Haven’t read the whole thread but I’m blocking the ad images with firefox now. If this stops working I too will be out of here. But if the Dope advertisers are willing to pay the Dope for exposure to a whole bunch of peole usung ad-block or equivalent then more fool them.
Turkey Spam?
CMC +fnord!
Personally, I’m bettin’ that when the real Powers That Be read this thread, we all get banned!
Haven’t read the whole thread either, but I wish to add my NO vote to these ads…unless of course that having the ads means that we don’t have to pay subscriptions anymore, yes? And the service and speed will be enhanced because of the increased revenue of course, yes??
Really, really dumb move Reader.
I wrote a couple of paragraphs steaming with piss and vitriol and the fucker ate them. This is bullshit. This is fucking bullshit. I didn’t pay for a fucking son et lumiere, and sneaking them on and then squirming and weaselling that “to the best of my knowledge a decision was made” when called on it is a fucking shit sandwich. We need a fucking posting boycott right now - maybe when the dumb fucks who made the fucking decision figure that if nobody puts up with this then there’s no-one to click on these fucking ads and their projected revenue stream has been shat in.
I’ll repeat that - I’m calling for a boardwide posting boycott of a week until these fuckers are gone and an apology is made to paying members for this underhanded fuckery. Anyone else up for it?
Which is exactly why that’ll be next. Remember back before pay-to-post the vast number of suggestions on how the Reader could make money from the SDMB without going p2p? How the Reader’s attitude was, “We don’t give a shit, this is how we’re going to do it.”? Then the Google ads appeared, with no prior announcement? Face it, Lumbergh is running things. Proxomitron blocks all ads, except those stupid content linked ones that are now becoming popular in many places, but with people paying to post, we shouldn’t have to go to such extremes, IMHO.
What the folks running the Reader are forgetting is that the web is a very big place, and not only do Dopers like Una and Opal have their own boards (not to mention the various off-shoots that the European and Aussie Dopers have), but there’s other boards out there, with no connection to the Dope. Indeed, one (Wordforge) I recently stumbled across (which is free, BTW), seems, from the little I’ve seen of it, to be much like the SDMB in it’s glory days.
Well I am not currently seeing these ads and I don’t have any clue why. I must have some type of ad block that I am unaware of. I can say if they do happen to seep through that with my current home system I will probably not be able to read the Dope from home.
For some reason large flashing ads freeze my system and cause it to shut down.
I think this is complete bullshit. I am sure Jerry had no choice as it seems was stated in his post in ATMB. He was told to do it and he did. It also appears that Tuba had no clue what the fuck was going on when she stated it was some sort of temporary bug and her snark at the concerns of members was uncalled for.
For a board that requires a yearly membership this sucks. I won’t re-up next year as it sounds like there won’t really be a reason to anyway.
Everytime I scroll up to go back to the message board at large, I overshoot my target and get stuck on that fucking Ford ad. It then explodes to 4 times it’s normal size and I have find a way out of it to simply get back to the front page. “Rollover to join the party!” I haven’t even asked that of my wife in 20 years, why should I expect this treatment from advertisers?
OK, I didn’t mind the google ads. I don’t really mind the banner ads.
But what were you thinking when you let banner ads with sound on the board?
Seriously, with the amount of people who dope at work - are you *trying *to drive us away? To have an ad start talking in the middle of the day screams to all my coworkers that I am on the web.
I just want to add my voice here as well. As you can see by my post count I don’t post much but I’ve been here for a while. I subscribed because I felt a certain moral duty or obligation on my part because of all the enjoyment I have received and felt that by subscribing I could show my appreciation, but now with these ads I will also seriously reconsider resubscribing in April.
Also, I what is the use of trying to get me to buy USA postage stamps with my face on them when I can’t use them? It’s just adding insult to injury.
The same TubaDiva who recently told us all that we shouldn’t ask the Administrators anything about the workings of the forums because they don’t actually know, and really aren’t given any information from any of the ‘technical staff’ at all?
Yeah, sounds like she’s making guesses and talking out of her ass.
Don’t worry, it won’t be long before we’re not allowed to discuss blocking them, much like we aren’t with the Google ads.
Can confirm that blocking “http://media.chicagoreader.com/phpAdsNewer/*” does indeed get rid of all sources of ad crap, rather than having to block individual sources. In a moment of boredom I also decided to get rid of the SDMB banner as well; those of you who know how to add custom stylesheets on a per-site basis can just use the following:
.borders {
display: none;
}
Acres more screen real estate for actual posts! Also, less obvious to fellow office workers that you’re pissing around on the internet. Bonus.
That aside, while it’s obviously very easy to block the ads, this whole thing does rather illustrate the naked contempt with which the board in general is regarded by the Reader. No shock there, though. I suppose I could try and muster some surprise at Tubadiva managing to be completely wrong, yet still a dick towards people who weren’t reacting positively to the wrong information (that she hadn’t even told them yet). But … no, I can’t. Not her fault she wasn’t told what was going on, of course, but Jesus, that woman has a hair trigger.
A relevant image from a presentation by Richard Kyanka of Something Awful.
Then again, I’ve got Google ads on my forum, and there’s been no protest whatsoever from the old-time users. However, it’s not a P2P site.
You can take your fucken banner ads and shove them straight up your collective ignorant asses. Adios, mother fuckers!
We used to have them here as well. I remember a long and funny thread about how great Altoids are and why we should all support the dope by clicking and buying. That went away(like our good will) as TPTB said it didn’t work so they went P2P. Now they’re spit-roasting us with no reach around.
This is actually good news for the Boards because[ul][li]Management has made a decision about the Boards and it’s not “close them down”. They’re not sufficiently interested in the place to make an announcement or anything, but at some level Management are aware of the SDMB’s existence and think it’s worthwhile making a decision about the place. This is good. A greater level of interest from the ferrets would be a worry.[/li]
[li]**Management has clearly humiliated the administrators and moderators of the Boards by neither consulting nor informing them of the change. ** Management insulted them by omission. Again, this is good, because it will encourage the Board staff in the view that the only people who think they have any value is the membership. [/ul]All this is good. The SDMB’s status is a tolerated backwater with “gone native” staff.[/li]
[sub]Obviously I can’t see any animations or hear sounds. I visit other place on the internet and got rid of them long ago.[/sub]
Add my name to the list of “fuck this”
another charter member, rarely bitches (and the very rare times I’m in disagreement w/admin, I’ve been rather polite about it).
fuck the lack of respect it took to simply do it, w/o advance warning.
fuck the ads themselves.
fuck the noise.
fuck the motion.
just fuck it.
If nothing else, this has woken up a few of our more forgiving members to the fact that TubaDiva doesn’t give a shit about their Total Board Experience.
My favorite part is the “you can be pissed if you want to” attitude. It’s nicely Coulteresque. “I called the 9/11 widows whores, but it’s their problem if they’re offended.”
This is exactly why I started posting about Adblock early on in the thread, before the Editorial Enforcers descend with their alt-x guns…
Not all of us have control over our computers at work. If I try and go through the options to get rid of anything I get an error. So add me to the list of, this is fucking bullshit.
Using a WinXp IE6 PC today and the method I posted works well except for the very first instance of bringing up SDMB. After that, no more banner ads.
I might look into this more later today.