My house is STUFFED with iPod nanos!

I seem to win several every minute...  I thought they were just horrible, disgusting ads that made me unable to listen to music while I browse this music forum, but yesterday, they all showed up at once!

NOW what am I going to do!?  There's no room for me to walk anymore!  I've tried making good use of them.  As a food source, they do not make a good stew.  They were initially effective as a doorstop, but now there are so many that my doors have no room to open!  I've replaced my tables and chairs with stacks of iPods (not very ergonomic I'm afraid), but the slightest move causes them all to come crashing down.  They're piling up by the minute, and I fear I'll be unable to breathe due to their crushing weight against my lungs. 

In all seriousness, this is stupid.  There should be standards, for godssake!  Don't get me wrong, I'm not against advertisement.  A banner at the top of a page here, some google ads there, this is fine.  But POP-UP ADS, AUDIO ADS, and FULL-PAGE ADS need to go.  And I don't want to hear anything about ad-blockers.  The vast quantity of ads suggests that this site needs the ad revenue to be self-sufficient.  By blocking the ads, we're cutting the revenue down, and therefore, the number (and ferocity!) of the ads must increase to hit the population that does not use ad-blockers.  This isn't theory; it's gotten worse over time as more people are learning about how to block these ads to compensate for this action.

The only reasonable solution would require both the site administrator -and- its members to act.  From M@X, we need a promise and a follow-through that spyware, pop-ups, audio ads, full-page interstitials, and other offensively disruptive advertisement be removed in favor of tasteful, non-intrusive ads possibly better-targeted towards the forum readers.  From the forum members, once the above happens:  turn off your ad-blocker.  Perhaps this compromise can allow the site to be ad-sustained WITHOUT the majority of our forum members getting raped with an advertisement assault that a seedy porn site could only dream of launching upon its viewers. 

When you see some of the forum's most active and loyal members advocating a "solution" that would deprive the site of its revenue (and make the problem worse for most), you know there's a problem.

Truth be told, I rarely come here anymore because I can't stand having my song interrupted with myriad proclamations of "free iPod" scam ads, among others (and I use Firefox!).  Looking at how slow the forums are compared to a year ago, I can't imagine that I'm the only one who feels this way.

Your thoughts?

(Edit:  Got another "two free iPod nanos" the moment I posted this.  For f**k's sake!)


Edited by Man Overboard - November 26 2007 at 01:26

I get a full page ad once when I first go to the forums.

Christ, glad to see you all know how to read.    It's not about seeing ads or not.  I know perfectly well how to not see ads. 

You're right, the site -does- need to generate money.  Really intelligent of you, to block them.  So clever.  Because more and more of you are blocking the ads, they're getting worse and more garish to compensate.  The IDEA is that we scale the ads back so that -only- harmless, non-intrusive ones occur, and then there's no need to block them and the site stays up.


Edited by Man Overboard - November 26 2007 at 03:16

king of Siam wrote: Man Overboard wrote: Christ, glad to see you all know how to read.   Then don't complain about it.

What the hell is wrong with you?

king of Siam wrote: Man Overboard wrote: king of Siam wrote: Man Overboard wrote: Christ, glad to see you all know how to read.   Then don't complain about it. What the hell is wrong with you? Sorry it's close to finals. Even without Adblock, I never got the iPod ads, but I do get some spyware from this site. I don't know if other ad companies use the same techniques, but I'm pretty sure they do. If the owners feel that this is the only way to power the site, then everyone is going to have to deal with it.

I wrote a long and lengthy intro post, and I was hoping that someone would actually read it before giving the standard response to "ads suck".  I'm a longtime net vet, I even used Lynx, I know how to create a temporary fix.  As I posted up top, there is a cause/effect relation going on.  The ads are awful -because- people are blocking them, so the people not blocking are getting raped.  If they could scale the ads back decently, with ZERO spyware and such, but no one blocked them, the same revenue stream could be achieved.  THAT is the point of my post. 

Why did no one read this?