For real, I can’t even click the “General Questions” link up top to get back to the forum because the banner gets in the way. Look:
[QUOTE=diggleblop]
For real, I can’t even click the “General Questions” link up top to get back to the forum because the banner gets in the way. Look:
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that keeps happening to me as well. Worse yet, for some reason the little x simply will not work for me on either my home or work computers, so I can’t even close the damned ad.
So, my only option is to completely refresh the page and tiptoe around in such a way that I don’t accidentally go within the vicinity of the big, expanding banner ad of DOOM.
I just checked my membership. I paid up on 10-01-07. My expiry (what, are we in the UK?) is 10-01-09. Weird. If that’s right, I paid up for two years, or I got a free year. I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually pay for two years.
But anyway, paid up or not, I’m willing to jump ship. IF there’s another ship to jump to.
I’ve been through this before. Back in the old days I was on AOL we had a LGBT forum going and it was a pretty decent place to hang out and chat about whatever. I can’t remember the details, but AOL screwed us and everyone decided en mass to move to gay.com’s message boards. Except after a few weeks it became apparent no one cared, and everyone dispersed to their own places. I hung out on Salon for awhile, but they went pay to play. I said “no.” Then I came here. This place went p2p, and surprisingly, I said “yes.”
But now, what’s going to happen? Like I said, I’m willing to jump. But what’s waiting for me? This place has some cliques, but they’re not Heathers or something, and it’s not extreme. But these other sites being suggested as alternatives, what are they like? Are they cliques? Would I be ignored?
I like hanging out here. I’m not popular, but I don’t get ignored either. I’ve never been to a Doper fest, don’t know anyone here in real life, don’t participate in MMPs, etc. Are these alternative sites too niche? Should I just pretend I’m 16 and go hang out with the kids on FoRT? I don’t want to try moving to an alternative SDMB site populated by 15 or so buddies from here.
Wow, diggleblop, that’s pretty offensive. I suspect the little “close” button in the top right of the banner ad is genuine, for what it’s worth, but bugger me that screenshot is a brilliant illustration of all that’s wrong with advertising “innovation”.
Yeah, the little close button won’t work either, I forgot to mention that. I just wanted to post this in a hurry.
[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
Wow, diggleblop, that’s pretty offensive. I suspect the little “close” button in the top right of the banner ad is genuine, for what it’s worth, but bugger me that screenshot is a brilliant illustration of all that’s wrong with advertising “innovation”.
[/QUOTE]
Like I said, I don’t know if it’s something with my systems or Firefox or what, but that little x wont work for me.
What’s really frustrating me is the fact that I just installed a “great” adblock and it’s not working with this site. What it IS doing is blocking my “Quote” and “Reply” buttons instead. lol
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
If you had read the thread, you would note people like to have their speakers or headphones on while they surf to listen to music.
[/QUOTE]
I know. It’s just that, well, I’ll be damned if I understand it. First of all, much as we’d like it to be true that
, we know that it’s far from the case. The reason I keep my sound off already is that I hate being bonged by surprise noises when I open a new page.
Plus, there exist a plethora of physically small, relatively cheap gizmos to listen to music on, other than one’s computer. Turn on the music, turn off the computer’s sound, nothing easier.
Hardly. That’s why I’d like to see our government do something about poverty and income inequality, even though my income’s quite comfortable.
See above.
Yeah, I know - yet when I pay for a movie ticket, they throw commercials at me anyway. That’s life in the big city, Mr. Free Market. Sometimes you pay for a service, but since it isn’t specified down to the nth detail just what you’re paying for, it isn’t quite what you thought you were paying for, even though it’s consistent with the contract.
You, of all people on this board, should have exactly ZERO problem with this.
I’m kinda stunned that you consider this a talking point, given your ideology.
At any rate, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve held minority points of view lots of times. I’ve even been wrong once in a while.
Approving of a business owner running his business the way he wants to, consistent with the contracts he’s entered into = USSR central planner.
Can you get Edlyn to point a webcam at you? I want to see just how big a pretzel you turned yourself into, to write that post.
[QUOTE=zut]
Although Liberal’s response is a bit aggressively analogical, he’s got a really good point.
The SDMB depends on members. What separates it from other message boards is, essentially, GQ and the people answering questions there (and the spillover into IMHO and GD and such). The board depends on recruiting new members as old ones leave.
There are a lot of people who are going to find NOISY, MOVING BANNER ADS intrusive and hard to deal with. Those that are currently members will leave. Those that aren’t members now will never become members. And, worst of all, there’s probably a large subset of people – currently non-members – who might be willing to pay a membership fee and dick around with Adblocker once they realized they like this place. But they’re not going to bother to try it out, because the Chicago Reader is bound and determined to run them off with NOISY, MOVING BANNER ADS.
It’s nice that you’re not personally inconvenienced, but me, I’d like to see this Board grow. Too bad for me, huh?
[/QUOTE]
I’d like to see this board grow, too. But as long as we’re a pay-to-play site, we’re going to take on new members pretty slowly, and apparently not grow at all.
There are a number of possible routes to this site’s profitability without membership fees. One of them is increased advertising. Advertising rates are a function of circulation/viewership/whatever. But if you don’t have many ads, a pretty huge increase in readership/viewership won’t make up the lost membership fees. If you DO have ads that pay enough so that if your viewership doubles, then they can ditch the membership fees, it’s an argument for ditching the membership fees so that the viewership will double.
