Huh. I guess my workplace has fairly aggressive adblocking, because I don’t see any ads, even though we’re required to use…no, never mind. Why share why I think they’re not working? I guess I’ll have to wait until I get home later just how obnoxious they are.
Number seventy-eight or so with the usual: I never complain about admin stuff, I do a big :rolleyes: when people bitch about the mods, even the board slowness (I figure the board being down is the Intarweb’s way of telling me it just needs some space).
But if I’m paying for this place I don’t want banner ads. Nope nuh uh. I’ll install my AdBlock but if this persists I’ll just find a new place to waste time.
There are any number of newspapers which host free forums, Chicago Readier isn’t doing anything special in that regard, except charging for what other papers provide for free.
What sets this place apart is the members and the mods. The mods are members and they don’t get paid. This board is all about us members.
It’s all about content, content, content. WE provide the content. All Chicago Reader does is provide us with a shitty server.
I have no answer though. If someone could set up a decent message board and convince all the mods & members here to migrate that would be awsome but since no one’s done it, and we continue to pay to hang out here, the Chicago Reader is going to continue to test just how much we’re willing to put up with.
The ads are talking to people. Sound. This means I can’t trust this place at work anymore.
Son of a goat.
I’m not seeing them, knock on wood.
However, it simply confirms what I’ve always said; the Chicago Reader is a weasely, shitheaded, penny-ante operation. Fuck the Chicago Reader and it’s new overlords. Fuck them with a cactus.
ISTM that the 4 letters “SDMB” isn’t trademarked to them, so why can’t we just up sticks and create a new message board called that? Sure beats their malignant neglect.
Here’s a couple resources for concerned members:
mail@chicagoreader.com
webmaster@chicagoreader.com
I’m assuming these folks might have had something to do with it, as well.
National Advertising: The Ruxton Group
Phone 602-238-4800 | Fax 602-238-4805
Sure is fun waiting for the ad to finish downloading AFTER the rest of the page is already there (and it’s the same stupid ad for IE7 EVERY time).
So, Adblock or Adblock Plus, which should I get, any opinions?
CMC +fnord!
I think the banner ads give a jaunty touch of colour to the otherwise rather drab pages of the SDMB.
Whoa!, this is gross.
I have never, ever complained about the board before, this is the time to do so.
I can just scroll down and hide them, but its the principle of the thing, isn´t it? I give money to keep the place going on, I dont like to be annoyed by tacky ads everytime I open a page.
Banners must go, and if I get one of those awfull talking ones I´m going to get very, very pissed.
I`ll refrain from stronger language until it is confirmed whether this is temporaly or permanent.
Count me in with the IE6 with nothing special ad-blocker-wise who have no idea what you all are talking about.
But after seeing that screenshot, holy shit, that’s annoyingly ugly.
I’ve used Adblock for years and I like it. It does take some user interaction on a regular basis to get it to block what you want it to block, but I think it’s worth it for the control you have.
I recently got a new laptop and installed Adblock Plus. So far it’s done all the right blocking without me having to do anything at all, but I have no idea how much work it’s going to be when it gets something wrong and I want to unblock it. But so far, it’s great.
That’s an ugly screenshot. I had no idea what was going on until I saw this thread, though. But if these start getting past Adblock, I’ll have a serious problem. Until then, I’m not going to get too angry- there’s a quick and easy fix to it. And I installed Adblock Plus months ago, and I’ve only had to deal with it once since then.
I’d just like to give you a big old thank you. I never know what extensions to use because most of them are more trouble than they are worth but this one kicks ass.
Annoying but not terminal. As a gesture of goodwill, I had not blocked the google ads; they were unobtrusive enough and occasionally entertaining.
These got blocked right away. I don’t want to see banner ads on a board I pay for. If you need to generate additional revenue from your members, up the rate. Or give me an option to eliminate banners for an additional fee. You’d have less bitching if you did it with some advance notice, but doing it at all would be a good idea.
If this is indeed temporary, I’ll be happy. If it’s not intended to be temporary, then may I suggest that the admins point the decision-makers at this thread to give them some insight into what the paying customers think of the matter?
Thank you DiosaBellissima. I have no idea why, but they aren’t here. I’m on a computer in the lab at school, using IE6, and wasn’t logged in when I started looking, but they still weren’t there.
I don’t believe I could survive without Firefox and Adblock Plus. Once I got it, I noticed that surfing the dope, as well as other sites, was at least six times as easy.
Brendon Small
Adblock Plus. It has the built-in filter updater, so most of the known ad-serving domains will already be blocked and you get the most recent lists updated automatically. Thus, you can pretty much download Adblock Plus and never need to touch the actual AdBlock controls.
That said, I was running the Proxomitron (it’s a proxy program you run all code through first to strip the annoying stuff from the HTML before it reaches the browser) years before anything like AdBlock was available. So the way I made the Internet more bearable in the 1990s was those host lists and the Proxomitron. These days, not only do I still run the Proxomitron (I don’t bother with manually editing the hosts file anymore), but I also run AdBlock Plus, Flashblock, and NoScript and then use Fasterfox to make things render a bit faster.
I highly suggest downloading and using the Proxomitron. As I said, it rewrites HTML on the fly and disables most of the annoying coding “tricks” people use or used to use (e.g., no right-click, no back button, embedded sound, etc.) that the other programs generally don’t catch. It’s a little tiny program that just runs in the background and makes browsing the Internet much more pleasant.
Sorry to post again so quickly, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t too difficult to unblock. I don’t remember how, but it is pretty much a point and click tool. I think clicking the stop-sign in the toolbar will open the menu and then you can select to unblock certain items, or for a one-time use, unblock all ads for the time being and block them again right after (effectively, turn it off and back on). If you really have to, you could install another great extension, NukeEverything. This way, you could unblock the ads, then you could nuke the stuff you don’t want to print, then block the ads again.
I love Firefox.
Brendon Small
Here, let me add my config to the database–no ads, in either IE6 or IE7. None in FF with Flashblock and Adblock Plus, and none in Bon Echo (64 bit version of FF) with the same extensions. No ads when logged out, none when logged in. I don’t see Google ads either. Running x64.
Fuck ads. Y’all better get Flashblock too, for those noisemaking ads–Flashblock is the best!
So… nobody else had a problem with this? Because at work, the reason I let people make remarks to me in a rude and snarky tone is because they pay me for it. Here, evidently I pay other people to advertise to me and then roll their eyes at me about it, and that makes me very unhappy.
Add another voice to the choir of “Annoyed Cherubim”. I thought it would be good to “drive the riff-raff out” when they went pay-to-post. Now I think this is going to drive the regulars away too (not-so-good). If this is kept permanently, the Board has just emptied one more cartridge into it’s foot.
Seriously, the banners are not all that annoying (although I downloaded the AdBlocker for FF, and can’t get it to work). It’s not nearly as bad as an MSN page or as flashy as CNN or something. I like it simple–keeps me focused on the content. What bothers me is that if this was a calculated move, the underhanded sneakiness of it irks me. It’s the principle of the thing. . .
But in my mind, jdavis’ post is too vague to tell. I have to give it a few more days before I decide I really hate it. . .
Tripler
Rioting in the streets: “Hell no, banners must go!”