What's with all of these Adverts?

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I haven't seen a thread on this but I'm starting to get annoyed at these adverts that keep popping up. I mean fair enough you need the money to keep the site running but do you have to have those redirecting adverts? Just now I've been sent to a gambling website and a website showing a video advertising smirnoff ice....
Sorry if you think I'm being petty but it's a nuisance to keep having to find the page I was just on.

I would suggest you put a pop up blocker on your browser. Other folks can tell you how, more than myself.

Ah ok.

Last edited by gemstone123 on 23 Nov 2009, 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I believe she was referencing something slightly different, akin to AdBlocker for FireFox.


M.

Are there any options for WP to tell the advertisers what types of advetisements are acceptable? Like selecting categories of acceptable adds. I have to adjust my browser window size so I can avoid adds that are not safe for work or causing sensory issues. In my optinion, if an add isn't safe for work, it's probably not acceptable on an AS support site either.

Examples:

1. Half naked people selling weight loss scams.

2. Adds that flash and hurt my eyes.

3. More adds with 1/2 naked people.

I'm thinking about blocking them or something. Not just for the sensory aspects and redirections, but they've started to become really creepy, advertising an obscure product I'd been viewing a day or so before.

Yes, they really are very very unpleasant.

I feel much happier now that I've followed Tallyman's advice and installed Adblock Plus ( from Firefox ). It makes a huge difference to my experience of WP.

They were becoming an astonishingly powerful subliminal deterrent, literally putting me off reading or posting on WP, for a few months now, without my even realising it.

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I really thought that I had gone off WP itself, when in fact ( having installed Adblock-Plus and suddenly finding myself reading and posting an awful lot more again ), I now suspect it was the ads; they are so totally unpleasant.

It's weird, and actually slightly disturbing, to think how powerfully the ads may have been acting on me.

I think they made WP seem not only faintly and persistently revolting all the time, like a bad smell in a shop might make you leave, but also ruined/wrecked/destroyed the "safe space/club" atmosphere. WP wasn't "private" anymore.

They made this little planet look as if it had been taken over by real estate developers.

I am really glad that Adblock exists, and grateful to Tallyman for explaining how to install it, but I wonder how many other people ( without Adblock ) are being put off WP, without realising it's the ads which are putting them off.

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I know your a mod and might not have any control over it, but how about all the people who come here that dont know about a ad blocker? Does Alex really want to kill his website that he has worked hard for? I imagine this is good for losing members?

How do I get the Zwinkeys to go full nude?

Is there a plugin for Zwinkey porn?

Classmates Refused to help find my mother's classmates from Tukwilla Ala, and my own from Kaksakie in upstate New York.

Even when I offered $100 for the current address of a girl I knew before she left town and changed her name. I would love to show up at her door.

Was Stalkers.com taken?

I too object to the half nudes, they got the wrong half, and why do anything half way.

Most has always been here, but the recent full page and wait have knocked the Online Now count down by half.

I am the mod that gives out the little WP Supporter badges for folks that contribute to the site. I gave out maybe 4 in the last 6 months. I would say people that use this site is doing more towards killing this site than Alex is.

I am not sure how you think that Alex is supporting the site, roadracer?

Merle

Wow! Is it that infrequent? I thought I'd seen about half a dozen different people with banners in recent months, but didn't realise that they were "everybody". Unless some people are contributing without asking for a banner that is.

Maybe you/the mods could make a sticky here in this forum explaining the situation, explaining how to make donations, including one-off ones by Pay Pal Send Money to alex@wrongplanet.net, etc, and generally facilitating the process.

I didn't even used to notice the Support WP Awareness button at the top of the page, for instance, and even when I did I didn't investigate it because I thought it was going to be about publicising the site, ( by linking to it on blogs etc ), because of the word "awareness".

A sticky on here would be useful for people who want to donate but don't know how, or people who want to ask about the financial situation, etc. And it would also help to publicise/advertise the whole thing too, remind people that they can help maintain, even perhaps improve, the site, ( without having to be a mod and put in the astronomical number of hours that you for example put in ).

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Is there an ad blocker that work's with Apple's Safari browser?

edit: I found several that work with OS 10.5. My computer is old and slow, so I am stuck with OS 10.4. Any adblockers that work with that (and are easy to install?)

I think you missed my point, I am not simply complaining just because I dont like the ads without thinking about it. I was saying that his methods of trying to get the money to run the site, by putting up more ads, is what is going to kill the site, pushing away more members that could posibly donate money, but simply are not thinking about it, or dont know about the need.
I have a pretty good understanding of this, and have seen many forums and sites die that have used the same sort of methods to try to run it, and I have seen good methods that really work.
This is what I suggested in another thread

there are also many other methods, like getting donations from organizations or companies to support the site, etc
Simply putting up more ads is not going to solve the problem

I was a member of a particular site that started putting on more and more adverts. In the end I stopped visiting the site for exactly that reason. I had to click through (slow to load) adverts to get to every post. Some of which were very unsuitable for the site. I didn't want to see full page adverts for online casinos and other crap. In the end I gave up visiting; not been back there for nearly two years now. I was also less likely to open posts unless the subject line was very interesting because of the time lag and annoyance factor of waiting over a minute while a crappy advert downloaded first. I couldn't click through until the advert had finished loading and the 'continue' button appeared.

I think there is a turning point when the number and quality of adverts starts to impact negatively on a site and the number of visitors and causes a downturn of advertising revenue from the dwindling number of disgruntled visitors.

I know there are no easy solutions. I'd love to donate to WP but at the moment that isn't possible, I'm struggling to put food on the table. I think it may be a similar problem with a lot of Aspies. I'd imagine our average income is less than the average income of NT's in regular employment.

Since advertising seems to be the primary source of income for WP I think Alex needs to tread a fine line between not having enough adverts to fund the site and having too many which will force people away or induce them to use alternative browsers with Ad-blocking. The quality of the adverts can also have a negative impact on membership too. There has been a number of posts recently by people who have been offended by various adverts that imply that they aren't popular or have other problems. Such advertising is a bit too close to home for some sensitive aspies who have social problems anyway. The last thing they need is an advert emphasising their isolation and problems.

I was going to point that out and mention that without donations, he probably dosn't WANT more people using WP (and thus increasing hosting costs.)

Of course, if there were an option for donations in amounts less than $25/month there would probably be more people donating..

One of those little progress meter things might help, too.. like the thermometer-looking things that shows "we're this far along the way to having enough site supporters to not have to use obscene ads for revenue.." As it is, I think it's too abstract for most people to feel like their donations would do anything.