Banner ads are the last straw for a lot of us. Where are we going to go to maintain the community we have established here? Any sites we can all move to? I’d hate to lose all of you, but right now, my ire towards the Reader is Great. If we have a viable alternative, fuck 'em, let’s move.
The problem is that the most viable alternatives are full of people who have been banned from the SDMB, some many times.
Fathom?
Oops.
When go leave pie.
I just don’t have that great an ire towards the Reader that I’d cash in my chips, pull up stakes and go elsewhere. Guess I’ll be one of those waving goodbye at the dock.
I didn’t notice the banner ads until just now. Thanks a lot. Now I’m irritated by them, too. :rolleyes:
They wouldn’t be so bad if they were static, but the animated ones are fucking obnoxious
I’m not seeing them. I think I see the blank space where they would be, but I’m not seeing them.
Oh, wait…fuck me! Now I see them.
I shouldn’t have mentioned it.
Just wait 'till you get one with sound. :rolleyes:
I’m curious, too. While I could probably stand it if AdBlock really blocked them all, as it turns out, it doesn’t. I’ve had to add four different things to block just this evening, and still some banner ads flash on briefly before being blocked. It’s still making things load, if possible, even slower than before.
And, despite that, it still wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me, except that I think it will be for a lot of interesting people I like a whole lot. So I want to know where everyone’s going so I can tag along.
It’s sort of like Darwin in action, y’know? When they chase out everyone except those who like big flashy animations, then it won’t be the board I like anymore, 'cause I like the people who don’t like big flashy animations. I’m sure the SDMB will be around in some form as long as someone keeps writing the check to host the domain. But if it turns to flashy animations and the dreaded avatars and graphic signatures, then it won’t be *my *SDMB.
Doesn’t **SkipMagic **have a board somewhere? How much traffic can it handle? I understand it’s kind of slow now, but if we all went there and increased the posts there, it might be worth it.
The banner ads aren’t enough to make me leave but if or when I do, I’ll just read livejournal more often. It’s where most of my online friendships are, anyway.
Cool. Banner ads for a country I don’t live in, for products that are illegal to import anyways (2008 Mitsu Lancer, to be specific–doesn’t meet the Canadian immobiliser regs).
I guess you never watch television or read magazines.
Here’s a revelation: they have ads, too.
I find it helps if you use the asterisk wildcard along part of the URL, to capture the root of the ad link concerned. I do similar with an online newspaper I read.
Hm, I’d never seen the banners or the Ads by Google until just now. I had to open a window in IE before I could see them. The only extensions I have in Firefox that deal with ads are Adblock Plus 0.7.5.3 and Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.1.2 and I never see any ads.
There’s Fathom, Skip’s Magic Board, and The Upside Down Message Board. There are some others as well, but I don’t remember them off the top of my head.
This is in response to Whynot’s post, BTW.
Yeah, they don’t yell at me unexpectedly while I have an infant snoozing in my lap listening to a lullaby playing on my computer.
I don’t see banner ads.
Seriously.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
No banner ads. Nada.
Edit: Adblock Plus running too. Get it. You’ll like it.
The SDMB is one of the most populous boards on the internet, and despite having pretty much all of the functionality turned off is still slow running. So ultimately the options are advertisements or higher membership costs. Either way the number of members will shrink, but with advertisements you have the chance to capitalise on non-members. So essentially, there is no path by which any site which could support the SDMB or its facsimile without advertising, short of some rich person doing it out of the kindness of his heart.
(I’ll admit to the possibility of setting up a donation system like the Wikipedia has–and indeed, if I was the Reader I might talk to the Wikipedia to see if there was any way to team up.)
Probably it should be pointed out that banners for members is still somewhat up-in-the-air, depending on whether you believe TubaDiva or jdavis.