Hopefully there is someone more knowledgable about this and it is quite probable that it was already discussed somewhere. –  Martin Sleziak Dec 11 '11 at 8:34
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-1. I find the style of this question unnecessarily off-putting. Does it really say, "But whyyyyyyyy"? On the main site, this style of question-asking is almost always a marker of a very poor question. Since I gather that this is a serious project, I suggest that the question be edited to a more matter-of-fact style. Otherwise, it would seem likely that you are driving away potentially talented participants. –  JDH Dec 11 '11 at 14:27
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@JDH I'll happily revise it. If you think it could use more refinement, feel free. I admit that I followed more of a script than I did personally write it. Part of me actually wants to go and make at least this minor fix on all the site threads, haha. –  Grace Note Dec 11 '11 at 18:27
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Thanks, Grace, it's much more professional now, and I have accordingly removed my downvote. –  JDH Dec 12 '11 at 4:25
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17 Answers

arXiv.org -- open access to over 700 000 e-prints

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is this version (made by Yi Jiang) better? –  Grigory M Dec 11 '11 at 12:55
    
@GrigoryM Oh yes! :) –  John Dec 11 '11 at 19:20
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Can we borrow this for Physics? –  David Z Jan 5 '12 at 8:55
    
@David Personally, I have no problem with that. But, I didn't make the current version and I'm not really active on this site. –  John Jan 5 '12 at 14:23
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The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences

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Alternative version of Grigory M's OEIS ad, per request. –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 22 '11 at 12:19
    
I'm still naive at mathematics and this question has no perjorative meaning: Why an Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences? –  Igäria Mnagarka Jul 7 '12 at 9:34
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@GustavoBandeira It is very helpful at times when you encounter an unknown sequence (often they are coefficients of polynomials or even values of recursive functions) when doing manipulations and computations in math. The explanations of the sequences can help reveal much on the math problem. –  Argon Jul 19 '12 at 22:18
    
@Argon Any suggested reading about it? –  Igäria Mnagarka Jul 20 '12 at 0:42
    
@GustavoBandeira Unfortunately, nothing comes to mind. Perhaps someone else can help you with that. Just about every sequence you can think of is in the OEIS! You may be interested in the use of the OEIS in the following answers: math.stackexchange.com/a/48509/27624 math.stackexchange.com/a/131954/27624 math.stackexchange.com/a/165970/27624 math.stackexchange.com/q/68147/27624 math.stackexchange.com/a/117542/27624 math.stackexchange.com/a/116032/27624 –  Argon Jul 20 '12 at 0:53
    
+1! There are tons of questions like "what is the formula for this sequence?", and the answer is always "look it up in OEIS". –  asmeurer Dec 9 '12 at 2:04
    
Ps. Here are the SVG and GIMP .xcf originals of this ad, in case anyone wants them. (The SVG is an early version, the GIMP image matches the actual PNG. I think I extracted the SVG vector logo from some PDF file on the OEIS website, although I don't remember the details any more.) –  Ilmari Karonen Jan 26 at 0:29
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GeoGebra - Free mathematics software for learning and teaching

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I thought we could use more ads for open-source math software. This is the first community ad I've made from scratch, not based on someone else's original version. Any suggestions for improvements are welcome. –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 24 '11 at 12:22
    
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MIT OpenCourseWare - Free Online Course Materials

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The format of the answer is a little wrong, but I am not sure how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated. –  E.O. Dec 29 '11 at 9:15
    
Looks OK to me now. –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 29 '11 at 19:36
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Just noticed that the background colors in the seal are a bit messed up. Either the whole seal should be black on beige, or the man's leg should be white like the rest of him (and presumably the insides of the "O"s should be beige too). –  Ilmari Karonen Jul 19 '12 at 23:04
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Sage Math

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Perhaps someone can contribute a better design. –  kuch nahi Dec 10 '11 at 5:56
    
This one from their marketing page converted to requirements: image link –  kuch nahi Dec 10 '11 at 6:09
    
