And if you get sick of telemarketers, why, all you have to do is turn off your phone!
I would, but I doubt word would get to everybody. A boycott could lessen the stream of posts but not stop them entirely. And besides, what would TPTB care? They’d probably just as soon turn the whole thing off.
Do folks here not buy magazines because of the ads?
This is a long thread, so I may have missed explicit MacOS instrux for implementing the “HOSTS” file trick on a Mac… in case someone needs that, though:
Open Terminal.app
Type “cd /etc”
Type “sudo pico hosts”
Enter your password when prompted
screen should change, should now have a title bar that says “File: hosts” at the top; then several lines that start with hash marks like so:
Host Database
localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
Below the double-hash will be some entries beginning with “localhost”. Leave all those but use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move below the last entry to the first blank line.
Type “127.0.0.1” then spacebar your way over to the right until your blinking cursor is below the other text entries such as “localhost” and “broadcasthost” and so on. Now type “media.chicagoreader.com”.
The full effect should be:
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
127.0.0.1 media.chicagoreader.com
(you may have other entries between the last “localhost” and the line you added).
Now hold down the Control key and hit the letter “o”.
A highlighted line will come up reading "File Name to Write: hosts
hit Return.
Now hold down Control again and type “x”. That should make the hosts file disappear from your screen and you’re back to a regular Terminal window.
You can now quit out of Terminal and restart your computer for it to take effect.
Ones that have the perfumy stinky ones- yeah. The perfume makes me ill and I avoid them. WHen I do get one inadvertantly, I rip it out immediately.
Flashing, blinking ads are nauseating in the same stinky way. 
It does look quite interesting. There are, however, a few potential problems with moving over there.
First, and most obviously, any large-scale movement from the SDMB to that forum would effectively swamp WordForge with Dopers, alienating other members and probably the admins and mods as well. There appear to be fewer active members over there, and the threads seem, on average, to grow more slowly than they do here.
Can you imagine the reaction here if a few thousand SomethingAwful members descended on the place and began having conversations among themselves and referring to their old “in jokes” etc.? We’d probably be pretty pissed. Any migration that involved joining a new, non-Doper-run board would have to be done VERY tactfully.
Also, a quick look suggests that there is some discussion on WordForge about adding advertising to their forums, and also about pay-to-post. It’s not clear to me how seriously this is being considered, but it would be rather pointless to move to a board, and then discover that it was about to implement the very features we were fleeing from.
Finally, while they don’t have a BBQ Pit, they do have a couple of more “lightly moderated” forums. I think that’s good, because some flaming and abuse can be fun, if it doesn’t get out of hand. The problem, for me, is that one of the main lightly-moderated forums is the forum for discussions of sensitive issues, philosophy, politics, and religion. This means that the forum where abuse is most likely to be allowed is also the forum that is likely to attract the most deeply-held convictions. I like our GD/Pit division, where you can decide whether you want a civilized discussion or a gloves-off flamefest.
When I buy a mag I know there’s going to be ads there. I didn’t know this when I paid last time. At the very least they should have made this move when a large group are going to be re-upping like around March. Then at least we’d know what we were paying for when we decided to give them our money.
Is anyone else getting the weird effect of the “Fighting Ignorance since 1973” part of the banner suddenly being centered?
ETA: Huh. I turned the ads back on and now they’ve been moved to the top and centered. Slight improvement, I suppose, although that also probably means they have no intention of taking them down.
Yes- and the ad is now above the banner. In response to the ads covering important links, perhaps?
As I said before, no. But I also don’t pay magazines to let me write their content for them, so it’s not exactly the same situation.
The ad (it’s been the same one all day) is at the very top of the page on this machine, and the fighting ignorance part is centered, which is indeed weird-looking.
Huh. The ad is now above the masthead. Yep, that makes things better. Or not. :mad:
I went over to my IE browser (I normally use Firefox) just to see what was up with the centering thing. I saw the “Fighting ignorance” bar centred, yeah – but no ads. Now, I haven’t done any mucking about with IE, none of the fixes as mentioned. But, on the list of blocked websites under options was zedo.com. That site loads up info each time an SDMB page is refreshed, via c7.zedo.com and occasionally c1.zedo.com. One thing that does annoy me is stuff like that loading up when I want to view a webpage, so I hunted about last night and found zedo’s opt-out option. Doesn’t seem to work at all with FF – but it may have loaded for IE.
