Not commercials, no. That’s only become widespread in the past five years or so.
The ads themselves won’t drive me away – I’ve been blocking ads for years, and I just found a mostly effective fix for work – but if enough people leave, I’d probably go too. I truly think that the new owners are trying to eliminate the board though.
I’m not planning on leaving because of the ads. I guess I have a fairly tight focus on the content I’m interested in when I look at web pages. This morning, the first thread I looked at was the Pit thread about the ads, and I had to scroll back up to see the ad there. I had missed it when I opened the thread. I frequent some other sites which are absolutely festooned with ads, and I have gotten reasonably adept at tuning them out while at the same time missing them with my cursor. For sites like SDMB, which I visit daily, my eyes go right to what I want to see, avoiding the visual noise around it.
I agree with many here that the attitude toward the customers of whoever is behind the scenes here is annoying or worse, as personified by the pathetic tuba player. I guess I’ve tuned that out too, for the most part.
Pretty much what WhyNot said.
I won’t leave because of the ads, but I will leave if the fallout from having the ads significantly changes the character of the Dope.
Me to.
No, I don’t reckon I’ll leave directly over this, I’ve got it under control for me personally:
$ sudo pico hosts
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 media.chicagoreader.com
127.0.0.1 a1444.g.akamai.net
127.0.0.1 burstnet.com
127.0.0.1 clk.atdmt.com
^ O
^ X
… but if enough of the interesting participating members leave in droves, what will be here for me to participate in? A dead board would certainly cause me to quit coming.
Ditch 'em, please.
I wouldn’t leave because the ads bother me…it takes half a second to scroll past them, and I hardly notice they’re there.
I wouldn’t leave over the principle that there shouldn’t be ads on a pay-to-post board. I don’t think one necessarily precludes the other, and excessive advertising is part of life these days.
I wouldn’t leave because the administration of this board tends to be annoying in the extreme, and treat the members basically like dirt when it comes to this kind of thing (if I was going to leave over that, I would have left already). I just ignore them as best I can.
I WOULD leave if I find the quality of the actual conversation lessens considerably. That remains to be seen.
I’m another member who won’t leave just because of the ads, but will probably leave if so many other people leave that traffic & quality noticeably suffer.
I’m actually a little bit thankful for this turn of events. It finally motivated me to get off my butt and install Firefox w/ Adblock and I’m more pleased than I thought I would be. I’m really digging the spellcheck as I’m typing this, too!
As long as they don’t make noise, I don’t notice them. I really don’t care and they don’t bother me. I buy comic books with ads in them, I pay Launchcast which has incrediably intrusive ads. It doesn’t surprise me.
If the ads stay then I’ll leave.
I would like to point out that there has been a large clarification and apology on the last part.
Hopefully this will focus our combined anger or discontent where it belongs. At the unknown “New” decision makers.
Jim
With so many occupied with the threads concerning the banner ads just look at how desolate the boards are today. This is what it’s going to be like?
Fuck…
I would never leave over a banner ad. But the following would have me flee the premesis:
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Pop-over ads, especially animated ones
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Animated avatars
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Animated signatures
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Signatures that stretch over a page long including countdowns and photographs of your ugly children
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Embedded sound
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Spam
Banner ads are nothing.
I don’t think I’ll do much from work any more. I have zero control over my computer so I get all the damn ads. At home I took care of it, but I don’t want stuff flashing at me and making noise. I don’t read many other boards because of the crap they have on them. I can’t stand the moving avatars or big assed ads. I too will be one of the ones that will see what happens when my subscription is up.
I’m actually glad to see so many saying that they will stay. I love this place. It’s been my main internet hangout since I found it. I recommended it to all my friends and most joined at some stage and then left because of P2P. At least one is still here and a popular and regular poster.
I guess it’s just my personality that’s driving this. I feel a bit like Peter Finch in Network.
Hopefully this will work itself out but I just can’t bring myself to give them more money while feeling like they are just fucking me at every opportunity.
I’m paid up till March.
I’ve been concerned about the board for a while now and this just reinforces that concern.
I’m scouting for a new place and may have found one. If I have, I’ll leave.
I will miss a lot of you, though.
I know that Goodbye Cruel World! threads can feel dumb, but if people do leave, give everyone a heads up so that those of us who want to [del]stalk you[/del] say goodbye can do so.
I completely respect people’s right to get upset over the principle of the thing. Maybe I’m just not as principled, I don’t know. But for me:
So far the ads are not an issue because people have posted about six ways to turn them off, and I’ve turned them off.
If a time comes when I must deal with them, if I find them too obnoxious, I’ll leave; if I can live with them, I’ll stay.
But am I stomping off over the fact they’ve been introduced? No.
Wow. I didn’t think there was one ad/commercial/etc-related area where Sweden was “ahead” of you guys, but we’ve had those at every screening for at least twenty years.
I never really took much notice till I saw the pit thread about them. They’re a bit meh, I guess my principles aren’t that hard core really.
If enough people left that it wasn’t fun and informative to post or just browse here I’d leave, but not before 
Ack! don’t go yet, let’s see what happens. This time the mods and admins seem to be as upset as we are.