Because of a long standing and public policy to never, ever outsource anything to the membership except content creation. It has been proposed and explicitly declined ever since the beginning of this message board. It ain’t gonna happen, no matter how bad it gets.
The stoney silence of the powers that be, on the concerns of tablet owners, now virtually unable to use the board, really says everything, dontcha think?
Another legacy iPad user here - the site crashes so often since the recent addition of the docking ads it is now almost unusable.
Maybe what its says is that the actual people in power, the owners, might not be reading this thread(or this forum, or maybe even this message board).
Presumably this wasn’t Ed’s decision, but either way, you’d think they’d test it before making it live like real companies do.
Which suggests the actual people in power don’t give a shit about their users and are just money-grubbing fat cats.
What type of device are you using? I have the SDMB open on an iPad and an iPhone. I’m not logged in and the docking ads appear as thin strips across the bottom of the page on each device. I don’t hear audio (it’s supposed to be off by default) and the adjustments when I zoom are modest - in many cases the ad drops off the screen altogether. This is how it’s supposed to work. If there’s some type of device-specific problem we need to investigate. Thanks.
Same question as above - what device are you using? What is the size of the ad relative to the rest of the screen? On the Apple devices I have here the docking ad is very small relative to the rest of the screen but perhaps there are issues with other hardware. Pls advise.
Ed, thanks for responding, it’s good to see at least some concern from TPTB.
Most folks seem to be talking about legacy iPads; my specific device is the Blackberry Playbook (yes, it’s obsolete, but it has one of the most beautiful HD displays I’ve seen on any device of its kind, and is still very serviceable for most things I need). This device has a 7" screen.
I don’t think the dimensions of the docking ads is by itself the problem, but to answer your question, a 7"diagonal screen is about 9 cm high in the landscape mode in which its conventionally used for browsing; in this configuration, a typical docking ad that I’m looking at right now is about 1.5 cm high – although this particular one (some sort of spiel for birth control devices) has a photo that extends beyond the upper border by another 1-2 mm.
So, from that alone we have almost 17% of the screen area taken up by the docked ad. But it’s not the screen area alone that is the issue. Even more than that, it’s the fact that the ad stays stuck in one place while the content scrolls, which means that it’s so enormously distracting that it simply has to be made to disappear in order to able to comfortably read the contents of the site. It should be fairly obvious that any graphic element that either moves while the content is stationary, or stands still while the content scrolls, immediately attracts the eye in a very distracting way, and in this case, it’s an element that occupies nearly 17% of the screen.
Hence why I’m always poking at the “X” or the “minimize” icon, and usually missing it, and half the time unintentionally clicking through either to the docked ad or to another ad underneath it.
Incidentally, in terms of screen area, if I scroll down on any typical thread, I come across the row of ads that is splashed across between the first and the second thread response. When I did this just now with a docked ad in place, between the docked ad and this row of ads, guess how much of the actual site is visible at this point? Literally, three lines. Everything else is ads. Of course the row of ads can just be scrolled up and out of sight, but it just goes to show how ad-crazy this place has become.
One last thing, FWIW, which may be useful to other Playbook users but in any case makes an appropriately ironic point. I found that the site is indeed usable and indeed nice and fast if I turn off Flash and Javascript in the browser settings, wherein I see no ads at all. This is the way I have to use it if I feel like browsing the SDMB on my tablet now. Two problems with that. One, I’m not inclined to keep turning those features off just for the SDMB since they are needed for most other things. Two, the only way I can visit the site now is to turn off ALL the ads in this way, whereas before I was more or less putting up with them. This could not be helpful to your advertisers.
I’m using a Nexus 7 with about the size screen as Wolfpup. I have pretty much the exact same complaint. The ad takes up about 1/6th of the available screen space which is not fantastic but the biggest factor is that it steals my eyes away from the rest of the screen. I find it so distracting that I cannot comfortably pursue the site. The fact that it reloads itself on every page makes it that much worse.
I’m a pretty live and let live guy and I don’t think I’ve ever complained about anything regarding ads on the site or the way it is run but this is bad enough I thought I should make my displeasure known. I understand this is a business and you need the ad revenue but this move has made it so you will be getting no more of that revenue from me (a hopeless click bait junkie. If your ad revenue goes up then I am obviously just a lone voice in the wildernes but if it declines in the next month or two then this decision may be why.
Let me check with my tech guy and see how much flexibility we have in terms of showing ads to particular types of devices. I doubt that it’s as simple as unchecking the box for Blackberry but we’ll see.
