STICKY....OSCAR download apneaboard and ads..please read

lazarus wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 10:04 am

Bad management of the instruction page--and specifically its containing treacherous ads--could easily undermine and eventually entirely eliminate the benevolent, altruistic, humanitarian reputation of the OSCAR project as a whole and damage the individual reputations of everyone involved.

The problem either needs to be fixed over there NOW or the hosting needs to be moved immediately to somewhere reputable and safe for older, inexperienced Internet users suffering from cognitively debilitating apnea and sleep deprivation.

In my opinion.

Not that I have strong ones, or anything.

A reputable and safe server needs funding. Anything free comes with ads - if you don't have very deep pockets.
And it was my impression that SuperSleeper owner of apnea board was doing his best to get rid of treacherous ads.
Furthermore, I think we're nearing the point when even " older, inexperienced Internet users suffering from cognitively debilitating apnea and sleep deprivation" have to learn about ad blockers.
We do expect them to know how to cross a street safely - they have to be tutored in some internet basics as well.

I have no trouble telling complete strangers to come here to a place reflecting Johnny's way of keeping the funding aspect safely separate from the forum interface.

There should be many ways to accomplish similar approaches without interactive clickbait ads directly on download pages and instruction pages for supposedly noncommercial software.

But I am not very experienced myself, and I do not use an ad blocker. So I acknowledge that my righteous indignation may be unfounded or misplaced.

Still, I personally won't mention OSCAR to anyone myself until I hear that what I consider to be a serious issue is corrected to my personal satisfaction.

My choice.

Maybe placing a static ad on the download page and the instruction pages linking directly to apneaboard and then letting the other ad-filled pages of that forum provide funding would be better, if that can be done.

But OSCAR is exceptional enough to be worthy of a protective moat, in my opinion, without placing it too close to the mire of direct contact with misleading ads.

Other pages of the forum mentioning downloads may be easy enough for anyone to recognize the ads for what they are. But not on pages discussing a downloadable program. That's dirty pool. Unacceptable.

Maybe we should see if ChicagoGranny would like to fund OSCAR directly for a while.

ozij wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 12:26 am

I actually wanted to link to zonker's "Welcome to zoo" image for the demo, but couldn't find it....honestly

i can't imagine how you missed it!

lazarus wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 10:04 am

Bad management of the instruction page--and specifically its containing treacherous ads--could easily undermine and eventually entirely eliminate the benevolent, altruistic, humanitarian reputation of the OSCAR project as a whole and damage the individual reputations of everyone involved.

The problem either needs to be fixed over there NOW or the hosting needs to be moved immediately to somewhere reputable and safe for older, inexperienced Internet users suffering from cognitively debilitating apnea and sleep deprivation.

In my opinion.

Not that I have strong ones, or anything.

oh i understand perfectly and agree to a large part. however, i'm trying to find a way where we HERE can either take control of more of this as dogslobber did with the automatic downloading of said files. perhaps he can do the same with the support files like how to set it up and so forth?

i don't like to put my faith in others in this particular interest. i'm not here to malign the moderator/owner of apneaboard. one does what one does to survive on the internet. i just feel like it's up to us to find some workaround for this.

and when i say "us", i mean the folks with the smarts to make it happen.

ozij wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 10:31 am

Furthermore, I think we're nearing the point when even " older, inexperienced Internet users suffering from cognitively debilitating apnea and sleep deprivation" have to learn about ad blockers.
We do expect them to know how to cross a street safely - they have to be tutored in some internet basics as well.

and i know we've had users come in and fully take to oscar and all of it's benefits immediately. but i still worry about those inexperienced users getting harmed by what is meant to help them.

i feel that if i tell one of them to cross this street right here because there's a store they are looking for on the other side of the street and they get clipped by a car crossing said street, well i'm going to feel badly about that.

lazarus wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 10:56 am

But OSCAR is exceptional enough to be worthy of a protective moat, in my opinion, without placing it too close to the mire of direct contact with misleading ads.

this seems perfectly reasonable and cromulent. but i still don't like having to depend on someone whose point is to have ads on his forum to generate income. again, nothing against apneaboard. i don't know how easy it would be to be able to set things up here so that one can get to all of the pertinent oscar files from here. but i think that may be the answer. mebbe i'm wrong.

without a doubt, in my opinion, oscar is certainly a valuable enough resource to protect.

zonker wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 12:22 pm

find a way where we HERE can either take control of more of this as dogslobber did with the automatic downloading of said files. perhaps he can do the same with the support files

My understanding is limited and thus surely flawed, but I believe the principles of good Internet hygiene dictate great caution is in order when choosing to click links in personal signatures. I base my decisions and choices for doing that on knowing the reputation of any poster here. But newbies coming here to cpaptalk have no reason to trust the links in our signatures than they do to trust ads elsewhere.