Worth having one for nb.sagemath.org as well, or would the duplication be excessive? –  Peter Taylor Dec 13 '11 at 17:26
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I saw this on the main page today, and I'm not sure I like the insinuation that Sage is the poor person's math application of choice. –  Unreasonable Sin Dec 20 '11 at 14:14
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I feel pretty confident I know two of the (unaffordable) "big three M's", but the third M that comes to mind is Maxima, which of course is free software and bundled into Sage. –  hardmath Dec 21 '11 at 18:46
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@hardmath Matlab, Mathematica, and Maple. –  Unreasonable Sin Dec 21 '11 at 19:24
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My first thought was “cannot afford antialiasing?”… the text at the bottom looks bad –  F'x Apr 19 '12 at 9:34
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I hate to make a redundant comment, but the tagline really must go. "It's not as good as Maple, but at least it's free!" is not an attractive slogan. –  Austin Mohr May 29 '12 at 19:42
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I was about to click on it. But then I saw the "Can't afford... big three M's?", and I decided not to click on it. –  becko Jun 10 '12 at 2:40
    
kuch nahi, @UnreasonableSin: I thought there were four big M's, since replacing Magma was one of William Stein's primary motivations in starting Sage. –  Simon Dec 9 '12 at 7:57
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Khan Academy - A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

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I LOVE! Khan academy for what its doing! There should really be a tagline or something on this ad though. –  gideon Feb 14 '12 at 14:07
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Given the lack of a text saying what Khan Academy is, I can only assume the ad is for branding. –  blunders Aug 13 '12 at 13:06
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Climb into Cantor's Attic, containing infinities large and small

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Climb into Cantor's Attic, containing infinities large and small. –  JDH Jan 4 '12 at 3:35
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+1 That's an ambitious project that will fill a "large" void. Kudos! –  Bill Dubuque Jan 4 '12 at 4:10
    
Thanks, Bill! We've just started out, but things are coming along. –  JDH Jan 4 '12 at 4:11
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The stats page currently says, under this ad, "Score: 7 Created: 19 hours ago Clicks per day: Infinity (11 total)" (my emphasis). That seems strangely appropriate. :) –  Ilmari Karonen Jan 4 '12 at 22:02
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@Ilmari, it seems that one can also enter the attic through the trapdoor of dividing by zero... –  JDH Jan 4 '12 at 22:32
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The link seems to be broken. It gives me a 403 access forbiden error. –  yohBS Dec 18 '12 at 9:21
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ProofWiki, the online compendium of mathematical proofs

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Alternative, less in-your-face ad for ProofWiki. –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 22 '11 at 12:22
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Alt Text

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I have no experience with art, so this is just a rough draft. Suggestions welcome! –  John Dec 9 '11 at 19:50
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CFD $\ $ I think a meta discussion is called for before giving free advertising to commercial enterprises such as Wolfram Research. This is not fair to other worthy free alternatives. –  Bill Dubuque Dec 9 '11 at 20:14
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@BillDubuque But Woflram Alpha is a free service, no? (And what is CFD, btw?) –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 20:17
    
@BillDubuque But please do suggest "worthy free alternatives", anyway. –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 20:19
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@GrigoryM Currently Wolfram Alpha is free but its computational engine Mathematica is not. No doubt the primary raison d'être for Alpha is to generate further sales of Mathematica and related WRI products. CFD = call for discussion. –  Bill Dubuque Dec 9 '11 at 20:38
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I don't know if this is what @Bill had in mind, but perhaps something like GNU/Octave, Maxima, or GiNaC. I think the former two have nice graphical front ends (qt-Octave and wxMaxima respectively). –  Willie Wong Dec 10 '11 at 12:55
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To quote user7530: «I have no doubt that informing users about Wolfram Alpha will decrease the number of very elementary algebra/calculus questions asked here, and increase the quality of the ones that still are» –  Grigory M Dec 11 '11 at 22:09
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Added the query suggested in the image to the URL. This produces a (slightly humorous) non-answer for African swallows, but with one more click you get an answer for European swallows! –  Mark Hurd Jan 31 '12 at 12:40
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Alpha's going "pro" now, so it's not so free anymore... almost anything complicated turns out to require money. –  Mehrdad Mar 31 '12 at 22:51
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African or European? Kidding aside, I feel Monty Python is slightly too obscure to rely on as a tagline, especially since it makes no sense whatsoever if you don't get the reference. –  Austin Mohr May 29 '12 at 19:46
    
