I love this new pager =)
You guys took out bookmarks :(
Good to know its in public beta now! Too bad I'm out of the country until June so I can't be a part of it this time at all. Maybe when I get back there will be even more good news by then. ;)
A very well made, official looking pager. Not like the old one that looked kind of sketchy. Awesome.
The only thing I have to say is... DAYUM!

This new pager is sleek as hell, I welcome the change.
I love it! At first I was afraid of the ads but I really don't mind, it's a practice that allows websites to provide free services (youtube) and keep running. Although I am curious about how BYOND gets paid for it... what I mean is, if I disable it will that affect the amount?
In response to Magicsofa
Magicsofa wrote:
I love it! At first I was afraid of the ads but I really don't mind, it's a practice that allows websites to provide free services (youtube) and keep running. Although I am curious about how BYOND gets paid for it... what I mean is, if I disable it will that affect the amount?

On top of this, is BYOND only paid by click?
In response to Vrocaan
Vrocaan wrote:
Magicsofa wrote:
I love it! At first I was afraid of the ads but I really don't mind, it's a practice that allows websites to provide free services (youtube) and keep running. Although I am curious about how BYOND gets paid for it... what I mean is, if I disable it will that affect the amount?

On top of this, is BYOND only paid by click?

PPC - advertising, I thought was show to pretty much not work already on the site itself.
In response to Ter13
I'm confident that most byonders are dedicated to one or a handful of games they care about. I feel like it's extremely unlikely that they even visit the website half as much as they visit the server they like.

If connecting to a game generates the ad-viewing, well, there's a lot more viewing going on. I think actual byond players, instead of visitors (or forum junkies), are likely to provide more activity (I dunno about clicks though)
In response to Kitsueki
You're probably right. I still browse the forums, but most byonders probably stay off the site, especially nowadays with the lack of personal blogs which really was the only thing giving the site any social life. With the new pager, it's even less necessary to visit the site.
In response to Fugsnarf
Fugsnarf wrote:
You're probably right. I still browse the forums, but most byonders probably stay off the site, especially nowadays with the lack of personal blogs which really was the only thing giving the site any social life. With the new pager, it's even less necessary to visit the site.

That's probably for the best. Putting the website on the back end as a more developer oriented experience should probably save the team a lot of headaches in the long run, and also let a lot of the fangames slide by with less notice from copyright trolls.

On the other hand, I'm curious how tom is prepared to handle profiting from played ads generated by traffic to games that are using unlicensed content. It was one thing to have the ads up on the site, because we could argue that you didn't have to watch the ads to access the content before. Now, with the new system, we fall more in line with early pre-partnerized youtube, where the ads are actually contingent on accessing copyrighted content in a fangame.

Now, tom can be accused directly of profiting deliberately from traffic generated by unliscensed content.

Has tom prepared for the eventuality that he might have to turn ads off on titles that are determined to be in violation of policy? If so, that makes the new system much less effective at generating income due to the fact that a large portion of our traffic is generated by fangames, a good chunk of that traffic generated by fangames using banned content.

If pokemon, bleach, and naruto become blocked content any time soon, we may well have less than a third of our traffic generating any revenue at all.
First off, profiting off copyrighted content is no different than not profiting off it. If a copyright holder has a problem with content, then it's an issue regardless of any money involved.

For the situation at hand, I can only give my non-expert opinion (and in fact I think this kind of thing is so new that even lawyers are not experts here). As we are not filtering the ads based on the end-result of the connection (which we are generally oblivious to, since it is all generated dynamically), I don't see this being a problem. The precedent I use are sites like justin.tv, which also run ads on content that is far more in violation than anything accessed on BYOND. Unlike sites that actually host or stream content, BYOND is really just a middle man index.

Some of these IP holders have a problem with fangames and when they issue a C&D, we have to abide. Of course, even then we really have no say in the matter since the content of these games doesn't reside on our site-- we just pull the listing. It seems like a rather silly arms race and personally I don't find it effective in any widespread usage. Look at youtube, which surely receives thousands of C&Ds daily, and yet they have copyrighted content all over the place.
Well, in the new pager there is an "all games" listing which is everything anyone on BYOND creates, and I suspect that is going to become the normal way of accessing games moving forward (not because of any legalities, but because it's clear that deciding what games are acceptable vs aren't is just fruitless, and will become more difficult when we open up the hub for all users).

Bear in mind, BYOND doesn't "accept" anything. Games can be played through BYOND whether they are on the hub or not, and games that aren't tagged by volunteer mods are still on the hub. All we do is try to organize some things into an index.
In response to Tom
I'm sorry, I deleted my post before you got your reply in.
The bottom line is that no one really knows how this all works legally speaking because it's relatively new. But we, as BYOND, really have very little say in the games produced here. People will find and play whatever they want no matter how we index it, which is why we've chosen to make everything available in unmoderated form in the new pager (surely to the dismay of those fighting rips, but, again, "if you build it, they will come"). I like the idea of a somewhat-moderated index if only to provide a way to highlight certain games, and we are trying to figure out how to best approach that; clearly the notion of "rejecting" something has not been met with the best response since who are we to say what is acceptable? So the change here is largely one of semantics, and that is to say "everything is listed here, but here are some games we recommend" (which, btw, is what youtube does, and by doing so they are implicitly looking at both original and infringing content to decide what to highlight; of course they are not proactive in actually pulling the infringing content unless issued a C&D!)
I wasn't trying to think for you there, Tom. I agree that you certainly are no more nodding your head to objectionable content than the site you mentioned, which is where my concern comes in.

In the state of modern copyright law, it's pretty much a guilty until proven innocent approach these days, which is why I was inquiring as I was, given that the eventuality of something more than a "stop it" from above may get thrown your way considering the legal precedent in the US court system of going after portal hosts rather than individuals who violate the law.

--Even portal hosts who have done nothing more than neglect to comply with impossible requests by content owners.

I think your approach of opening it all back up is actually a good one. Keeping in the spirit of current C&D orders, though, of course we are continuing our removal of Dragonball-oriented HUBs?

Again, with the rip witch-hunt, I don't propose the ousting of the rip community as an ideal. Indeed, my only real qualm with the rip community is the fact that they have been forced into some pretty third-world conditions due to the community itself, which has harbored a lot of hostility all over the site. In the end, this has resulted in the rip community not actually being able to benefit from the services provided on the overall site, and to actually improve rather than stagnate their product.
I don't have access to a computer with internet right now, but this all sounds great to me and I can't wait to be able to test it out.
This version is definitely more visually appealing than the current. Good job.
<_<(looks there), >_>(and there), <.<(and there), >.>(there again), >.<(what the heck is the new pager? how do I check it out?), O.O
In response to Scyrus123
Scyrus123 wrote:
<_<(looks there), >_>(and there), <.<(and there), >.>(there again), >.<(what the heck is the new pager? how do I check it out?), O.O

How about actually reading the post? http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1199074
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