Also (again, repeat of my limited/flawed disclaimer), it helps for there to be one, and only one, source for obtaining the latest version of software and instructions in order to protect the integrity and usefulness of any given community project.

zonker wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 12:22 pm

i'm not here to malign the moderator/owner of apneaboard. one does what one does to survive on the internet.

Agreed. I'm not trying to blame any individual, either. It's an unfortunate circumstance caused by the realities of funding and hosting and the leverage of advertising-placement companies. None of that was caused by anyone at that forum.

And frankly, that forum may be the absolute best place for hosting the files and the instructions. But the convergence of circumstances requires something to give, despite the best of intentions all around, in my opinion.

Health-related software is unique and fragile and worth extra consideration for how it is handled. Losing control of it is not an option. But reputation is hard won and too easily lost with this stuff.

zonker wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 12:34 pm

having to depend on someone whose point is to have ads on his forum to generate income

I don't begrudge anyone's income, and in harmony with what Ozij wisely points out, without a benevolent benefactor, cpaptalk could not exist in its present form. In years past, though, cpaptalk was critisized for the equipment links that go directly to cpap.com, causing another forum to ban links to posts here because this place was considered by them a blatant but hidden-motive commercial enterprise. (Silly critique, yes, but not without grounds.) Hosting and bandwidth are expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere.

But I appreciate the efforts of you and others to point out what end users are seeing and having to deal with for downloading and figuring out OSCAR.

Thanks for all of your observations and thoughts and insights and instincts and motives with all of this, my friend.

Note: edit was of one of the more distracting among my many typos.

lazarus wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 1:22 pm

Thanks for all of your observations and thoughts and insights and instincts and motives with all of this, my friend.

and the same to you. here's hoping more people get involved in the discussion.

Some eyes may be missing it, if they're used to skipping over all the stickies at the top.

Almost missed it myself, since I tend to look for whatever is below the distilled water thread.

lazarus wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2024 4:09 pm

Some eyes may be missing it, if they're used to skipping over all the stickies at the top.

Almost missed it myself, since I tend to look for whatever is below the distilled water thread.

yeah, that's been a common complaint from pugsy, that she takes the time to write a sticky and no on reads it.

Having worked with Supersleeper for some years I have a deep and abiding dislike of the man, for reasons I won't go into here. However, in fairness, I have to say that without him there would be no Oscar. After Mark Watkins (inventor of Sleepyhead) shut down that project, it was Apnea Board members (many of them also members here), facilitated by Supersleeper, who took up the task and developed Oscar, based on SleepyHead. Apnea Board provides hosting at sleepfiles.com, as well as all the wiki space for the instructions (which are extensive) plus forums for the developers and testers. It's a very big contribution, and I'm sure it has cost a lot of money.

In honesty, I don't think we can do much about this situation, except to warn people that the dodgy ads exist. I'm going to amend my sig accordingly.

The other alternative is to direct people to SleepHQ instead. That at least is open about its commercial nature, and SleepHQ has a lot of advantage over Oscar when examining somebody's data.

Respirator99 wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 21, 2024 2:42 am

. . . don't think we can do much about this situation, except to warn people that the dodgy ads exist. I'm going to amend my sig . . .

Thank you for that clarity and context, Respirator99.

I would encourage folks here to read my reply in the other thread, here:
viewtopic/t187724/Apneaboard-vs-cpaptal ... 5#p1451123

Allow me to blather on about some thoughts I have...

That post in the link above explains how there's only a limited amount of control that I have over which types of ads are displayed on ApneaBoard.com. I've been working on trying to get rid of those "sneaky" ads that Google Adsense has placed on our site, and for those who have experience hosting a website that has a large volume of ads via Adsense, they will understand how frustrating it can be to control those "sneaky" (actually deceptive) ads that appear on websites. As was stated, our SleepFiles.com site (including the official OSCAR download page) has absolutely NO ads whatsover. It's only on the ApneaBoard.com domain where we have ads.

As a side note, it's interesting to me that occasionally we have people complain about "inappropriate sexual ads" that they see displayed on Apnea Board. We ban the "sexual" categories within Adsense, but sometimes those types of ads get through. When they do get through and someone complains to me, little do those folks realize that they are seeing ads that were likely displayed on their computer because THEY had gone to "adult websites", retained a cookie from those sites, whereupon Google served up "sexually-related" ads, thinking they were interested in such things. Those folks don't realize that they are revealing their own browsing habits.

