SDMB: From this point forward, all users without paid subscriptions will be subject to advertising.
Drunky: This is outrageous! Extortion! Emotional blackmail! Mental abuse!!
SDMB: So, I guess you won’t be visiting the boards anymore.
Drunky: Um, no… I’ll still read and post here, I just, you know, won’t pay. Take that, you evil extortionists!
SDMB: Umm, okay?
I just got this too and the last time I wasn’t able to post a comment .
I don’t object to ads. The site owners want to make money, and i have no problem with that. And it costs something to keep the bits running. My husband, a professional web developer, guesses it’s $40/month just to keep the site up.
This site does have much skeevier ads than most sites i visit. But I’ve never complained about that. What i an complaining about is pop-under ads, which are a lot more annoying than usual ads.
You’re allowed to post here for free – a membership isn’t manditory. I used to be a member back when you had to be one in order to use the search engine. After awhile I just said screw it, and gave it up. The owners of the board don’t require a paid membership, so I totally don’t feel guilty. As for the adblocker, my last computer was completely destroyed by spyware. (And no, it wasn’t from here). I’m not risking it happening to this one. You’re free to disagree.
And I’ve been on plenty of websites and message boards that run ads – and none of them have had the problems that this one has.
I don’t mind ads on any site. But ads shouldn’t cripple the browsing experience. If you want to have a mandatory 15 second advertisement a la YouTube, that’s okay. What people object to is, opening a link expecting to read something, then getting slammed with a pop-up ad, then getting slammed with another pop-up ad as you scroll down, then getting slammed with another ad that slows down your user experience.
“Dude, why not just pay up?”
Um, dude, why not let people enjoy their user experience and why not find ways to give users relevant advertising? Otherwise, find less obtrusive and annoying ads that can be plainly visible but don’t ruin the experience for users. Sorry, but I have better things to do with my time than to be annoyed with ads that prevent me from seeing content that I thought I was interested in reading in the first place.
Bottom line is this - I run adblock after three separate times having to clean malware I got from SD off my computer and each time SD’d reply was
It wasn’t us.
You sure it was us?
Well what do you want us to do about it?
You guys are very, very concerned about obtrusive ads and viruses. **Guin **had an entire computer destroyed by a virus from here.
The precise financial value to you of your tremendous and very real fears can in this instance be easily quantified; your concerns are worth less than about $15/yr.
Which is to say your fears are actually pretty trivial, no matter how much you talk them up. There’s something else going on here.
So you said before. But it was unconvincing the first time round and it’s no more convincing this time around. Firstly they are not handing out poison as such; they are handing out ads. There may be poison in the ads, in the same way a can of beans you bought from the store may contain salmonella, but that doesn’t mean the store is morally engaging in the equivalent of “handing out poison” except in an extremely hyperbolic sense.
Secondly, as you admit - nay insist - you know that poison can sometimes lurk in the extremely cheapass version of the product. You also know the seller offers you another very cheap way of getting what you want with no risk of poison. But you’re too cheap to take even that.
Against that background (and indeed even without that background) I am at a loss to see how a person providing a service you want needs to be “morally superior” in order to deserve some recompense.
Frankly I think it’s just an exercise in victim blaming. By kidding yourself the operator of this website is morally inferior because sometimes a virus slips through, you can convince yourself it’s moral to take all you can and give nothing.
Wrong, because I already block all ads on all sites for $0/yr (and have done so since long before I ever heard of this site). I do not need to purchase any additional protection from ads on this one particular site.
Would I consider paying more than $0 to block ads? Probably. Do I need to? Nope.
Uh, so you’re saying that $0/yr is worth more than $15/yr? Do you want to think about that some more?
No. You are free to think about your argument some more, though, because it made no sense whatsoever.
If a superior product is available for $0, and an inferior product is available for $15, opting for the superior product does not mean that the buyer thinks it has no value. The amount you actually pay for something in reality is merely a lower bound to the value you place on it.
If someone is already blocking ads everywhere for free, an insinuation that they are lying about their fear of malware from ads because they haven’t also paid $15 to block ads on one site in particular is invalid.
Since you’re blocking ads, what you should be comparing is a product worth $15 to the same product available for free. Which should you take?
For my money, the free one is worth more to me. Given that they’re identical it’s worth an extra $15.
They can do whatever they want with the site. I can use it or not use it. If i use it, i can use it subject to their skeevy ads, or i can use it with an ad blocker, or i can pay $15/year to use it without ads even without an ad blocker.