@GrigoryM: So you would rather someone got a computer to do their work for them than have someone explain how to do it to them? Their is more to life than the answer... –  user1729 Oct 26 '12 at 12:13
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PlanetMath - Math for the people, by the people.

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I thought PlanetMath could also use some free advertising, but I couldn't find a high-resolution image of their globe logo. So here's a draft ad with a crappy upscaled globe, to serve as a reminder for myself and/or as inspiration for anyone else who feels like improving it. –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 29 '11 at 18:02
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I asked at PlanetMath if they had a larger version of their logo, and they said they didn't and suggested that I try drawing one myself. So I did. –  Ilmari Karonen Jan 4 '12 at 20:27
    
I like PlanetMath, but if this draft version is replaced by one with, say, Ilmari's globe, the space between the "f" and the "or" in "for" should be reduced. –  Mark S. Nov 13 '12 at 4:07
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@helopticor: That is the version with the remade globe. But you're right, the kerning of the text below the logo was all over the place. I tweaked it by hand a bit to make it tighter. –  Ilmari Karonen Nov 13 '12 at 10:47
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You'll wonder how you even managed to write the simplest equations with Word's poor excuse for an equation editor.

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A very cool what you see is what you mean "document processor" with an attitude. Focus on the content, LyX (LaTeX) will take care of the rest. Comes with an equation editor that's heaps and bounds better than Word's unusuable and clunky contraption that starts breaking down after the 20th equation. –  badp Dec 11 '11 at 8:09
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Warning: TeX.SE will send ninjas after you if they see you using this. –  muntoo Jan 2 '12 at 20:06
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Just tell them you could have been using MS Word and they'll back off. –  David Z Jan 5 '12 at 8:56
    
@muntoo: lol, why? –  Mehrdad Jan 23 '12 at 22:27
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lol, I never noticed the "jQuery,Or..." –  muntoo Jan 24 '12 at 3:47
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Really the only program out there that can be used to write anything from class summaries to a thesis comfortably. –  nbubis Apr 24 '12 at 7:20
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I find this ad rather busy and a little confusing. My eye is drawn to the giant colored "LYX", whereupon it skips up to "You should totally...", and then I find that I'm still not at the beginning of the ad. –  Austin Mohr May 29 '12 at 19:52
    
@AustinMohr Well - LyX is what the ad is about so that doesn't work out too horribly :) –  badp May 29 '12 at 20:44
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tex.sx: We like Lyx; it is the bait. We'll get you working with Latex source later. –  Charles Stewart Jul 2 '12 at 11:14
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Help this community grow!

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Full disclosure: I moderate that site. –  Ｊ. Ｍ. May 24 '12 at 8:14
    
The phrase "most fun" is generally preferred over "funnest", even though the latter is technically correct. –  Austin Mohr May 29 '12 at 19:49
    
I'm well aware of that, @Austin, but the maker of that ad chose to channel Steve Jobs for the purposes of getting attention (which is somewhat the point of an ad). Remember "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."? –  Ｊ. Ｍ. May 30 '12 at 13:25
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I've never seen "funnest", I thought it was some kind of joke with "Fun Nest" since Mathematica have a Nest function. –  Igäria Mnagarka Jul 7 '12 at 9:26
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@GustavoBandeira that's awesome - maybe we should change it to "Join the fun`Nest` community for technical computing"! –  Verbeia Jul 11 '12 at 11:23
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@Verbeia Lots of NestedUsers[]... –  Igäria Mnagarka Jul 11 '12 at 13:24
    
