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What is this crud?

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3.5K views 27 replies 21 participants last post by  TedW  
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I posted a few minutes ago and had one word with a double underline. I edited and it changed to regular text. I was looking at another thread and, for curiosity, clicked on a double underlined word. I got a #$%^& advertisement! What is this noise?
 
#2 ·
I feel your pain. I am so sick of ads, not just here but the entire internet. You can barely click on anything without some ad playing. I go though opting out of every possible ad choice I can find and they are still there. I guess since pop up blockers worked so well, people are coming up with new methods of getting their ad seen.
It is out of control.
 
#7 ·
I suspect that them that own this site are doing whatever they can to maximize revenue so they can sell it at a higher profit. It ain't about the woodworking community; it's a pump and dump operation. Nyuk nyuk
 
#8 ·
I want to register my thanks to Lumberjocks for providing a great community where I get inspiration and learn knowledge about woodworking EVERY DAY FOR FREE. I've interacted many times with friendly, helpful, creative, knowledgeable people. I've gained great knowledge here and I've done my best to share my own. I don't understand why these threads keep coming up. For the person talking about a constant bombardment of ads, I'm completely honest when I say I have no idea what you're talking about. If you don't like the ads, ignore them. I've never done a single thing on this website that was made more difficult because of ads. I've never been prevented of doing a single thing because of ads. Are you just angry that ads exist? Ad revenue is their business model, as it is for countless thousands and hundreds of thousands of other websites. Lumberjocks is a business. How could it exist as a non-profit? Seriously, tell me specifically how it could exist without ad revenue as a business model. The only other way possible is a subscription model, and I can't even stand to think about the belly-aching over that. Or do you think you just deserve all this content, and that all the real human beings responsible for creating and running this site who have bills to pay and families to take care of and lives to live should sacrifice to cut you a deal? This site exists because of the work of coders, designers, moderators, servers and all the rest who do thankless work and get endless grief from threads like these.
Have you researched a tool or technique on Lumberjocks? Have you read a product review? Have you been inspired by a project on Lumberjocks? Have you asked for information and received thoughtful answers? Then be grateful for that and quit complaining about problems that don't exist. Anyone who believes that the priceless knowledge and fellowship shared on Lumberjocks is diminished because of the ads that allow it to exist is delusional. I will not respond further to this thread or read any responses or speak to anyone about it.
 
#9 ·
Very eloquently stated Furnitude. I take it, then, that you are fine with the words in your posts being changed by ad contractors hired by the site owners into links to ads. And that these ads will be seen by non-member viewers who will assume they were placed there by you to help you sell non-woodworking items for your personal profit. When in fact it is the site owners who are making the profits by modifying the content you posted. Doesn't seem ethical to me, but what do I know.
 
#12 · (Edited by Moderator)
I would imagine with the amount of visitors to LJ the board is probably hosted on a VPS or dedicated server and both can be expensive.

My wife has so many business clients that she also host and websites she maintains that she has her own dedicated servers and owns her own hosting company. It cost her several 100 bucks a month for her servers not to mention the upkeep and support for them. I've seen her servers bills go well over 1K a month. She doesn't allow any ads on any of her client sites, nor her hosting company because her clients pay her to host them without ads.

Her servers are located in a top US datacenter in Chicago with colocation servers in Atlanta, LA, and Dallas.

The more visitors to a website the more bandwidth and ram it uses and to keep a high traffic site online like LJ it can get expensive.

According to the info for LJ that is public LJ is hosted with http://webnx.com/
They look to be a hosting company for high volume websites not the average website on a shared hosting server like I'm sure most of you have.

My free plans site takes an average of 1500 unique hits a day and is hosted on a reseller hosting account I own which is shared hosting.

I don't pay any attention to the ads on LJ because I understand it can be expensive to maintain and support. One thing that will make me haul butt is a popup ad on a site. I leave those never to return.

I'm sure with the amount of site visitors, blogs, pictures, etc it cost a good bit of money to maintain and manage LJ.
 
