Deceptive adbanners on B3D

Actually I'm using Firefox. That blocked popup was my first ever from B3D.

 

What's the difference between blocking ads and mentally ignoring them? The latter is more annoying...
If you were facing problems funding this site, there would be enough people willing to donate, including me. But I certainly wouldn't start clicking on ads.

I'm glad browsing forums is part of my work

 

You may already know this but there is this one annoying ad with a clown fish, Nemo?, out of water. When the ad first loads it yells out "Help me" in a muddled fashion. When I first heard this I thought it was a system alert, but I don't have any sound byte that comes close to it. Eventually I found out it was the ad since it had the words "help me" on it. Just to let ya know.

It's happened to me on a number of occasions.

 

That one got me twice, thought my computer was having "issues" before i noticed what it was..

 

I got a popup blocked message from firefox when I was browsing here yesterday.

 

Donations just seems rather out of place (for lack of better words) for what I have come to know as a really professional looking site (with intelligent individuals in the site's forums as well). I had visited this site (rather infrequently) when "Reverend" ran it and back then I have never viewed Beyond3D as anything more than a site with a hobbyist nature. Dave Baumann's news postings and his and his staff colleagues' contents (reviews/interviews) are also notceably different from back then - they all just read as being being professionally written (gosh, all the B3D staff aren't "professionals" at what they do here, are they? ). I have never been able to get rid of my own personal view of associating "donations" with anything negative when it comes to websites. Apologies if the following comes out the wrong way but if a site were to "depend" on donations to either survive or make money, then that site's owner would be ignoring something that may be more important than providing us with interesting and informative content.

Perhaps subsciptions may be an alternative. Or maybe have "payable content" (but only for certain selected content, which Dave Baumann would need to choose/determine carefully; certainly previews/reviews of the latest next gen hardware should not qualify as this site would lose a huge audience.

Of course, I would absolutely not mind if things stay the way they are!

 

Ghost,

The way i look at it is this: Dave is a guy just like me and most of the people here. He's a normal guy with his job, who happens to own this site. Personally, i would find it very difficult to keep this amazing site opened, keep the forums in an acceptable state, write LONG articles on new architectures coming out every so often, which involves a lot of testing too...
ALL FOR FREE!!
Personally, i would never even bother, and i think it's commendable that someone would do all this out of his own enthousiasm.
In the circumstances, if Dave ever had problems in keeping this site the way it is simply for lack of funding, it would just be a shame. It will never happen since hundreds of people around here would sign up right now to pay for the site, either through "donations" or through subscriptions, or anything to keep the site running.
I do understand that pride comes into the equation, but at the end of the day, losing the site would be a much bigger shame than that.
As long as he doesn't charge per-post, i'm happy!!

 

I hope Dave forgives me for being so poor.
My mum certainly wont give out money over the net and I don't have a job so I can't afford to pay.

I know it doesn't help, when I do get a job I hope someone will remind me to pay up because I would have no problem doing so.

 

Well obviously i don't think we should lose on the people who can't possibly pay. That's why donations seems to be a good idea. Subscriptions would be nice, but i wouldn't want non-subscribers to lose too many privileges.

I'm sure someone with some time could come up with a good system for this.

 

The system is okay as it is, it would just be nice if Dave could get the ad providers to use less non-intrusive ones here. But I don't know if that possibility is given.

 

He said he does, which is what we've been also saying in this thread. I never got one pop-up or all that crap you get from this site...
At one point a few months ago i did get sounds though, but it stopped shortly after.

 

Ads are on a montly basis, so the lower revenue spin ads are also often refreshed on a monthly basis. Its usually at the start of a month where incorrect codes can creep in.

 

Hiya, Rev. I think a new ID might not have been a bad idea, but the name, and the post history, on this id is just way too obvious.

 

And if it is you, Reverend, as I really suspect it is, you should think about why as a grown adult you chose to (badly) hide behind a new account on the forums you used to love. It appears to bring a snide level of underhandedness, dishonesty and two-facedness that this place really doesn't need.

 

Heh. I thought I'd seen the over-use of the world "altruistic" before.

 

Well, I'm amused.

 

Sorry, Dave & Co.
I saw a couple of crappy ads such as the one that spawned this thread (I was shocked too) and immediately sought out the culprit and have been blocking that firm for years now.
I don't think anyone is contesting the need for revenue generation of some sort, but in the case of ads, I think the argument is against having ads for utter shite on a respected site.

 

Sorry but I'm not "Reverend". Sounds like you guys know him well.

 

Oh? Huh. The timing of Rev's last post vs your first (March 8 vs March 9), the name (ghosts used to be someone, right?), the constant John Carmack references, the references to the B3D days of yore. Well, what a co-inky-dink.