other downloads...?

[chaos master]

I was looking at the ROM files on CoolROM before and I noticed that there is an other downloads list which contains GBA and Dreamcast and other ROMs/ISO's and when I clicked on it to see what's up, this vote screen came up. I didn't go any farther than that, mostly because I am confused. What does this other downloads list do? Refer us to another site? I thought that GBA ROMs and such were not allowed on this site. Any help would be appreciated....

[Crazed Dragon]

hmm i saw that too. when you click on one at the top is said that coolrom's sever for this is offline witch make sence because coolrom doesn't give out rom for those, but when you click to vote some anime porno ad pops up! and when something like that pops up i close the window and don't ever go back to what ever brought me to the sick ad

[harger]

thats what happen to me when i first saw it

[DarthBrady]

Yeah, whats up with this? Xbox 360 is on there?!

I am so confused now. This is going to confuse newbs on the forum too i'll bet. That is when they get into ESA protected rom discussions like we always do...

I hope somebody sheds a little light on this soon.:skep:

[Kameo]

It's just a scheme to generate votes for this site, lots of sites do that, even more people fall for it. U can vote a zillion times, all it will do is lead U in circles, it will not take U anywhere. It's only the n00bs who click these things. No such files R stored here, or anywhere else for that matter, not behind those links anyway. Don't bother with it ;)....

[Fierce Deity]

I like how the voting screen has naked cartoons on it. Nothing is better than having people that respect you think you are looking at cartoon porn when you are actually trying to help your site.

[admin]

Sorry for all the confusion guys. I have noticed that CoolROM is not getting the votes we deserve, and we are often behind other sites that we shouldn't be behind. So I have decided to add a "Other Downloads" section with loop voting to see how many votes this will generate from people who do not pay attention to ESA policies. I know this may not be the best get votes, but I do not know how else CoolROM can compete in top sites! Almost every other site have some form of forced voting/misleading links, and we need to compete with them somehow. To tell you guys the truth, CoolROM has jumped from the average 40k unique visitors per day to over 50k after the system was implemented. Please let me know what you guys think - I think your opinion is really important in this matter.

[Fierce Deity]

Well, do what you have to do, I guess. I will vote for CoolROM every time I log on now, assuming there are no parents in the room. Due to the banners of inappropriateness and such. Yay internet!

[chaos master]

Well, do what you have to do, I guess. I will vote for CoolROM every time I log on now, assuming there are no parents in the room. Due to the banners of inappropriateness and such. Yay internet!
Yes, if you gotta do it, then do it. I'll vote more, too.

[Crazed Dragon]

i'd vote if it weren't for the "first vote here, and here and then here oh don't forget here" it confuses me. and the anime porn, if you can get rid of that i'll vote with some free time i have

[Fierce Deity]

i'd vote if it weren't for the "first vote here, and here and then here oh don't forget here" it confuses me. and the anime porn, if you can get rid of that i'll vote with some free time i have
admin doesn't own the voting site. The anime porn is there because of the voting site's owners.

[Crazed Dragon]

admin doesn't own the voting site. The anime porn is there because of the voting site's owners.oh i didn't realize it take you to another site

[Fierce Deity]

oh i didn't realize it take you to another site
I see the force is not very strong with this one. Anyhow, I'm going to go and vote once, and then I'm going to be because it's 5am and I have to move tomorrow. Or today, rather....

[Fierce Deity]

I thought you'd al want to know, CoolROM is in second place. It is the only site with the SF (Surfer Friendly) icon.

BTW, is there anything stopping you from voting over and over again?

[Kameo]

I thought you'd al want to know, CoolROM is in second place. It is the only site with the SF (Surfer Friendly) icon.

BTW, is there anything stopping you from voting over and over again?

Don't vote at all :p.

I vote once each day, it only picks up Ur IP once a day so even if U do vote a zillion times, it doesn't count.

I say keep those links, it'll keep the n00bs busy for a while, nicely generating votes as they will never understand why it doesn't work :p.

[DarthBrady]

Sorry for all the confusion guys. I have noticed that CoolROM is not getting the votes we deserve, and we are often behind other sites that we shouldn't be behind. So I have decided to add a "Other Downloads" section with loop voting to see how many votes this will generate from people who do not pay attention to ESA policies. I know this may not be the best get votes, but I do not know how else CoolROM can compete in top sites! Almost every other site have some form of forced voting/misleading links, and we need to compete with them somehow. To tell you guys the truth, CoolROM has jumped from the average 40k unique visitors per day to over 50k after the system was implemented. Please let me know what you guys think - I think your opinion is really important in this matter.

I can't argue with that, sounds like smart thinking to me! In this new light, I support the change, if it helps CoolROM get more votes!