#16 ·
Like most of the others, I have been getting annoyed with the excessive ads. I can see both sides of the argument. I understand the need for funds. I also understand that when someone's personal words are stolen for the sole purpose of revenue generating ads it becomes an ethical situation. A new visitor or someone doing research through google could find a posting and see ads in the posting itself and be lead to believe that the author of the post is promoting whatever the ad is showing. I think when one writes anything, he or she is the author and owner of those words and ultimately responsible for his or her own words.

Another reason the ads highlighted in our words continued to become a greater annoyance to me is that fact that I must utilize a "zig" and a "zag" with my mouse cursor. Because if I were to accidentally go over one of those words even for a fraction of a second, I would get a pop up and the pop up does not go away, it forces me to close it manually so that I can continue reading the thread.

So, reluctantly I decided to try the adblockerplus that is mentioned on here. And it does work, at least so far. I will now have to see how this new blocker affects the rest of my internet surfing and if it is going to be a good long term solution.
 
#17 ·
Just something else on my mind. I understand LJ as a business, needs to generate funds and all. The ads generate funds and keeps the world turning so that is all good.

But why was the previous owners able to run this site for such a long time successfully without ever having the need to steal words from members to have extra places for ads, the previous owners never needed to go to this extreme with the ads to keep things running smooth. It is hard to believe that the cost of running the site has just doubled or tripled in the last year since these new owners took over. It is more likely that the new owners simply want more money and are willing to be more extreme with their ad sales, even to the point of placing ads in our "words".
 
#18 · (Edited by Moderator)
Sad to say but the internet has become one huge ad campaign and with no control over the internet it's probably going to get worse.

The ads we're seeing on LJ are becoming more and more prevalent on websites especially the highly popular sites.

To me they're one of the most disrespectful things you can do to the viewers visiting a site especially like LJ where it has a huge following and responsive membership. (disrespectful to us as members).

These ads totally destroy a site for script readers, readers that have to enlarge the site to be able to read it. We have a young girl that is a script reader that works for us and it's considered a handicap. She looked at LJ for me this morning and her remarks were..what a mess!

She ask my wife to shop for her in a few sites because of these flipping ads and how they effect her. She has to scroll a site sometimes to 200% to be able to read it and when she does these ads totally consume her monitor.

I wonder how many people, and script readers, LJ runs off because of these flipping ads in our faces and do the owners even care.

Then again. some websites are here for only one thing in owner's minds…to generate revenue and nothing more.
 
#19 ·
This morning I do not see any of these on anything I have read and I do not use the thing to block ads. Personally I don't want these additions in anything that I post because I may not be a supporter of that product. If I wanted to plug a product then I would do it, I don't want someone else promoting their product under my name giving others the idea that I use or support that product.
MIKE
 
#21 ·
Mike,

You no longer see the links when you are logged in. They are still visible to "guests" who are not logged in.

I am very pleased to announce that the double unlined Kontera links will now only be shown to guests.

They will no longer be displayed for members who are signed in to the community.

Thank you for your patience while they worked out a balance for us.

- Cricket
 
#22 ·
Mike,

You no longer see the links when you are logged in. They are still visible to "guests" who are not logged in.

I am very pleased to announce that the double unlined Kontera links will now only be shown to guests.

They will no longer be displayed for members who are signed in to the community.

Thank you for your patience while they worked out a balance for us.

- Cricket

- ChuckV
 
#24 ·
I think that LJ is going through a time where it is trying to figure out the business side of this and keep providing a good website. It will take a balance just like any other business. I am pleased that they were able to do away with the double underline ads for members.

I am somewhat surprised at some of the posts who seem to think that LJ should provide a free site with no ads or no inconvenience. There is nothing that is free on the web. Someone somewhere is paying for it. Would you be willing to pay a yearly fee to never see any ads. That is how some sites work. It is either one way or the other as bills need to be paid.

And just to upset any of you…..stop complaining so much. Every time there is any change in the site, there are a bunch of people who complain about everything. It is a free website…..what more do you want.
 
#26 ·
I have only been on here for a few weeks but have looked at this site many times and have never had an ad pop up while here! I am using either an iPad or a chrome book so perhaps that is why? Anyway, it has been a really good experience for me so far! I learn lots from everyone on here so hate to hear that some are leaving!!!!