I hope Cecil steps in and fixes this.
When I’m logged in, threads that I haven’t opened show up as read. Posts that I haven’t seen, since I haven’t opened the thread, show up as read. It’s time based (what has happened since the last time I looked at the boards).
When I’m not logged in, the board keeps meticulous track of which threads I’ve opened and which ones I haven’t, for the whole browser session. So, when I go to new posts on a thread, it’s not a whole page further than last time I opened it. It’s activity based (what have I actually looked at).
This feels like it does when I go to a fast food restaurant and find that, to save money, they’ve hidden the napkins behind the counter and reclassified their standard items as premium so that they can charge more for them.
I ran an experiment by coming here and not logging in right away. I use AdBlock Plus on Firefox.
No ads, not even the videos or pop-unders.
Very good to know. (Not being sarcastic)
I regularly read without logging in from work, because I only have time to skim a few quick threads, and don’t want it to update my last visited time.
I sometimes read from my other computer at home, or in a private browser window on my main machine, for the same reason.
Something has to slow down the lightning fast speed of the dope, I’m only waiting a minute or so now to open some pages. And yes, when I’m sitting there counting the time it takes to access this board, I see a little “Waiting for some internet ad site to respond” message at the bottom of my screen. Bad enough waiting for the dope, but waiting for some internet ad whore processing site to get it’s act together is a bit much.
Popunder? Pop-anything? What year is it?!
Oh Jesus, brilliant strategy, throw ads at the newbies who haven’t signed up in hopes that convinces them to come join us. :rolleyes:
And pop up ads are particularly obnoxious. Yes, even ads that only show when you leave a page. Or pop up a window under your main browser page and you find them later when you’re closing things down. I thought only porn sites did that.
Inline video ads - gah!
I used to be an engineer at a large travel site and they went to pop-unders while I was there. I hate pop-unders and was disappointed that my company resorted to using them. But dammit they brought in a lot of money and so complaining went nowhere.
I don’t like the SDMB moving to pop-unders but I understand the decision (even though I would advise against them). I will concur with others that this just leads more users to using ad blockers.
Why do pop-unders work better than regular ads? I ignore them all, anyway.
For the past couple days, I have been surprised by the full-screen ad every time I close the Dope, and was worried that I had a virus or something. But now I’m used to it, and it doesn’t offend me…
It’s a small price to pay for the best site on the web. I just click twice to close both windows.
If the Dope doesnt make a profit and closes down, the biggest loser will be me–this place is a regular part of my day, and I;ll really miss it.
Add me to the list of people who don’t like/want this.
I was wondering why all of a sudden, I have 10 web pages open for an ad to cosmopolitan magazine.
A quick bit of experimenting, and sure enough, it is (I guess) the pop-under ad.
What a pain in the dick.
Jesus, I know it’s your board, but WTF? How is this a good idea when it will force just about everyone to use some sort of an ad-blocker?
I hadn’t bothered until now. I could stomach the banner ads, and figured it was a low-stress way to support the board.
But this? Consider it done. I will forever block all ads from this site, and any site that thinks popping up a new window on my computer is a good idea.
Heaven forbid you buy a membership.
When I say “banner ads” I meant the ones at the bottom each page that say “you might like this”.
Not this, and NOT video ads. Jeebus.
Nope.
There are a lot of us here that aren’t members. If that is a problem, let us know. Make it a member-only board.
I don’t want to be a “member”. Instead, I’ll block all ads, and when the dope decides to stop me from using the board, then that will be that.
I don’t care if you are a member or not. Just don’t pretend you care about supporting the board.
Please.
I don’t care if you are a mod or not. Acting like you know my motives, and can speak to them because I don’t want to pay for a membership says more about you than me. Would it be fair game for me to question your motives for wanting to be a mod?
I’ve been around since 2000. So clearly, I like the place. I also don’t want to see it go under, which is why I have never blocked the ads.
If you are telling us non-paying members that we don’t measure up because we don’t pay up like you do, or we don’t support the board by not blocking ads, then
- why not just kick us freeloaders off the board?
- why run ads at all?
Are you saying that my not blocking them means nothing? The SDMB doesn’t see a dime from any ad they put on my page, and on the occasion I actually “click” on an ad on the SDMB, that doesn’t generate revenue either, right? Then what is the point of ads at all?
You support the board your way, and I’ll support it mine.
But I guess since I will be blocking all ads, that won’t matter, because according to you, I am not helping the SDMB revenue stream by not blocking them presently anyway.
We don’t know how much is being made, so it could be argued that the banner ads that (regular) non-members are seeing reel in more per year than a membership.
Also, if you really want to support the board, let your Charter Membership lapse and pay full price.
Edit, if you really, really want to support the board, help get rid of overly intrusive ads that pop under and/or autoplay. Why would any newcomer stick around for that? If I Google something, click on a link and get that kind of crap, I back up and go to the next link down.
If TPTB check their analytics, I’ll bet the bounce rate for unique visitors is on it’s way up.
This was a topic of great debate among the engineers because to a person none of us could remember ever clicking on a pop-under, let alone actually buying something. It was hard for us to track because we were only showing the ads and we had no idea which users actually bought something (and thus made money). We were paid a CPC by the advertisers.
Some engineers thought that the advertisers were just paying us because the advertisers thought it worked (e.g. they couldn’t differentiate between clicks generated by banner ads and pop-unders so they lumped all the revenue together) or they were tracking it wrong. Some thought it was grandmothers who didn’t use the Internet enough to be annoyed by pop-unders. Some thought it was just a result of showing even more ads–i.e. you’d get the same revenue if you added another banner ad to the main page. It hadn’t been solved by the time I left.
I assume that Ed & PTB were given an estimate (or guarantee) of increased revenue with pop-unders. I would hope that it would be nixed if it was a trivial amount so my guess it’s worth it to annoy the few users who don’t have ad-blockers.
I appreciate the announcement anyway – I came to ATMB to see what the heck was going on! I don’t have a bookmark or saved login because I share this computer (and delete History automatically) so I go to straightdope.com and then to Message Board. That’s when I suddenly started getting the new window popping up, er, under.