[Richard]

I also wanted to post this about the whole thing.

I am not trying to say that the banners on the left are in no way some form of advertising, in fact everything we do is advertising. In fact this entire board is adverising in one shape or fashion as it generates sales by discussion of the merits of our games.

The only reason I made the distinction is because I think there is an automatic reaction to see a side bar and say "Man more ads" especially since the original bar looked somewhat like a typical google ad area.

The links on the left talk about games we are releasing, patches being released, new scenarios for games we currently sell, and games coming off of back order. They are informational and yes they may lead to sales, however they are not the same as the banner ads on the top of our pages.

So don't take it as us trying to avoid a question, because we all very well know that the left bar is a form of advertising like any press release is, but to chalk it up to us wanting to bypass filters or put more ads up for the sake of putting ads up is silly.

We have been trying to find a good balance of not adding confusion to the board experience, while making sure we let new folks to the board know how they can reach other parts of our site and what is happenning with the titles they currently have. This seemed like the best compromise.