• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

World Chelonian Trust?

WebSlave

The world looks differently to me now.
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I'm not saying that this is intentional abuse, but when I see stats such as this, it throws flags all over the field:

Code:
  Today 1 Days Ago 2 Days Ago 3 Days Ago 4 Days Ago Average 
Hits 60203 4498 4040 3531 2771 15008 
Unique 12935 1125 949 981 691 3336 
Clicks 13 3 8 4 3 6

These stats were captured around 12:30pm on 01/05/04. 60,000 hits in 13 hours with a prior average of 3,500 or so? I don't think so.

Something is DEFINITELY wrong, and I had no choice but to disable that account.
 
Appearance of abuse

Dear Webmaster,

The stats that appear to be abuse for the World Chelonian Trust website are in fact accurate. There has just been another SARS outbreak in China and the government has ordered 10,000 civets to be euthanized.

The World Chelonian Trust has a comprehensive overview of the markets of China in 5 languages including pages on the civets which is why our site quite simply exploded this morning with page hits.

Please reinstate the site in good standing with your wonderful page counter. Your stats site is one of the best out there.

Thank-you.

Chris

Chris Tabaka, DVM
Detroit Zoo
World Chelonian Trust- veterinary advisor and trustee
 
Aw hell. Now I feel like a jerk. The only way I could disable that account was by deleting it. That program doesn't have any facility to do it any other way.

I am sorry! But I monitored the page counter on that site and compared them with the hits being applied to the FaunaTopSites hit counter and they just did not come anywhere NEAR being similar. Matter of fact, the hits for today were pretty near to exceeding the TOTAL hits listed on the sites internal hit counter. That indicated to me either a program malfunction of some sort or obvious abuse.

I did send a couple of emails addressed to the webmaster of the site, but got no response.

Again, my apologies, but my server was getting pounded by what looked like bogus hits to me and I felt I had no choice in the matter.

If I could reenter the data myself and recover your listing I would fall all over myself to do that.

:detonate:
 
Bummer...

Understood on the strange stat explosion. I've never seen anything like it. Really too bad you can't recover the data though. It was a lot of fun watching everyone pour in and go through our series on the Chinese animal markets. A large number of folks, particularly in the media, learned about the Asian Turtle Crisis today.

Thanks for the reply.

Chris
 
I think I have recovered the account info to get it back into the FaunaTopSites listing. I had to extract it from the nightly backup file. Of course, the listing has data from it from 4am this morning, but hopefully at least it is back up on the site. Wasn't exactly an easy thing to do, but it was my fault so I just took my lumps and did it.

I sure stepped on my own tongue on this one......

My sincerest apologies!! :bandhead0
 
Yahoo just linked to the WCT Chinese market pages again so thus the second day of explosive Fauna badge hits.

For anyone interested in seeing what the situation is in the Chinese markets for chelonians, snakes, amphibians, birds, and mammals, check it out via the following link:

World Chelonian Trust- the Animal Markets of China

assuming we don't break our server's back today.

Chris
 
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