[Iconoclast]

Did you say that CoolROM.com is in second? That's interesting...I thought it was the second best, too. Actually, I should probably chance my mind. I was going to say ROMHustler is the best, (I voted for CoolROM, anyway.) but it only seems to have all of the N64 ROMs. It is missing a few ROMs every now and then for some of the other consoles. Besides, it's not fair that CoolROM was changed by the ESA indirectly to remove ESA-protected ROMs and ROMHustler wasn't. And CoolROM.com isn't the only site with website/server issues...ROMHustler has a few glitches.

But enough about that. I'll say what I can of my opinion. To be honest, I don't see the big deal of having CoolROM listed as the top ROM website on top100gaming.com (I think it was). I mean, top100gaming.com is just a fake little website giving links for places to download ROMs. Now, I do think that for the most part, CoolROM.com is the best for downloading ROMs in general. I wouldn't be worried about it. The purpose of the ROMs section of CoolROM.com is to provide users with ROMs. Now, whether the users who want the ROMs get them from CoolROM.com or any other website, as long as they get the ROM they want and they're happy, that should be the purpose of all ROM websites. They should all be together to help the users get the ROMs they want. I don't think this matter between the different ROM websites should become a voting competition. It's not like nobody uses CoolROM.com to get ROMs. Although, the site is rather more organized and cleaner than the other sites for downloading the ROMs in a few small tiebreaking ways. In short, I wouldn't worry about it. The other sites can continue to cheat their way to getting their site to the top of the list if they want, but the only way for CoolROM to catch up with that is to full-force cheat along with them, changing the way users download ROMs in negative ways by forcing users to vote for CoolROM and a bunch of methods to slop the place up, or CoolROM stays fair and organized, and the 'cleanest' place to download ROMs, forgetting about having the site at the top of the list. I want to avoid saying best...I guess it is, in my opinion, but I haven't look at all of the sites. But going in between, partially cheating, isn't going to work.

As for the increase of users after implementing this...well, yeah, to my surprise, that's one way of getting more users online, but it's a waste of time for the user to go through all that voting. But that depends what your answer to the question is. Which matters more,

The rank of your website judged by another website (top50gaming.com) instead of its users (Remember: The users don't really think those sites are the best, they just vote for them because they are tricked to. In fact, the rank of this website may not even hardly affect the number of users who choose CoolROM because of how many of those votes are tricked.) and, as it leads further down to, getting a fair increase of users using CoolROM to download ROMs (not because of the website rank, because of that ESA-fool-vote-loop thingy you added), or
The preserved uniqueness of this site compared to other sites where users don't have to vote to humbly make it considerably easier on the users for downloading ROMs. Keeping another reason why CoolROM is the best. And not wasting an user's time by linking them to something they can't download. That'll only stress them for something they can't have. Same thing with the new users who chose CoolROM if you picked the first answer above. They'd probably give up on CoolROM anyway if the reason they came here was to get ESA stuff.Yeah, I think I've said too much, but I hope that helps. I felt like talking a lot, so I hope you dug out just the considerations from what I've said.

[Fierce Deity]

Holy Crap. How do you write so much about so little? In any event, the reason we are on top is because when somebody goes to any gaming site, they eventually find a ROM that isn't there. Let's take a look into the lif eof Johnny Everyn00b.

Johnny goes onto www.romsitehere.com
Johnny can't find ROMname.
Johnny sees the top 100 list.
He clicks there.
He makes his way to the top sites once he stops staring at the hentai.
He clicks the very first site, it is ranked as the best, after all.

That is why we need more votes. Which ever one is ranked top will get more traffic. Currently it is RomNation, which from my experience, sucks, if I am thinking of the right place. More traffic means more money from ads, which means that coolrom can stay open longer, and admin will be happy to devote his time to the site, because of money ro something. I am pretty sure the ads at the top are based on traffic, so more money means that the site stays open.

[Kameo]

True, ROMNation sucks. Anile8 (the Admin. of the place) never updates, he doesn't care for the site. And the forum is pretty much dead too, totally not like this one, this is like a schoolyard loaded with playing children compared to the graveyard ROMnation's forum is :D ....

[Fierce Deity]

MMMmmmmm...Playing Children *drools*

I love homer... :p

[admin]

Thank you for all of your feedbacks guys, I really appreciate it. Icono, you have some very good points in your rather detailed analysis :).

I agree about ROMHustler being another great site, but I think one of the reasons they get substantially more votes than us is their 2-page download clickthrough. Users who click on the "Download this rom" link will be taken to a second page with the same voting warning. If they didn't vote on the first page, they will think that they have vote in order to download, and thus, vote on the second page. What do you guys think of this system? All potential downloaders will be affected by this, in my opinion.

