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| MrMobodies:
--- Quote from: tooki on April 11, 2020, 07:48:02 pm --- I also wish I could put out a bounty on anyone who uses a lightbox (the thing where the page dims and a modal dialog appears) to ask me to sign up for your newsletter. I guarantee, using one of those to nag me before I've even had a chance to read the page is the way to get me to not even consider signing up, no matter what. --- End quote --- I always wondered what they were called, that's the thing that has been hurting my eyes. Some of them say "Sorry for the intrustion" about their cookies when they don't realize it maybe uncomfortable when they darken the rest of the page. I think of it as a bit like say 20 years ago, someone working with an old CRT screen and another person there adjusting the contrast and brightness controls going from one extreme to another thinking they're helping them see better. Someone told me that they switched off javascript years ago by default and now I am finding I have to do that a lot more often. Now with adverts, what I see some websites seem to be engaging in spammy behaviour and not just adverts alone. Rather than display adverts at the sides of the page where it scrolls with the rest of the page and so you see different ones I have seen websites display the same adverts on either sides of the page in a fixed position that flash and annoy/distract me, some appearing over the contents that either get in the way or expand the page making it jump. In other words interfering with the contents and my viewing of the page and they put the fixed videos that autoplay, so now it's easier without the aggravation by turning off the scripts as soon as I see a small dialogue with rest of the page darkening. I don't mind adverts but not shoved in my face over the contents like with any fixed element. To add to insult I am occasionally seeing, "Turn on Javascript for a better website experience" which is I turned it off in the first place. Dare click that bookmark killer to kill unwanted fixed elements and I have seen some sites as of recent engage in scroll jacking and I thought taking away my right click away was bad. |
| peter-h:
Disabling javascript makes most websites unusable, unfortunately. Blocking adverts is also a problem in the long run, for a forum which needs the money, as all do. A site like EEVblog can be hosted for under $100/month, but the admin costs a lot more. The owner may be running it as a hobby and draw no income (I have no idea who is involved) but unless he has the entire range of IT skills required for modern www development and server admin he has to pay anything up to $1000/day to outsiders. One site I am involved with (written in Ruby on Rails) would cost that sort of money for any enhancements. We did an appeal for donations which raised about 3k over a year which covers the actual costs but that's only because the site is solidly written originally. Anything developed or ported-to recently will need much more work. Mods normally have to be paid something, too. If you recruit them from a pool willing to work for free, you get all kinds of weird people. I have seen this happen on numerous forums. You get the "police recruitment problem" where you end up with people who are not particularly bright and enjoy beating others up. The result is that a lot of mods end up doing a Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now and trash the site, because all the good intelligent contributors got pi55ed off and left. It can happen over just a few months. |
| MarkMLl:
--- Quote from: peter-h on April 12, 2020, 10:40:15 am ---Blocking adverts is also a problem in the long run, for a forum which needs the money, as all do. --- End quote --- I for one am entirely happy with adverts. I'm not happy with adverts which demand the privilege of running code on my computer, and will send a list of my bureau rates to anybody who thinks they can stand the tab. MarkMLl |
| PlainName:
--- Quote ---Blocking adverts is also a problem in the long run, for a forum which needs the money, as all do. --- End quote --- That's debatable. Relying on adverts isn't a sustainable business model, and a business model is what a forum needs if it's going to grow and thrive. Someone running a hobby site but of the size of EEVBlog is akin to someone whacking together an Arduino doobrey using info from Instructables and then selling it in the thousands as a mature product. Or compare some bloke with 20 viewers on Youtube with the apparently hobby LTT channel which actually rivals serious broadcast TV. The problem with adverts is that they need to be shown to people. Just plonk them on your site and they probably won't piss off anyone but they won't be doing any good either, and sooner or later your advertisers are going to realise that. So you start pushing them in front of eyeballs so they do get seen, and some time later you have to prove to your advertisers that they are being seen. And maybe eventually your advertisers realise the adverts aren't actually cost effective, and there goes your single-source supply of goodness. There are other ways of funding hobbies. Perhaps most of them have drawbacks too, but that's life. If it was dead easy we'd all be running super-forums and too busy spending the proceeds to visit anyone elses efforts. |
| Ian.M:
Many of the users that block ads do so because they find *ALL* advertisements to be useless annoyances*. Even if you get them to turn off their ad-blockers, you wont get any clickthrough from them without tricking them. Any site with deceptive ads doesn't deserve any revenue they get from them. Customers that will click to buy anything shiny waved in front of them usually aren't technically savvy enough to (a) want, (b) install, and (c) maintain an ad-blocker. Therefore I question whether ad-blockers significantly impact the revenue stream of any reputable site. * The last time I bought anything due to an advertisement was back in the '80s, from an ad in a computer magazine. I have never bought anything from a TV or internet ad. OTOH I will occasionally impulse buy stuff that has been reviewed by a source I trust. |
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