As a paying member, of course, I say: “What ads?” But the above concern certainly seems like a valid one. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot here?
As I understand it there’s no “quality” involved, there’s no attempt at all to vet ads by any of the ad companies. They don’t even bother to check who is sending the ads, much less what’s in them.
For FUCK sake…
I am now getting side bar AND bottom of the page ads at the same time, WTF!!!
i cannot even read a post until i change screen zoom and disable side ad…
Knock it the fuck off…seriously1 The pop ups on the bottom are not enough???
Yes, ads at the bottom and top do not bother me, but today I am getting ads on the right side of the screen that completely block my ability to read lines of posts that extend more than three fourths of the way across the screen–and these ads apparently cannot be smallened or eliminated. Not a good look, as they say.
For what it is worth, this is completely new as of today and I am using Chrome on a PC.
Thanks for listening.
I’ve stopped looking at this site during the day (from my phone). Despite my phone being on mute some of the ads hijack the secondary sound (music, videos, etc) channel & play the ads at full volume, sometimes even after I’ve played Wack-a-Mole on the “X”. There’s one easy button for volume/vibrate/mute. Having to regularly dive 4 menus deep to turn off sound just for this site is not acceptable. Also, when I increase the magnification enough to be able to read the text, the ad covers ½ the screen, sometimes more; & sometimes when I shrink it back down there is no magic “X”, which means a reload & more wasted time just getting to the site.
I’m a long-time & valuable poster here (meaning I sometimes start threads, I sometimes answer other’s questions seriously & sometimes humorously & I don’t like to dabble in GD or Elections so I don’t have lots of enemies; IOW, generally a ‘good’ contributor) & I’m quickly reaching the breaking point, as it appears other are, too.
If I were a noobie, I wouldn’t return…ever, which means there won’t be noobs to backfill those who leave.
Ed, if TPTB don’t want this site anymore, then kill it off now, but please don’t slowly smother it to death. It’s too good of a community to have that type of ending.
One of the advertisers whose ads is doing this is Zale’s, the jewelry company. I intend to contact them directly and complain and tell them I may contact an attorney as well as my Internet service (both for my desktop computer and my Smartphone). They are defeating the ads’ purpose by making the ads intrusive like that. :mad:
So far, however, I have merely complained about the ads’ intrusiveness. I am sure push will come to shove, however, and will take the more drastic measures in time.
Moderator Note
I understand that you are frustrated, but be careful about how far you go down this path. Our policy here is that if you threaten any kind of legal action against the SDMB, we instantly ban you and forward everything to the legal department.
Your statement here is just barely vague enough that I don’t have to do that, but you are right up to the line.
You can bitch about the ads all you want, but don’t threaten legal action.
Dancing around what ECG just said, I can understand calling up someone that bought ad space and telling them why you’re not going to spend money with them any more…but how does your IP fit into that?
That, to me, is like calling your cable provider because you don’t like the 4 inch bar at the bottom of your TV showing ads for something while your trying to watch a show. It’s annoying and intrusive (especially if it has some audio), but all they do is pass along the data (more or less). You can move to any IP you want and this website is still going to serve up the same ads.
But, as has been said many times, ABP will knock down the great majority of these ads.
dougie_monty will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought he was talking about Zale’s, not the SDMB, as the subject of any legal action. (Not that it will do any good - the purpose of an ad is to make you notice the company name, which is what it did.) And “your ad is interfering with my attempt to read a free website” is not something a company is going to care about.
But add my name to the list of those grousing about the side bar ads. When I need to log in, they cover up the “Remember Me” option and hijack me away from the password input box. Once I log in, it’s all good, but I don’t know how non-[del]Special Snowflake[/del] Charter Members stand it.
Regards,
Shodan
I recently installed AdBlock solely to eliminate the intrusive SD ads that were blocking content/navigation at or near the bottom of pages.
Since then I’ve been treated to occasional whiny appeals and/or revenge blocking by a few websites that want to preserve their revenue from annoying ads.
I mention this only to relate that if the Dope decides to block access to people using AdBlock, I am out of here.
A)I don’t think that matters. On that off chance that it would actually come to fruition, the SDMB would still be part of the suit. Based on that, they’d be right in banning him, IIRC, that is part of the TOS here. It’s a free website, why would they want someone here that’s costing them money?
B)A company may respond to 'your ad is interfering with my attempt to read a free website therefore I won’t buy any of your products anymore", especially if you have some leverage, such as following it up with cancelling your Zales credit card that you still regularly use.
Maybe I’m missing something.
SDMB is a business. They need revenue. Sure, somebody *could *elect to run this as a charity. I have no idea what that would cost.
I pay for a membership. At the price management chose to set. I don’t see ads. Zero, zip, nada. No fancy adblock required.
Seeing ads is the price of not paying for membership directly. Instead you get to pay for it indirectly.
The choice is pretty straightforward.
As I said in an earlier post, if the ads are so poorly done technologically that they interfere with site usability, carry malware, etc., that’s a separate issue that TPTB will ignore at their extreme peril. One hopes they’re listening.
As an aside, tapatalk is free and is a much better way to Dope on a phone or tablet than is trying to use a browser directly on the site. That way lies extreme frustration even before ads get involved.
Writing off the cuff, so don’t think this is definitive, but I believe the original thing was involving the SDMB in any way with legal matters.
As I said, If push comes to shove…
Yes, I understood that.
The point is that if there is a threat of legal action that may involve the owners of the Straight Dope, we at the moderation level have no choice in the matter at all. We are under orders to ban the user and forward everything to the legal department. No exceptions.
If dougie_monty had actually threatened the SDMB with legal action, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He would have been insta-banned.
You have to be very careful discussing potential legal action on the SDMB because this is something that we have no leeway with whatsoever. Moderators are not trained in how to respond to legal issues and we aren’t even employees of the company (we’re volunteers). We have to do as we are instructed with legal issues and we’re not allowed to do anything else. Ban and forward. That’s it.
Like I said, feel free to bitch about the ads as much as you want. Ed’s been alerted to this thread and while he doesn’t post very often in ATMB, he does read most of what goes on here anyway. Just don’t threaten legal action, against the SDMB or anyone else. If you threaten to sue one of our advertisers, that has potential legal implications for the SDMB. If we have to get the legal folks involved, you’re going to be banned until the legal folks say otherwise.
dougie_monty, I mean this will the utmost sincerity: Please read engineer_comp_geek’s last post very carefully.
Is this a threat of action against the SDMB?
Doubling down on this one?
I **AM ** talking about Zale’s. This is NO reflection on the SDMB or the Teeming Millions!