Adblock Plus betraying its users with so-called Acceptable Ads

[DaemonFC]

Kontera ads are not even displayed as long as you've been logged into the forums recently... It's automatically turned off if you have the Phoronix Forums user cookie set.

What's the problem with seeing Microsoft ads? No one is forcing you to click it and I don't believe I have ever seen an intrusive Microsoft ad, yet they pay a fair amount of money compared to some of the other companies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYIqoXfPx6o

Yeah. I think that sums up my objection to Microsoft skyscraper flash ads. Those insipid bandwidth suckers also chew up bandwidth allotment, which must be fun for people on metered connections like some cable companies like to do.

[Michael]

@Micheael its a stupid idea to fight against poor people with no money and slow Internet and slow pcs with a ad-blocker. so please stop this. this is just anti-social. .

Phoronix isn't a charity.

[darkbasic]

Are there Microsoft ads on this site? OMG

Please fix premium instead of wasting your time with stupid anti-adblock scripts: your users aren't stupid and know very well how to use greasemonkey or privoxy.
Ridiculously there is still no way to support this site without having to be tracked by stupid ads.

[crazycheese]

Phoronix isn't a charity.

Im actually proud (no sarcasm) it is not. Love Phoronix.
I use noscript + adblock combo to prevent js-based spyware and intrusive ads over the internet, because when you surf for fun, no one knows that you could encounter.
As mentioned before Phoronix is long whitelisted.

I guess I should think about donating to Palant, that "non-intrusive ad" idea is really not very bright. A soap that does not clean "acceptable dirt"... Its far better the owner himself what clothes are better to clean and what not.

[mcirsta]

There's a donate button somewhere , I even managed to donate once. It's only for the brave ones that manage to find it though :P

I've said this before, how hard is it to have a decent sized donate button , on the top frame , maybe at the end of each article: "did you like this : donate".

We don't all need/want Phoronix premium nor do I need/want to see the adds but I am prepared to make a donation from time to time.

[Michael]

sure but tell me why not?

Because I have expenses too.... I don't work up to 100 hours per week for the hell of it.

[NoEffex]

It's because ad-blocking is inherently immoral. If someone is providing a free service that tons of people use that require some sort of income then ads provide that income (i.e. enough to pay off the server costs). Donations do not cut it and are generally never enough. Very simply ads that aren't intrusive i.e. a top ad and a side ad like on the site I am a part of (Linked for ad proof) I don't think are wrong and I don't think people should typically be blocking them because they're using our site / services for free and we cannot provide those without any income. Even then, ads aren't really enough.

If you wish to see a lack of free sites or anything providing free content by all means block every ad. In this economy nobody donates.

That said, ads such as popups or intrusive ads that get in the middle of your content isn't so innocent and by all means feel free to block it.

[maartenlameris]

Because I have expenses too.... I don't work up to 100 hours per week for the hell of it.

There is nothing wrong with making a living and the fact you can actually pay to get rid of the ad's is really nice!

Since I found the ad's really annoying I paid for a full year to get all the contend without the distraction, however since 95% of my visits are to the front-page only and my interests are not really in the forums I still got stuck with ad's on a site I paid for....

In the end I actually installed ad-block-plus because I was so annoyed by the ad's on phoronix.....

In other words please spend some time on the premium part, I think it will make you more money and keeps a base of dedicated users happy!

[AnonymousCoward]

It's because ad-blocking is inherently immoral.

And expecting your users to accept everything you throw at them in the name of "you're not paying me" isn't? Well, your later qualification of "blocking annoying ads is ok" invalidates your statement anyway.

[NoEffex]

And expecting your users to accept everything you throw at them in the name of "you're not paying me" isn't? Well, your later qualification of "blocking annoying ads is ok" invalidates your statement anyway.

Wait, what? I said blocking ads that get in the way is significantly more reasonable than blocking ads that go in otherwise unused space.

I don't exactly understand what you're trying to get at, however. Judging from your tone it doesn't sound like you've ever had to run a site that has hundreds of thousands of members without any other form of income.

Also, most ads are loaded asynchronously via javascript so no it doesn't slow down the web page as it doesn't have to load the ads to load the page (and in fact it loads the page before it then loads the ad).