I just saw the notice from Jerry. Looks like it must be incompetence, and not a fondness for me, that is keeping the ads away.
Jerry, I’d be willing to wade through advertising to participate in a free site. That’s how it works. I’d expect a pay site to keep the advertising to a minimum. That is also how it works. Maybe you can blaze a new trail, defy convention, and be a raging success; but I doubt it.
Most sites do one or the other, and to try to cash in both ways is insulting, IMO. If the position is going to be “there has to be more advertising, or the board will close,” then fine. Close the board. If the SDMB is doing that poorly for cash, it’s time to stop laying a guilt trip on the members and admit that it’s the management that is doing a poor job.
I really don’t want to be numbered among the complainers, I almost always avoid those discussions, but this one is going to piss me off.
I didn’t have a history of posting on the dope before we went pay to play.
When I came along, I found a great messageboard. Simple layout, great people, intelligent discussion, no horrible avatars or huge .sig files or ads everywhere.
On the strength of that alone, I decided to pony up with the $15 a year to play here.
I’ve not complained during the major server outages.
I may have uttered a noise of complaint for the google ads, but they were inoffensive and soon I got used to them and got over them.
Banner ads for non-members? If that’s what TPTB think is necessary to bring in more revenue, okay.
Banner ads for paying members? Wait, what?
But Jerry’s post doesn’t indicate this turn of events is temporary. Jerry’s post says that there’s now banner ads for paying members. That seems pretty final from where I’m sitting.
So I will load adblocker into firefox, and see where it gets me. If WhyNot’s experience proves to be more widespread, then I honestly am thinking that will be it for me. I shan’t make big noise about “I’m leaving here and never returning!!!111!!!”. I think, like most others, I shall just let it slip into the aether.
Do you pay (above your normal internet costs) to look at the rest of the internet?
I put up with banner ads on news sites because I don’t pay to read them or post on their page.
I put up with banner ads on webcomics because I don’t pay to read them or post in their forums.
But to interact on the SDMB, one has to pay. The $15 we pay should be so there doesn’t have to be ad banners.
Even if the ads were more like the google ads at the bottom of the page, then I think most people wouldn’t be so offended. It’s the fact that the ads are large, brightly coloured and completely at odds with the presentation of the board that is the most offensive part of this (apart from the whole “we’re paying to be here” aspect).
But then you scroll down, and they’re gone :shrug:
The principle of having such banner ads may well be screwy on a pay-to-post site, but surely they are no true hardship to perusing threads and whatnot.
I’m not happy either, Jerry. If this is permanent, I’m not happy at all. I don’t bitch when the board goes down. I don’t bitch about the google ads. I don’t bitch about the mods. Especially since banner ads are sources of bad things. Malware and the lot.
This, I dislike. This could get me to decide not to re-up.
Banner ads increase the load time of pages. On a page with already screwy load times this could be a killer.
The website manager only has a certain amount of control over the content of these ads. So we end up, like Diosa was saying before, with flashing ads or noisy ads.
As has been pointed out, though - the ads are offensive primarily because we are all paying to post here. I don’t buy into the “the admins are rolling in our dough” argument that has been espoused by various elements in the past, but I’m really having a hard time believing that the board is that hard up that we need banner ads on top of google ads on top of subscriptions to post.
There was a cell phone ad that came down OVER what I was reading and starting TALKING REALLY LOUD until I clicked the little x and made it go back up. The noise scared me so bad I almost peed my pants. Is the Chicago Reader going to buy me a new couch?
I logged on a few minutes ago. Saw a neon red, yellow, green, and ugly monstrosity of a banner ad on the top of my page.
Silly 2p8, I thought, I need to log in. Well, I was logged in.
Thanks, Board Gods, for motivating me to re-activate Adblock Plus for Firefox.
(Problem with Adblock is that it can disable streaming video transparently without your knowledge, since Adblock doesn’t leave placeholders when it blocks ads.)
If the ads are here to stay, consider raising the rates or offering a more-than-14.95 option to use the Board without any ads whatsoever.
Add me to the ranks of Sierra Indigo and others…I, too, rarely, if ever, complain about the Board. But this is one of those times where I feel it’s necessary to protest.
I use Firefox, and I don’t see anything to click on at the “lower right”. Everything clickable is at the top. The stuff at the bottom is just generic Windows crap.
On the right side of the status bar right under the bottom scroll arrow, it says “Adblock” with a dashed line under it. It’s clickable. I didn’t have to do all of what jayjay said to get rid of the banners; I just installed Adblock + Filterset.G (link in my last post, both links in my sig) and they (and the Google ads, as a bonus) were gone.
If you don’t already have it, you can go here and download it. You should be able to right-click on the banner ad and pick “adblock” from the context menu. Then go down and replace everything after the server address with “*” to wildcard it, and you block the entire adserver.
