[QUOTE=twickster]
What I’m not getting is people getting their panties in a twist about the fact that we weren’t consulted as to whether we’d want ads or not. Why the hell would you expect to be consulted about this? They didn’t bother to ask because a) they knew what the answer would be (no thanks, we’d prefer not to have banner ads) and b) we don’t get a vote about how they run their business. Our only choice is whether to patronize that business or not.
[/QUOTE]
Yep, and that’s what some of us are discussing. Do we continue to patronize this business, now that they are collecting my money, as a membership fee, AND loading up with ads.
In addition, this business has changed the product provided, after I have already paid for it. I paid for membership to a board that does not have ads. First the Google ads were added, and now the banner ads. That’s not what I purchased.
Would you allow a car dealership to come slap some bumper stickers for their company on your car, 6 months after you bought it?
[QUOTE=Tastes of Chocolate]
Would you allow a car dealership to come slap some bumper stickers for their company on your car, 6 months after you bought it?
[/QUOTE]
You have confused buying the SDMB with buying a subscription to the SDMB.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Well, I just signed up over at Fathom. I’m not abandoning this place just yet, but I’ve got my life preserver on and a seat reserved in what looks to be a very nice lifeboat. In the meantime, I’ll lurk over there and post here, until the energy moves wherever it’s going to move. I can’t say for sure what will happen, but I feel better now that I’ve got a back-up plan. I know it sounds ridiculous to a lot of you, but this experience is very important to my mental health, and I don’t want to go spiraling back into my (diagnosed and clinical) depression and isolation if this place changes and doesn’t serve me any more.
[/QUOTE]
I signed up a couple of weeks ago, before this brewhaha. I do, however, feel like you do, that I need a backup plan. In the pit thread, I advocate starting anew, while we still have momentum and a large amount of posters.
[QUOTE=Muffin]
You have confused buying the SDMB with buying a subscription to the SDMB.
[/QUOTE]
Right. This is more akin to having a rental car. And pre-paying a one year lease in advance. And then a few months after that, when you come in for scheduled maintenance, the rental agency adjusts the radio so you can’t change the channel … or turn it off … or adjust the volume. Well, unless you get a third-party add-on that you install yourself to get past that, and hope the rental agency doesn’t notice.
I’m not infuriated by the banner ads but I do feel myself winding down. I hate having to check my sound before coming here or risk being blasted by a car commercial again. But really I’ve gotten scared to post outside of the pit. I feel like anything I say a moderator is going to come in and threaten to ban me. So yeah I’ll need a new place to go eventually. I don’t run up until june I think. Be sure to let me know who is having the after party.
[QUOTE=Muffin]
You have confused buying the SDMB with buying a subscription to the SDMB.
[/QUOTE]
Ok, if you bought a membership to a health club, would you object when they started making you watch commercials for local restaurants before you were allowed to enter the locker room?
[QUOTE=Tastes of Chocolate]
Ok, if you bought a membership to a health club, would you object when they started making you watch commercials for local restaurants before you were allowed to enter the locker room?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah!!! And what if you bought expensive satellite television service and they started making you watch com—
Oh, wait.
When I surf at work (oops!) I see how much I’m missing (?). I feel your pain. I don’t intend to join the exodus just yet. This is still the best (most dynamic, generally intelligent, non-leetspeek/-avatar/-image-posting) forum that I know of.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
I have to agree with the o.p. The banner ads at the bottom were not worth the venom flung at them and even provided some degree of levity at times, but these flashing, screaming, noise-making ads below the header are as intolerable as Courtney Love at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and if they don’t cease forthwith I’m inclined to place my energies and interests in some less obnoxious forum, or at least one that doesn’t follow its mantra of “Fighting ignorance since 1973” with adverts for Lyndon LaRouche and “Top Supermodel Searches”.
Stranger
[/QUOTE]
Stranger. If forthwith doesn’t happen and you decide to place your energies and comments on another board-let us know! I plan to stay with SD, but will certainly join any site that you find worthy of participating in. Please, your comments are consistently the best we have and I will do what I can to keep up.
http://www.metafilter.com is not quite a message board, but the quality of posts are sometimes on a par with this place.
I’m going to let my subscription to the SDMB die next month. The ads are only the straw that broke the camel’s back – I’ve been meaning to leave for awhile. Among other things, this place is simply too much of a distraction for me. I may still read it every once in awhile, but I think my posting days are through.
While I think Fathom, Unaboard, Skip’s Magic Board, and so on are nice message boards, they just seem like … well, like they’re extensions of the owner’s personal site.
The SDMB has a touch of Cecil, but he’s not the focus of the site; rather, the community and its members are. It’s not “Cecil Adams’ Forum” or “Ed Zotti’s Magnificent Message Board.” Same thing with other successful message boards; it’s “Something Awful”, not “Lowtax’s Message Board.”
Message boards need owners and leaders, of course, and their personality is going to be reflected in its design and overall vibe. Still, the SDMB spinoffs … well, they feel like they’re too much about Opal, Una and Skip, and that the community is secondary. I get the feeling like such boards are more of a hobby than a semi-permanent fixture.
[QUOTE=Peak Banana]
There does seem to be a lot of people here desperately wanting to be outraged, and also lacking basic internet skills. Not only that, but lacking an interest to learn those skills, which seems to me to fly in the face of the site’s motto. Even after having been told one zillion times how to go about blocking the ads, they choose to rather keep seeing them and remain outraged.
[/QUOTE]
No shit.
I was mildly pissed when the ads started, but lo and behold my ignorance of certain things computer was fought. I used the Internet Options Security/blocked sites option on one machine and the HOST method on another. Now I don’t get the ads, but…BUT!!
I also LEARNED how to apply these techniques to other sites. I LEARNED something.
Fuck me running, that was worth the total of one ad I saw before I put measures in effect to stop them.
My main, and continuing gripe (that I’ve all but quit even griping about), is saddling this poor old marginally functioning board down with the burden of running the ads. That just doesn’t seem right, like hitching an extra plow to a 40 year old sway-backed mule.
Maybe the ad revenue will be used to buy a state-of-the-art super server, but I’m not betting the farm on it.