You can appreciate that with the wide variety of devices out there it’s difficult to come up with an ad format that works equally well for everyone. It’s also tough walking the line between in-your-face-enough-to-get-noticed and totally obnoxious. Thanks for your patience while we try to tweak this.
Ed:
Always remember: Ad scum tracks IP addresses and delivers friendlier/safer ads to addresses associated with or in the region of the web site. This is been a major headache for people trying to monitor the type of ads that appear on their site.
So never, ever assume that what you see is what others see.
Incidentally, if any legacy iPad users are having problems, pls provide details. My iPad is old and I’m still running iOS 8, but the docking ad is small and loads fast. I note that I’m viewing the page in portrait mode, which to me is the logical way to do it; in landscape the ad takes up a bigger fraction of the screen.
The new ads cause my iPad browser to crash every few seconds. The obvious solution to this would be to remove the new ads.
I don’t see that I have anything to gain by providing more information than that.
I have an old iPad 1 running iOS 5.1 and Safari crashes constantly with these new ads, Chrome not so often but the ads are intrusive. I’ve discovered disabling Javascript for Safari under Settings fixes the crashing problem. Give it a try, it’s almost feels like I have a new iPad.
Before these new ads I actually didn’t mind the old ads even though most seem weirdly sensational. I’ve even been curious enough to click on a few but with these new ads and my Javascript disabled I’ll never see any ads. Seems like SD’s new strategy of carpet bombing us with ads is misguided.
My logical way of viewing the page is landscape mode so more of my screen space is chewed up with the new docking ads. I’m using an old iPad 1 and disabling Javascript fixes my problem. Of course I’m not viewing your ads now where I had been prior to these new ads but this fixes my problem and makes your website usable again.
Subscribing to this site will remove all ads? How does someone subscribe? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that option anywhere. Maybe you should promote that more instead of using docking ads.
Go to your User Control Panel (User CP link on the upper left area of the screen). Scroll down towards the bottom and click on Paid Subscriptions on the lower left. Follow the on-screen prompts from there. There’s a pull down menu where you can select a one or two year subscription. For an additional fee, paid subscribers can also select a custom title that will appear under your name from that same screen.
In addition to not being served ads, paid subscribers may also create posts in the Marketplace forum.
Thanks! I subscribed, re-enabled Javascript, and no ads! You guys should make the subscription option and the benefits a bit more obvious.
Ads, schmads, I shouldn’t have to bat away several ads before I can get on the boards, as I’m already a paying member.
You’ve answered your own question. The more obtrusive to us, the more revenue is being gathered.
Look, I’ve been involved with The Straight Dope since about 1988, a few years after the mass paperback edition of his first collection hit my local fave bookstore ( the much-lamented Coliseum Books on West 57th Street in NYC. )
I stood in the aisles, laughing loudly as I read. LOUDLY. Because I’d not read anything like this before. Ed Zotti’s columns were the perfect combination of hilarious wit, rigorous research and feckless disregard for formalities. ( there’s an old-school SDMB reference for yas ! 
).
I then bought it, devoured it reading in bed and laughing and giggling. Endorphins, they’re powerful medicine. I wound up owning all of the books.
Near as I could tell, Ed was married to Slug Signorino- so perfect was their united presentation of words and images in the cause of hilarity.
When I found the original AOL Message Board it was…1999. It had the same tone to it and was a tremendously welcomed find.
That was a hell of a long time ago, and Mr. Zotti’s newspaper column days are a tiny speck in the rear-view mirror. Man has bills to pay and kids to send to college and whatnot and we all get that.
Unfortunately, the problem with being a world-class know-it-all is that when very very intelligent creative people offer up solutions, they are rejected out of hand because, well… the recipient of said solutions knows it all already.
So we find ourselves here. 17 years after the AOL launch of The Straight Dope as an Internet presence. Having to pay with our sub-consciousness because nobody wants to pay to play. Truly pay to play. As is the case with the overwhelming number of web sites we all visit, we visit and endure ads of some type before viewing our content. While many are not interactive as this is, we all have our pleasures. Many of us don’t want to pay for our pleasures.
I am a Charter Member and maintain that by paying what I consider to be a pittance for the privilege. I’m not really interested in paying 10.00 a month for the honor of posting here. Fuck, I pay 9.99 for Amazon Prime and that’s a universe of indulgences.
We have to suck it up because nobody’s buying those old paperbacks and the income has to be generated somewhere.
I always log in when opening The Dope anyway.