I also agree that it is more important for CoolROM to be ranked by users, rather than by top sites, but I think there are many people who still do not know CoolROM, and the service we provide. There are a lot of bogus sites (with little or no content) out there that are sending visitors to top sites in exchange for even more traffic. I believe our high ranking will ensure that users get an equal chance to discover CoolROM and our services, compare it to the likes of ROMNation and ROMHustler, and see which site they like better.

I also understand that users who come here looking for ESA protected or newer titles will be taken to the voting loop, and receive a bad impressions of CoolROM, but this also gives them the idea that if they are looking for these titles, they will not find them at CoolROM!

Truthfully, there are not enough users like you guys who actually take the time to vote for us (I know there are adult material on some sites, and I am sorry about that), and most people just skip voting and directly download ROMs. Our bandwidth consumption has increased significantly during the past month (with the addition of the entire MAME ROM set), but revenue has stayed the same. Maybe I am thinking too much about the hits/revenue side of the site? Perhaps, we can find another way to generate more votes for CoolROM? Thanks a lot for your opinions so far!

[Fierce Deity]

Well, implementing would be beneficial to the voting thing, but second may be good enough. Now that I think it through, most users will try RomNation, see taht it sucks, and probably go right down the list, which would take them to CoolROM next. If all it is doing is increasing used bandwidth, maybe it isn't such a good thing. Maybe you should make your own voting site, porn free, and make it so voting can't be forced? Just a thought. Anyhow, do what is best for enough revenue to keep CoolROM going, and to keep you satiated, but without making the site a corporate *****.

[Iconoclast]

I'm not sure what else to say. I think I'll let the other users remark to what you said; maybe I can come back to this later after they've replied. I can't think of another way, yet. Especially with this Eminem music I'm listening to...yeah, this is by far the worst thinking music I've ever had to witness myself testing. No spaces between his words.

But for now, I stand for what I said before. I would not worry about the votes or hits for CoolROM. Whether an user chooses ROMHustler but is not aware of their future preferring to use CoolROM to download ROMs, the important thing is that all of these sites, including CoolROM, get the users the ROMs they want. Between them preferring CoolROM, ROMHustler, or any other ROM website, it only seems like a matter of preferring how the ROM downloads are presented and the organization of the site. As long as they get the ROMs, even if they aren't using CoolROM, they got what they wanted.

But yes, I do see that it is a little easier if we got users to choose CoolROM.com for downloading ROMs or at least see if they prefer that over ROMHustler and the other sites. But I don't even think the users care long enough to think about which they prefer as long as they get the ROMs. That's what they want.

[chaos master]

Yeah, some visitors might think that they'll just snag a few ROMs and it won't affect anything if they don't vote just this once. The same happens with many people, and we end up with much less votes. Many people do not care about the toplists, they just want their ROMs!

If we are higher on the toplists, then we can supposedly get more visitors (2nd and surfer friendly are quite enticing) and then that may mean more revenue from people clicking and seeing the ads (that's how they work, right?) and then we can make CoolROM better with whatever we could make it better with.

Yes, someone could get a bad impression of CoolROM if they just spent half an hour on the voting loop. But, hopefully they will also check out the guaranteed downloads and see that we do have many quality ROMs that are indeed working and spyware/adware free.

I also am pretty sure that ROMNation also has a voting loop, which might account for their position in 1st. ROMNation has much fewer ROMs than CoolROM does.

Also, the voting loops seem kinda silly to me. I mean, who would make a "Ps2 and GBA ROM section?" They have nothing in common. And Xbox 360 supposedly be emulated seems preposterous to me. Not to mention "ROM" is used where "ISO" should be sometimes. I suppose this serves to let people who know their stuff to know the ulterior motive of it.

Yet, 2nd with surfer friendly is very good, especially if the site in front of us is inferior. I'm not sure what we should do, though. The voting loop seems to mess with CoolROM's "real, quality ROMs and ISOs" style as it tricks people. Although it gives people the impression that ESA ROMs are hard to find, and also might keep more ESA requests off of ROM Request. So, there's pros and cons here. I'm not completely sure what we should do....

[pizzaman]

Well I've read this thread, but I didn't answer, because I don't know what all this voting stuff is about. If people vote, what do you( Admin ) get for it? I'm sort of confused about how to vote too. I never tried it, because I just thought it was some ad( As I was send to strange sites with strange picture.... ). If you do, however put the voting loop in a whole different catagory, like you did( Garanteed downloads and other downloads. ) then there should be no problem. If a person gets in the loop, he won't go there again( Or might, depending on his IQ/determination. ) and will download from the garanteed ROMs.