Back in Monday, we claimed that this week was one of the most crucial weeks for the future of DSOG. And today, we are ready to discuss what has been happening these past days, as well as some minor changes we’ve implemented.
So, in Monday we got a report from Google about some pages featuring adult/sexual content. Google is against such things, and is very strict about its policy. Therefore, we had three days to comply to it, and remove any offending images, videos or text.
But what is considered ‘offending’ content? Well, basically everything you can imagine; from bikini images to mere words. You all know that we want to provide freedom to you – our readers – however it seems that some comments triggered Google’s bots. After all, the example page that was included in Google’s report did not feature any adult images or videos.
As a result of that, we have added a new filter to Disqus (basically it will censor a lot of ‘cursing’ and ‘harsh’ words). It may be frustrating, but we strongly believe that it’s better to play it safe. We are currently at a crucial point where every mistake can be grave. And though this filter may frustrate some, we believe it’s better dealing with it (or being careful with your comments. No reason to resort to cursing people. We always value discussions with arguments) than letting everyone loose and – eventually – closing down DSOG.
Truth be told, we’d love to be funded by our readers. Our ideal scenario is to have an ads-free website. Yes yes, we’d love a website funded by our fanbase that does not contain any ads at all. However, and let’s be realistic and honest on this, that won’t be happening any time soon.
But how are we so certain about this? Generally speaking, we love experimenting with all sorts of things. A couple of weeks ago, we decided to include a ‘Donate’ widget at the right sidebar. That widget was purposely placed at the top of the sidebar. We did not inform anyone about it as we wanted to see whether people would notice it themselves, and whether we’d have any pledges without ‘asking’ our fans for such a thing. Our total earnings from that ‘Donate’ experiment – that lasted a week – were $0 dollars.
DSOGaming is slowly – but steadily – getting bigger, which is precisely why we need to be extra careful. We do know that some of our readers are using ad blockers. And while this does ‘hurt’ us economically, we are against using plugins that prevent our content to those using them. No, that’s not who we are. We’ll never block our content. And we won’t blackmail our readers in order to whitelist us. That’s their decision.
Decision. Yes, that’s the right word. After all, it all comes down to this; every decision has a consequence. And unfortunately, we don’t know how things will turn out unless we make a decision. Some of those decisions may backfire in the long run while others may benefit both us and our readers. And right now, all we can do is hope that we’re making the right ones.
For what is worth, it will be an interesting journey!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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