I do some of both, currently. I use an ad blocker on my home computer, and don’t when i access this site via my employer’s computer. I also use Tapatalk, which works well with this site. The site seems to have chosen not to send ads via Tapatalk.
$15/year seems steep, given the alternatives. I’m curious, do they refund that if you get banned? But i might decide to pay it someday. Not to avoid ads (i already do that) but to support the site. I’d be more likely to pay a one-time fee or a lower annual fee, or even a “donate here”. But perhaps this is the best fee, based on total user reaction. I don’t use any other fee-supported chat sites, so i don’t know the norms.
Anyway, i an not overly bothered by the ads. But i observe that they are unusually low-quality, obtrusive ads, and they may well have the effect of driving away users-who-aren’t-me. If I’d just stumbled upon this place (it was highly recommended by a friend) it might have driven away me. There are a variety of ad vendors, and most news sites seem to have a higher class of ads. Something the site owners should consider.
Let’s think about business models that provide me free services and then ask me for money.
NPR.
Free, generally quality radio programming year around. A few times a year they do a pretty annoying ad drive, but they spend the entire time apologizing. This year they’re doing a thing where they say, “if we raise x dollars quickly enough, we’ll cut the drive off early and get back to your programming faster because we know you guys hate this.” I don’t donate because I don’t listen to the radio very much, but I appreciate that they’re not jackasses about their donation drives.
My local art and natural museum.
There are big clear donation boxes in the front lobby. Little old docents watch you with silent disapproval if you don’t drop a buck or two in. If there’s a new exhibit, I pay.
My local park system.
Not technically free since I’m a taxpayer, but several of the very nicest parks in my area have honor boxes. Sometimes I pay, sometimes I don’t. I think most people pay at least some of the time.
The SDMB.
Engages in negative reinforcement by telling users that paying money will remove distasteful conditions that have been injected into the core experience. To be clear, I’m referring both to the advertisements and to the abusive attitudes of those members who treat non-payers like they’re consigning the Chicago Reader to a life of food stamps and subsidized housing.
Sorry, but I’m not rewarding the SDMB for engaging in behavior that would be unconscionable anywhere else. If the art museum let a dude from Geico follow me and sell me insurance around while I looked at paintings, being told, “well, 15 bucks a year means we’ll sic him on somebody else” would not make that okay.
Advertising on Web sites is not a big deal but, time and again, the Reader has chosen to pick some of the worst and most intrusive kinds. The most recent popunders showcase that.
Hmm, actually, i sort of do use a similar fee-supported service. I listen to a lot of NPR. They have high-quality, relatively unobtrusive ads. Of course, you can’t avoid those ads by paying the requested fee.
I pay NPR quite a bit more than $15/year. Of course, i am doing that not only to support my listening, but to support their existence, and their availability to people with less disposable income than i have.
The straight dope probably doesn’t have enough panache to swing that model, though.
I didn’t see Johnny’s post when i wrote that. But I’d like to mention that those fund-raisers are less annoying if you’ve donated. They still interfere with hearing the news, but the actual experience is less annoying.
In a world where titles, join date, and post count confer status…
I only have, what, 125 posts on here? I have, however, spent about 15 years lurking and just reading threads, and I finally decided that the sheer amount of entertainment I got from the Dope was worth far more than $15/year. Hell, I pay $144/year for Netflix, and I actually spend more time here than I do watching that.
I’ve lost great message boards due to lack of funding, and have no desire for that to happen to the Dope. At only $0.04/day, there is really no reason NOT to pay the fee if you are a regular visitor.
Hah! As do I. At it looks to me that some of the people bitching above spend even more time on the board than either you or I, based on their post counts.
Exactly.
I mean, I agree in principle that the SDMB shouldn’t source skeevy ads to generate revenue. It’s a problem, if nothing else, in terms of attracting new members (assuming, you know, we want those :P.) Honestly, it’s difficult to work up much concern as to whether it annoys people who spend enough time here that they should just be paying members already.
Sheesh, people. The membership here for a year costs less than a nice lunch. You obviously like participating. Just become members already!
Amen. The latest is a wheel to spin telling me I’ve won a prize worth $349 dollars. It pops up repeatedly making it nearly impossible to read a threads at times.
Past date Coke won’t give you a virus, just taste bad. Apparently the ads around here can (and have in the past) give viruses. Bad analogy.
For the analogy to work you’d have to have rubbed the free Coke in ebola or something first.