@J.M.: Congratulations on the graduation! –  Asaf Karagila Jul 18 '12 at 23:09
    
Thanks @Asaf, but it wasn't just me. That site has a lot of contributors way more prolific than me... :) –  Ｊ. Ｍ. Jul 18 '12 at 23:15
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@J.M.: But none of them have posted in this thread... you may send me a congratulatory cask of whisky, if you wish. –  Asaf Karagila Jul 18 '12 at 23:16
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Scientific Literature Digital Library & Search Engine

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Based on Grigory M's version, with less aliasing artifacts. –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 21 '11 at 23:45
    
Good, thank you! –  Grigory M Dec 22 '11 at 7:04
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Alt Text

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I made an alternative version of this ad, because I found this one a little too in-your-face. (As in, I found myself thinking "wait, which site was I on again?") –  Ilmari Karonen Dec 22 '11 at 10:45
    
@Ilmari Very nice! –  John Dec 22 '11 at 17:01
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Do we really need two ads for ProofWiki? I don't really feel comfortable doing it myself, since I'm the one who made the competing version, but I'd like to at least suggest that perhaps one of the two ads should be disabled (e.g. by adding some extra text to the post so that it doesn't conform to the formatting requirements). –  Ilmari Karonen Feb 26 '12 at 15:21
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AMS Graduate Student Blog - Read and write about topics that matter to you.

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I should mention this is a little shameless, as I write for the blog. –  dls Apr 16 '12 at 4:14
    
There is currently an error in the link that this ad contains: "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ECHO in /web/sites/mathgradblog/wp-content/plugins/cd-qotd/cd-qotd-widget.php on line 45" –  000 Dec 29 '12 at 23:28
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Just to let you know, this is the 2012 version of the thread. You should add the updated version to the 2013 edition if you want the ad to appear! –  Alex J Best Apr 4 '13 at 17:57
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Academia Stack Exchange

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Hi! Academia.SE has a nicely growing community discussing all sorts of matters relating to academic life, from grad student to emeritus professor… We think it could be of interest to a good part of the Mathematics.SE community! –  F'x Oct 26 '12 at 9:25
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Follow us on Twitter!

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This is an example ad to demonstrate, with the site's twitter account. Don't actually know how all y'all feel about the StackMath auto tweets, haha. –  Grace Note Dec 8 '11 at 15:28
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Personally, I am not a fan. I don't care to much either about the twitter account either. The whole ads part bothers me a lot. –  Asaf Karagila Dec 8 '11 at 18:23
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@Asaf Let me make sure I understand you (I personally don't care for Twitter, either, but that's a bit irrelevant). Do you have a trouble with the community ads system (that is, this question), and if so would you tell me about it? I'm happy to listen. –  Grace Note Dec 8 '11 at 21:07
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Indeed so. I feel that this sort of ads campaign may be very useful for some other communities but I have strong doubts on it being useful for communities like this one. In my view, at least, this community has enough work as it is. The fact that the dominant tag is homework - and it gave a very nice head start to other tags - is enough to suggest that most of the transient users want an answer or two and that's it. (cont.) –  Asaf Karagila Dec 8 '11 at 21:14
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(cont.) On the other hand, the interesting threads can be found by those looking for them in 99% of the cases. Those whom are interested already come by, so ads cannot be directed particularly to them. –  Asaf Karagila Dec 8 '11 at 21:15
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@Asaf Alright. That's sensible, and thanks again for letting me know. The main reason we offer these community ads is to allow a community to control what is shown. Otherwise, the standard presentation is going to be the Area 51 ads and random questions from other sites. However, if it's already something that isn't going to be looked at out of reasons other than lack of interest, it makes sense that it won't really make any use to the community. –  Grace Note Dec 8 '11 at 21:24
    
@GraceNote There are couple of good (IMO) ideas in OP's comments but no one to implement them. Maybe you (or someone else from SE team) could (please!) help? –  Grigory M Dec 9 '11 at 18:53
    
@Grigory I do like the ideas, actually. I've been watching this thread and seeing the suggestions. I'll see if I can round up some resources for this. –  Grace Note Dec 9 '11 at 18:56
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