Ads

[bayswater]

I've been running an ad-blocker for years-- however, I had always white-listed MN and clicked the SW banner for support. Still, not seeing any ads here.

(I've not found an ad-blocker that works for YouTube, yet.)

I assume you’re talking about the Mac. I don’t see the ads there either. In fact, right now, on ipad os 15, I’m not seeing the right now either. They seem to come and go.

Today's the first for me on my iPad — current iPadOS.

Very odd. Right now, it's happening for the first time on macOS. And it's not happening on the latest iPadOS.

[dix]

I just saw that James is in the hospital with an emergency appendectomy! I'm guessing he'll chime in and let us know what the deal is with the ads when he's better. For now I'm just going to ignore them, rather than bother to troubleshoot.

Feel better soon James!

[bayswater]

I just saw that James is in the hospital with an emergency appendectomy! I'm guessing he'll chime in and let us know what the deal is with the ads when he's better. For now I'm just going to ignore them, rather than bother to troubleshoot.

Feel better soon James!

Yes, as I said above, I’ll just put up with it until he gets to it. We can only hope he’s not paying any attention to us.

[stubbsonic]

Holy moly!! Take care and feel better soon, James!!! We're thinking about you.

[dix]

Dang. These were gone for a bit, but now they're back for me. Maybe they're here to stay.

[mikehalloran]

Last night, the Google ad loader—whatever it’s called—locked my Mac and I couldn’t do anything till I force-quit Chrome. I couldn’t even take a screen shot of the error screen.

Minor annoyance since, on restart, Chrome was able to re-open all my windows but still…

[monkey man]

Haven't seen a single one yet (Safari on High Sierra).

Maybe it's 'cause of my VPN?

[Killahurts]

They take up about 1/5 of the bottom of my window. Because the ads are always stark white, and the forum is dark/black, it is difficult for me to read any posts anymore, especially if they are long. If it's something like Fernando's new studio pics, forget it.. like trying to look at details on Mercury while ignoring the Sun..

[James Steele]

Yeah... well it is an inconvenience having to go to a free forum with valuable information and not have the experience be perfect... I mean, 'cmon, right?

It's so funny what are expectations are these days, you know?

I figured out what's going on with the ads. As you know, Sweetwater decided not to renew their largely unobtrusive banner ad, so I decided maybe I'd turn on the Google Ads thing again and I let it use it's own algorithm to determine where it placed the ads. I never saw them because I'm using Brave as my default browser. I launched Safari today to check (prompted in part by a private message by someone who likes the board and all the useful information it has, but wants all the useful information conveniently, and free, and oh yes, do something about the colors please) what was going on and saw the ads myself.

So I toggled it off and maybe it will go off in an hour or so. Far be it from me to try to recoup some of the expense. Nope... needs to be free. No ads. And it better look nice too.

[dix]

I don't get the impression from this thread that anyone is too upset, James. It's just that many of us thought is was a hack, and not something you implemented. I know I did. If you're the one reaping the pittance, and not some rando bot hack scam, I can deal np. The ads bug me way less now just knowing you're okay with them....several avoidance strategies are already mentioned above if they start bothering me.

[stubbsonic]

I'd cheerfully pay a subscription, patreon, or just via a donate button (with the occasional reminding post). At the very least I could whitelist the site with my adblock. In short, I try not to take this forum for granted.

[James Steele]

I don't get the impression from this thread that anyone is too upset, James. It's just that many of us thought is was a hack, and not something you implemented. I know I did. If you're the one reaping the pittance, and not some rando bot hack scam, I can deal np. The ads bug me way less now just knowing you're okay with them....several avoidance strategies are already mentioned above if they start bothering me.

No hack. In fact, if you looked, when the ad popped up it had the usual small triangle type links that your usual Google Adsense type ads always have. That said, I had forgotten I'd enabled Google to do it's own AI test of ads and agree that the ones that pop up from the bottom are annoying, especially because they needed to be dismissed each page load. So I've toggled them off. Google said it make an hour for that to take effect.

I have another business the pays for this site. I use it myself but had not seen the ads in the Brave browser like I said. Once I feel a bit better from my emergency appendectomy surgery, I'll get on the other big annoyance to people and that's the white text on black background... which was called "insane" by one very infrequent user of this site.

It's no wonder there are so few independent sites like this on the net. And as for donations... this ties into the REASON I stop taking them DECADES ago. (I used to have a $1 donation button at bottom of page many, MANY years ago.) I stopped donations because that RAISED expectations. If people have complaints about a free site, God help you if you take money. The site is FREE so that I can always say "Hey... it's FREE. What do you want?" So I can have a life and not spend too much time on this.

I've said it a millions times... when people have made complaints, I've directed them to phpBB.com and told them the software is free and they're welcome to create and maintain their OWN forum if they can do it better. I've had ZERO takers. That's because, of course, their time is more valuable than mine. However, there are alternatives now. There are Facebook Groups. Facebook finally made it *easy enough* for people whose time was valuable. So there's always that, except Zuckerberg owns all the content... but I digress....

I'll get around to having a black text on white background when I'm feeling better...

[bayswater]

I'd cheerfully pay a subscription, patreon, or just via a donate button (with the occasional reminding post). At the very least I could whitelist the site with my adblock. In short, I try not to take this forum for granted.

Same here James. I don’t expect you to incur the expense of running the site. But the ads appeared without warning, and I think a lot of us wondered if they were a hack. All this complicated because it happened at the same time as your trip to the hospital They might be just like other Google ads as you say, but I haven’t seen any like this before.

[mikehalloran]

I have no problem with ads — whatever helps you maintain this site is a good thing.

The block in the upper part of the page for years was not intrusive—if it had a round-robin of various ads, that would be fine.

That banner that creeps from below gets in the way of the page content and that's my only problem with it. Even when it locked my screen, force-quitting and restarting Chrome was easy and all my open windows came back to life in a few seconds.

[bayswater]

I can turn off the ads in Safari on the Mac with Adblock Plus, but that sort of defeats James' purpose. Ad blocking on the iPad doesn't seem to do anything.