[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
(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”)
[/QUOTE]
Which columns would those be, exactly?
[QUOTE=Una Persson]
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.
[/QUOTE]
This is very true. I don’t have any of the four but time and the willingness to be responsible. That counts for a little, but not everything.
I’m one of those people who tends to get put in charge of projects, mostly because I don’t have the sense not to volunteer. 
If it would be possible to bring together the funds for, say, a 3-month experiment, I think it would be extremely interesting to see what shakes out.
I don’t know how much of the “brand” is in names and how much is in attitude, and there’s nothing more impossible to predict than attitude.
If a new site were run with transparency in the money numbers, I think the results could be quite different. When people know what things cost, when they are kept advised, when they are consulted and alerted and all that stuff, they are more likely to pull together than in a million different directions. That’s my platitude for the day.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
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.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not a Firefox user, but I believe that a free add-on is being strongly recommended to block Internet ads, especially flash ads. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/10.
IE7 does the blocking without an add-on, just an entry in the internet options. IE6 is hit or miss. Then there is hosts files entry that should stop it on any PC.
Jim
Not usually much for whinging, but…
Boo. Hiss.
I haven’t bothered to install ad blocking on this machine because my usual practice of not navigating to any place that sucks hard has been sufficient up to now. Ah well.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
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.
[/QUOTE]
It hasn’t happened to me, so why should anyone care? :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=drachillix]
A point for consideration, what do web advertisers hate more than anything else?
[/QUOTE]
Being raped in a dirty foreign basement?
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Being raped in a dirty foreign basement?
[/QUOTE]
No, no. We’re talking about web advertisers here. They love that kind of stuff.
What they hate more than anything is the sun. It burns them.
Based on what I’m seeing in the code, Creative Loafing is the culprit.
Ad-related elements on the Creative Loafing Charlotte page include the following domains:
http://servedby.advertising.com
http://uac.advertising.com
http://spe.atdmt.com
http://view.atdmt.com
http://tag.contextweb.com
http://m1.2mdn.net
http://adopt.specificclick.net
http://afe.specificclick.net
http://amch.questionmarket.com
http://c1.zedo.com
On the SDMB, they include:
http://media.chicagoreader.com
http://m1.2mdn.net
http://adopt.specificclick.net
http://afe.specificclick.net
http://c1.zedo.com
quantserve.com can also be found on both pages, but it’s not ad-related.
Except for media.chicagoreader.com, the ad-related domains can all be found when the main Creative Loafing Charlotte page is loaded.
I found that pages take MUCH longer to load with the Flash ads than just the plain Google ads. yes, I use Adblock, but I turned it of for a bit, and don’t like what I see.
EDIT: Oh good Lord … An Ambien ad with scrolling side effects and warnings?
Just a heads up to those who have reported E-Sabbath’s posts and others including Reader contact information because of the “call to action” rule. We do have such a rule, and I appreciate the reports but we’ll leave the posts as they are for now. The rule is really intended to prevent us getting the Board involved in outside political, legal, or other issues, and TPTB has let us know that the posts can stand in this case and that there should be more information about this issue soon to address your concerns.
Again, thanks for the reports.
Well maybe we need to get proactive then, do a little fundraising. No, not a bake sale or a car wash, maybe we need to sell some SDMB merchandise to offset some of the costs of keeping this place neat and tidy.
Five minute window …
Seriously, I have the feeling that management (Creative Loafing, not the SDMB) will never publicly respond to the concerns of SDMB members and staff, and that the ads are here to stay. The SDMB provides a LOT of page views that look good when the Creative Loafing sites are pitched by online marketers; not just in the markets where they publish freesheets, but throughout the rest of the US, not to mention Canada, the UK, Australia and so on.
Thanks to everyone who posted how to edit the hosts file, I’m now happily adding in advertising addresses to block, this will help me to achieve the ad-free nirvana I want
you hear that, Reader/Creative Spamming, you’re NOT getting through my gillnets, go frak yourselves!
oh, and to any companies advertising in these ads, you’ve quite effectively insured I will NEVER buy any of your products, your ads are having the opposite effect than desired
:::goes off to happily ad more advertising domains to be blocked by the Hosts file, hmm, wonder what the Google Ads address is, those need to be blocked too::::
now I can use my normal non-Firefox browser (no I’m not telling you what it is…) to surf ad-free, as a nice side benefit of editing the hosts file is that it blocks all advertising from the source, not just on the SDMB
Suck it, Reader!, Suck it new TPTB!