But back to the problem with the deceptive ads-- I'm sort of between a rock and a hard place. Drop the ads, and both SleepFiles.com and ApneaBoard.com go away due to lack of funding. Keep the ads, and attempt to satisfy everyone involved by keeping the objectionable deceptive ads at bay (which is a never-ending task). Actually it's an impossible task, and we'd have to have someone full-time doing nothing but reviewing all the ads in Adsense to take care of those deceptive ads and even then, we could not catch all the "bad" ones. Over the past few days, I've tried to go into our Adsense account and do a search for "download", or "Start here" etc. in an attempt to discover the offending ads. When I find them, I ban that particular advertiser. But let one day go by, and BOOM!-- all of a sudden you've got hundreds more deceptive ads that start showing up. Like I said, it's an impossible task, and Google isn't doing a darn thing about it, since if ANY ad gets "clicks", Google makes money, whether it's a legit ad or a clickbait deceptive ad. So they are incentivized to do absolutely NOTHING about this issue. All of us are volunteers and we have to prioritize our time spent on Apnea Board. Those who run ads on a larger website understand this frustration.

It's easy to criticize an endeavor like Apnea Board or OSCAR when you really have no clue on what all is involved in keeping things going, operating with a shoestring budget and keeping everyone happy while making the entire site useful and easy to operate. Some of you may know what that's like, perhaps. Most have no clue.

I wish I had a perfect answer for all of these issues, but I don't. I'm getting frustrated myself, both with running the site and with doing all that is necessary to support OSCAR development on an ongoing basis. Most people have absolutely no clue what goes on behind the scenes, so they feel free to assume that because we're not over here justifying every little thing we do, we must all be corrupt over at Apnea Board or "Moderator Nazis" or some such B.S.

If anyone wants to start their own CPAP or Sleep Apnea forum and perform all the stuff that's now done on Apnea Board and with the OSCAR project, PLEASE DO SO. Apnea Board has been online since May of 2004 (closing in on 20 years now). That's a very long time. And a lot of the key players are getting older now, and I've tried to ask our key forum and OSCAR staff to come up with "backup" people who can take over if something would happen to one of us. It would be great if a younger and more energetic person could take over Apnea Board and the OSCAR project, so it would not die on the vine if certain key people went off the scene. Truth is, we're all older now, and to be honest, tired and worn-out. Getting old just ain't fun. There's been points where I was tempted to just shut down the entire site and the OSCAR project, and leave it up to someone else to start a new forum and a new OSCAR fork for the future. But I've realized that it would nice for our future replacements to have the benefit of continuing where we left off, and have the benefit of building upon what we've already accomplished (and not have to re-invent the wheel). That's why we really need new blood to keep things going.

I'm not sure if anything I've said here makes sense or will help in any way. I do blather on and on at times. I DO care about what everyone here thinks (well, most of you)... and I'm not deaf to the problems people are having, so I do appreciate any sincere help or advice that is offered. Personally, I think we've done a lot of good over the past 20 years. But an organization stays successful the way they became successful. With Apnea Board and the OSCAR project, that means that a LOT of people need to continually sacrifice their time and efforts to keep thing rolling well into the future.

I guess what I'm asking for is that people have some degree of understanding and patience with regard to some of these issues. Your comments are not being ignored.

Thanks for listening, folks.

Forgot to add one thing-- the OSCAR project is going to produce a new release in the near future. If any of you folks would like to be a beta-tester, that would help out tremendously. We're lacking as far as active beta-testers. If you can help, join the Apnea Board forum and then send a PM (Private Message) to 'Crimson Nape', and he can enter you into the Beta-Testers group, and you'll have access to the private Beta-Testers Forum and be able to download the latest & greatest versions of OSCAR for testing.

And, by all means if anyone has coding experience and you'd like to help with actual software development, please contact 'Crimson Nape' for that as well. He's currently helping the OSCAR team while Gideon has some personal issues to take care of that keep him from active duty.

Thanks.

SuperSleeper wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 21, 2024 10:43 pm

As was stated, our SleepFiles.com site (including the official OSCAR download page) has absolutely NO ads whatsover. It's only on the ApneaBoard.com domain where we have ads.

Nobody has said (or even implied) that SleepFiles.com has ads. If you had read the relative links, you would have seen the process that people are following to get to the malicious ads.

• They are landing on Sleepfiles.com site
• They are then clicking on the instructions link, which is more prominent then the link to the executable. This brings them to ApneaBoard.
• Thenthey are clicking on a huge and very prominently ad that contains the malicious ads.

You may have not have control of the ads that are displayed, but you do have complete control over where they are displayed.

• Put the link to the instructions (on sleepfiles.com, under the links to the download instructions.
• Don't display the ads at the top of the Installation pages, but them on the bottom.

People following the process as described above is a pretty common occurrence. People ask ApneaBoard about "OCARD asking for a Credit Card" in topics. The answer is always, you've downloaded it wrong a non-official site.

What's happening is as I described in this topic with a specific example in this post.

viewtopic/t187734/Worked-great--until-i ... 5#p1451222