Does that make sense?
Like I said in a previous post, the ‘moving’ aspect of the banners goes away just by scrolling down. Much less obnoxious than the ads on a lot of sites, which get in the way of the text you want to read. The SDMB’s don’t do that.
And like I said at the top of this post, damned if I understand the bit about people surfing the web with their computer audio on. Websites make noise, and we’ve never had more, cheaper, more powerful alternate ways to listen to music.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
Tuba responds.
[/QUOTE]
Even though Tuba’s in the same boat as all the other members and can’t do anything about the ads … that post of hers was needed.
Weird. It may be that Jerry hasn’t included all the script stuff that takes care of that crap, since the ads weren’t entirely working earlier. Hey! If we ask really nicely, maybe we’ll get fully functional adverts. Awesome.
I’ve got to add, it feels damned weird, being the one more or less defending the board here. A few longtime mods’ heads are probably exploding.
[QUOTE=SmartAleq]
My IT guy has reminded me that we also run Peer Guardian on all the home and work boxes–it’s an IP blocker program intended to protect P2P users from sites that flood with garbage and/or are shills for the RIAA and such. It has a constantly updating database which seems to be really awesome in getting rid of some of the more flagrant abusers, and ad servers are definitely part of the blacklist. If you’re interested, the download can be found here. No support for Vista yet, sorry, but XP is well covered, including x64.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve done the same. (Not unexpected, since I seem to follow WhyNot like a puppydog whether I realize it or not.)
ETA - Thanks to whoever had the idea - it never occurred to me that I could block the masthead before! Much more work-discreet.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Like I said in a previous post, the ‘moving’ aspect of the banners goes away just by scrolling down. Much less obnoxious than the ads on a lot of sites, which get in the way of the text you want to read. The SDMB’s don’t do that.
[/QUOTE]
Add the word “currently” into that last sentence, would you please?
[QUOTE=AskNott]
When you pay to get a magazine or newspaper, do you stomp and swear you’re never gonna buy another until they stop those tacky ads for fast food joints?
[/QUOTE]
No, but I don’t pay any magazines for the priviledge of writing articles for them either.
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, http://www.wordforge.net/ looks promising. They even have forums broken down by content like many of us have requested time and again here, only to be ignored. And it’s running vBulletion 3.6.4, as opposed to 3.0.7. Can’t upgrade in two years but here’s some banner ads with audio? Are you kidding me?
Everyone looking for another place should at very least click the link and read the forum descriptions.
[QUOTE=Ogre]
After years of struggling with the declining quality of the SDMB, I think this is the final straw. I’ve been bitching a lot about the board recently because I’ve wanted to be convinced that it’s still worth the price of admission. This proves to me that it is not.
Bye, guys. It’s been a fun 7 years.
[/QUOTE]
I fully understand your complaint, but I hope you at least check back in a few weeks to see if this decision has been backed off of.
RTFirefly: you are right about other devices with sound, but it is so easy to store thousands of songs on my hard drive at home and hundreds else where that the PC is an excellent method of playing music. I don’t seem to have the constant nuisance of noise on the Internet that has had you give up on using the PC for music.
Jim
[QUOTE=Ellis Dee]
Yeah, http://www.wordforge.net/ looks promising. They even have forums broken down by content like many of us have requested time and again here, only to be ignored. And it’s running vBulletion 3.6.4, as opposed to 3.0.7. Can’t upgrade in two years but here’s some banner ads with audio? Are you kidding me?
Everyone looking for another place should at very least click the link and read the forum descriptions.
[/QUOTE]
I believe I’ve heard of a well run vBulletin messageboard around here somewhere… (remembers to click “show your sig” button for the first time in forever) 
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Plus, there exist a plethora of physically small, relatively cheap gizmos to listen to music on, other than one’s computer. Turn on the music, turn off the computer’s sound, nothing easier.
[/QUOTE]
Why should I use up my iPod’s battery life when I have 100gb worth of music on my computer that’s sitting right here? I can’t listen to music on the iPod when it’s plugged into my computer charging because I get a flashing DO NOT DISCONNECT thing happening on the iPod. I generally don’t go to web sites that have sound so I’m rarely assaulted by sound I don’t choose.
In any case, I was lucky enough not to be assaulted by one of the sound ads before I tried the HOST fix, which is still working for me, thank goodness. I’m still seeing the Google ads, but they don’t bother me.
How many people here would be willing to go on strike for a day? Two days?
I’d be willing to start a thread calling for a boycott or no-post period if enough people would be willing. In fact nine different posters should start threads in each of the forums.
I’m not currently seeing ads at work, and I got the source blocked at home, but I don’t want to have to black them or ignore them, they shouldn’t be there. I’m seriously considering not renewing in February.
I Frakkin’ LOVE Adblock Plus/NoScript 
banner ads; BLOCKED
google ads; BLOCKED
Straight Dope header; BLOCKED (will be restored once banner ads are ELIMINATED)
I pay for my internet experience, I pay for posting privilges on this site, therefore I and I alone should be able to choose whether advertising of any kind is welcomed or allowed
It’s NOT, nor will it ever be, if I pay for something, I sure as hell do not expect to be marketed to, if I’m interested in purchasing something, I will research it, I will never be enticed by advertisements
I have never purchased anything from a banner ad or google ad, and I never will, the Reader’s advertiser revenue stream from me will and always will be ZERO, attempting to throw advertising my way is nothing more than a waste of bandwidth