[QUOTE=elmwood]
Seriously, I have the feeling that management (Creative Loafing, not the SDMB) will never publicly respond to the concerns of SDMB members and staff, and that the ads are here to stay. The SDMB provides a LOT of page views that look good when the Creative Loafing sites are pitched by online marketers; not just in the markets where they publish freesheets, but throughout the rest of the US, not to mention Canada, the UK, Australia and so on.
[/QUOTE]
That’s what bugs me the most about the SDMB. You have a vibrant and interesting community going here on a server that is owned by people who have absolutely no idea what it is they own, and in fact are completely uninterested in the opinions of the people who make up this little community of ours.
I wonder if it would be possible to buy the SDMB from Loafing … You know, promise to keep the CoCC and CoSR forums as-is, but otherwise be able to run the site however we want. I envision some sort of co-op setup, where you can buy a share of ownership of the SDMB, and thus get a say in hardware and software decisions, but otherwise be no different than non-co-op members.
Sigh … it’s a nice dream, but I don’t see those jokers selling.
I though Macs didn’t show banner ads…
Either their system is broken, or someone is listening, because as of this minute, I’m not seeing any banner ads anywhere.
[QUOTE=Ponder Stibbons]
That’s what bugs me the most about the SDMB. You have a vibrant and interesting community going here on a server that is owned by people who have absolutely no idea what it is they own, and in fact are completely uninterested in the opinions of the people who make up this little community of ours.
I wonder if it would be possible to buy the SDMB from Loafing … You know, promise to keep the CoCC and CoSR forums as-is, but otherwise be able to run the site however we want. I envision some sort of co-op setup, where you can buy a share of ownership of the SDMB, and thus get a say in hardware and software decisions, but otherwise be no different than non-co-op members.
Sigh … it’s a nice dream, but I don’t see those jokers selling.
[/QUOTE]
I thought about us buying up the entire Straight Dope®, but…
At 70-some-odd-thousand members (let’s pretend for the moment that all members are active participants), to chip in and pay the columnist salary… dunno what the going rate is for being Cecil Adams and waging war against ignorance, but a blind fling of the dart says 70K annually (without benefits to keep the math simple), so we’re in for ~ a grand apiece per year to subsidize the column. Dang, that’s an expensive membership!
It would be cheaper to just subsidize the message board, but then it’s only negligibly about Cecil Adams’ The Straight Dope, right? (On the one hand we would not need to pay Creative Loafing et al anything in order to “be a community that uses a message board”; on the other hand, would be remain a sufficiently bound-together community without the column and CA to define and inspire us?
[QUOTE=AHunter3]
At 70-some-odd-thousand members … to chip in and pay … 70K annually … ~ a grand apiece per year
[/QUOTE]
The bellhop keeps 69.93 million dollars, right?.
[QUOTE=MacTech]
:::goes off to happily ad more advertising domains to be blocked by the Hosts file, hmm, wonder what the Google Ads address is, those need to be blocked too::::
[/QUOTE]
I am near to a computer illiterate, but when I added
http://googleads*
and
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/*
to my AdBlock Plus, the Google ads at the bottom of the page went away. I don’t know if that’s useful to you on another browser and/or on a Mac, but there you go. Good luck!
(This has actually inspired me to block advertising from other sites, as well. Brilliant move on the advertisers part, don’t you think? :rolleyes: )
[QUOTE=silenus]
Either their system is broken, or someone is listening, because as of this minute, I’m not seeing any banner ads anywhere.
[/QUOTE]
Yep, they seem to have been removed. (Hopefully.)
[QUOTE=silenus]
Either their system is broken, or someone is listening, because as of this minute, I’m not seeing any banner ads anywhere.
[/QUOTE]
I checked the source, it is no longer part of the page, so it is not a server error.
The code has actually been removed. (For Now)
Jim
