Well, it comes down to the same thing for practical purposes from the Doper/user’s POV, doesn’t it? The banner ads are slowing down this Board, and it was too slow already.
RAWR! They aren’t just banner ads, they are fucking obtrusive, pop-over fucking banner ads. They can GO TO HELL! The least that could be done, is to stipulate that the ads cannot be pop-over, annoying strobing flashing bullshit, or noisy!WE DO NOT WANT THAT CRAP HERE! We paid, to have a sanctuary from that bullshit. Listen up, new owners of the SDMB!
A point for consideration, what do web advertisers hate more than anything else?
I have a virtual private server for my Web site, which includes a forum. However, there are times when it struggles to keep up; if there’s 100 simultaneous visitors, and background processes are analyzing the previous day’s logs, and bots controlled by Russians are hitting the site with cross-site and SQL injection attacks every 30 seconds. A $60/month VPS might be fine for a new site, but ultimately youll have to go to dedicated hosting.
Costs? $200/month for a good dedicated server with full support. $160 for vBulletin, plus $35/year to renew the license with full support. More time and effort involved if you’re integrating a content management system (Subdreamer, vbDrupal, etc) into the vBulletin database; $100-$200 if it’s a proprietary VPS.
Income? Based on my experience, you’ll cover costs with Google Adsense, and make a small profit; nothing to live on, but still a good amount to reinvest into the site.
You talking about OpalCat and me? 
Wait-- pop-over? Does that mean they’re unblockable, or that they open up a new window? Because I didn’t have to change anything in Adblock to block them.
<My Blue Heaven> It’s a pop over, you eat it <My Blue Heaven>
The one I saw just before I posted expanded (and animated) and wouldn’t go back to banner size until I clicked close. It was on the same page, (ETA: At the top of the page) so I couldn’t close it using ctrl+alt+del. It was intrusive, and distasteful.
Why not? I know others could or would be able to do the same. The question is in terms of follow-through. I assert that less than 1 out of 1000 people here could successfully set up and run a board the size and traffic level of the SDMB for any extended time - otherwise all the people who have been griping about the SDMB’s “poor performance” for 7 years would have stepped up to the plate and done something about it. Here today we see scads of people talking about making a new SDMB, and yet I doubt most all of them could or would do it.
Some have the “fire”, but no money, time, or skill. Some have money, but no time, skill or fire. Me, I have money and skill, but time and fire are constrained (I work 60 hours a week and run my own board), and it would take no SDMB at all to push me into doing anything constructive. One must have all four in order to succeed, and that magic combination has not yet presented itself.
It would also need to keep its “hook” to maintain its identity as the Straight Dope. And that, as I said in a thread a short time ago, would be very hard to do without the Cecil connection. It might be a successful, thriving message board, but would it be the Straight Dope? I say no, but I also hope we never test that theory.
But all that aside - these ads are a minor thing. Irritating to many, and possibly a show-stopper for a few, but my guess is that 95% of people will install an add blocker or modify their hosts file, and within a week forget that there are banner ads at all. If the ad server starts playing “catch me if you can” then that of course changes everything, but I doubt they’re going to go through that effort.
This isn’t the death o’ the SDMB. It might be over many people’s tolerance level, and I respect that and them, honestly. But from a factual, practical standpoint, I assert that the 95% with working ad blockers will not notice any difference at all.
There is your explanation for my user name. One of the main characters Shampoo refers to boy type Ranma and girl type Ranma loving one and hating the other.
Perhaps, if the Chicago Reader is very lucky, the new revenue from the banner ads will balance the shortfall next year caused by thousands of members not resubbing.
But only if they’re very lucky.
I am less annoyed from most of the banner ads than I am from the one particular Ford one that PLAYS A VIDEO WHEN I ROLL OVER IT WITH MY MOUSE! Sound and everything.
i could really give a flying fuck less about banner ads, I bet ya’ll are gonna find it fairly infuriating on my behalf though that the last 3 pages I tried to load, ONLY the banner ad loaded, and I had to F5 refresh the page before I could actually see the forum.
I can’t imagine it will even be close - and a mass exodus would have a dominoe effect.
Oh wait. I FUCKING take it back. EVERY FUCKING TIME that damn, I dont even know, Scotch(?) ad loads I DONT SEE ANYTHING ELSE ON THE FUCKING PAGE. Now I’m pissed. Fix that shit immediately. fuck. I just had to refresh a thread 4 times to see it. goddamn.
Well, we handled the influx from the whole “If LOTR Had Been Written by Somone Else” business fairly well. If the board’s worth joining (and we’re worth having as members), then I don’t think it’d be an issue.
The threads there I’ve seen on it have been going on for a number of years (IIRC, I wasn’t able to find one discussing it to verify this.), at the very least, if they’re openly discussing this (and I’ll point out that they do move threads out of the “Secret Mod Forum” after a period of time, so members have an idea of the things that TPTB there are discussing), it seems unlikely they’d just do a “Suck it, bitch!” and spring them on the members like we’ve had here. IAC, I’ve started a thread there asking questions about some of the issues you’ve raised. If anyone thinks I’ve missed something, feel free to let me know and I’ll be happy to add it to the thread.
Well, one can always politely unsubscribe from a thread if they feel the discussion’s gotten too heated.
For me, this is pretty much the nail in the coffin. It seems clear that the Reader doesn’t give a shit about what we think (and I’d like to point out that there’s been a couple of Cecil’s columns which appear to have been cribbed whole-heartedly from GQ, with no reference as to that being where Cecil got his info from, so it looks like Ed’s started to “phone it in”), so why the fuck should I give them any more of my money and time? And Ed, Cecil, and the Reader can all go fuck themselves if they think I’ll be plunking down money for another Straight Dope book, I’m keeping all my dimes.
I’d like to add, that it is quite possible that the Chicago Reader has, on occasion, gotten ideas for articles from the content we generate. After all, everything we post here becomes intellectual property both from the poster and the Chicago Reader.
So we are paying not only to generate content for ourselves, but we are also paying to be a smorgasbord of original brainstorm idea’s for the Reader; and we pay to read Google ads.
I draw the line at having to pay for seeing (or having to block) intrusive, annoying banner ads, though.
I also feel the mods should take the lead in any upcoming move. I, for one, would be willing to double whatever the Reader is paying them (so, two coffee mugs instead of one) and as an added bonus throw in all the chocolate all Mods can eat in the time I made this post.
TubaDiva, nay, most mods, have complained to Jerry, and were told: “Yeah, but you are not my boss.”. And you know what? Jerry is right. The mods don’t have bosses, and they are free to do a Mozes, and lead us out of Egypt and into the Promised Land of another internetforum.
Let’s make some internet history !
What is your browser and Op sys? I have tested combinations of IE 6 & 7 on XP & Vista and can walked most people into blocking the ads on those combos. PM me if needed or search through this thread.
If you are Firefox, the blocking should be easier, but someone else will need to help you. I believe it is a minor free download.
Jim
It does seem to specifically be the Scotch ad. Early this morning, I couldn’t get any pages to load, because every page was loading the ad for Whosamawahtchit’s Scotch, and the rest of the page would be blank.
Firefox 2.0.something, Win XP, if anyone cares.