So – has the SDMB formed up an arrangement with zedo.com for these ads?
Man, thanks for this. Worked most excellently. I’ll be able hang on now at least until April.
Hey, a Pit Thread about how screwed up this board is.
Is it Thursday already?
Agreed, but it does look promising. Mostly what I want is a completely free board where I can set up the keeper league operations, since a good chunk of the participants have let their accounts lapse. And if I could find good sports discussions – or bring them with me – then I’m pretty much all set. Half the sports fans I enjoyed conversing with have already left the boards anyway.
Since I timeshift network television by weeks at a time and wait for movies to hit cable a year after they open in theaters, I don’t really participate in the majority of threads I seek out around here. Any other reading I do here is through sheer boredom.
Slacker’s suggestion of Slackercentral.com also looks promising, though it disheartens me to see that they just recently contracted the sports forum into a general chatter forum. Plus, it looks pretty geek-oriented, and the ultra-geekiness of the SDMB already drives me up a wall.
Regardless of whether I stay here or move to slackercentral, wordforge, or somewhere else, at the very least the banner ads have helped remove the fog of inertia from me. I really don’t need to stay here to find decent conversation. Frankly, the last really good conversation I recall around here was long ago anyway; probably before the whole Duke Lax shitstorm.
I’m trying to think of reasons to stay here, and am having trouble. The topics I like to discuss are marginalized, and fighting the good fight about that has soured the whole thing for me. Plus I’m embarassed by my ridiculously high post count; it screams “LOSER!” loud and clear.
Before today I wouldn’t have given leaving here a second thought. Now it seems like a reasonable option.
I don’t buy magazines because I don’t feel the need to pay for the privilege of having shiny, smooth paper copies of print ads.
Most magazines today are so full of advertising that it far outweighs the actual content, and so I refuse to pay for them even at the ‘discount’ subscription price - let alone the ridiculous newsstand price.
Damn, you, **jsgoddess ** and **silenus ** are all seriously thinking about leaving, the sports threads are going to start looking a lot sparser. We already lost **PRR ** and probably BBS2k.
This would be a good time for a minor concession and opening a sports forum or sub-forum. We need some positive to help balance the big negative.
Is this a joke or do you really think this is the typical weekly board pit thread? I think this one is rather unusual as if you read through it, you will see even some of the mods are upset by this event.
Jim
I got about halfway through this thread before lunch, and walked over to the nearby pho place thinking about the situation. I’m not affected- yet- but I imagine that TPTB are doing their best to make sure that we all, eventually, see the ads. After all, they’re doing it for the money, right? Why should our choice in browser and plugins affect that potential revenue stream?
As mentioned before, WE are the content providers for the SDMB. We’re in the unique position of providing said content and yet having to pay for the privilege. And now they want to subject us to ads on top of that? Hell no, I say.
A boycott’s been mentioned- but as another poster pointed out, it’s like herding cats. Besides, there are many members who haven’t seen the ads yet, and haven’t read this thread- so a call to boycott will be problematical at best. Also, TPTB won’t necessarily notice a decline in posting- it’s hard to notice an absence, right? New guests won’t have a clue as to what’s going on, and will continue to post as they do already. End result? It’s easy for TPTB to ignore us. So what do we do?
Strike, that’s what.
Here’s my plan- every time you want to post a new thread, or respond to an old one, instead make a new thread with the title, “SDMB Members on Strike Until the Ads are Removed,” and in the body of the post, detail exactly what’s going on with the new banner ad situation, and that you’re unhappy about it.
Imagine what a forum full of those posts will look like. I can’t imagine TPTB will be able to easily ignore that when Tubadiva brings them a screenshot of it.
So, what do you guys think? Is this too much of a nuclear option?
On my urban planning message board, I created fantasy sports subforums (football, hockey and baseball) in response to user requests. They’re very popular, and also also serve to reinforce a strong sense of community.
I’m not a sports fanatic, but I can see the need for a sports-related subforum. I think that on the SDMB, the discussion on such a subforum would be on a level above the the usual armchair quarterbacking, trash talk and “Go dem der Bills der!” banter.
Anyhow, back on topic. I’m tempted to start an SDMB alternative, but I’m already spending enough time maintaining one Web site with a forum. If anyone needs advice on how to start and administer a vBulletin-based site, though, I’m here to help.