Urging members not to click ads? and related questions.

On community sites.

[gethan]

One of the things I've been contemplating is the possibility of members of a web community trying to support the site by being helpful, eg. clicking ad's with no intention of buying and no real interest.

Would it be A) sensible B) against TOS - to put in the members area/signup email;

"This community is paid for by advertising - please only click the adverts if they are of genuine interest. Clicking adverts of no interest makes this site a worse place to advertise and could potentially lead to the loss of the advertiser."

It is vague, doesn't encourage clicks, doesn't talk about adsense specifically.

Opinions? More ideas?

One of the most frequent questions that I receive is how does site XYZ offer that service for free?

How should this answer be worded in order to fit in with the TOS, not encourage helpful clicks and answer truthfully the question?

[jomaxx]

This community is paid for by advertising...

IMO this is an incitement to click the ads.

...please only click the adverts if they are of genuine interest.

This is still a veiled request to click the ads.

I recommend you say nothing about them. If someone asks you a direct question by email, go ahead and answer it. If it comes up in the forums, be very careful what gets said about them - by you or by anybody else.

[richmondsteve]

I second what jomaxx said. I say nothing about the ads on my sites for the very same reasons.