Popup Advertising in Forum Threads

[WJT]

Well, this is the end of PhotoNET for me. The Forums, especially the

<i>Pentax 67 Forum</i> for me, were the last bastion of quality

photographic communication that this site offered. They are now being

corrupted by these greedy little Intellitext popups that offer

absolutely <b>no new knowledge</b> to the reader but, rather, only an

annoying offer to sell you something. <p>

I truly enjoyed reading and responding to members posts in the

<i>Pentax 67 Forum</i>. I tried to offer help to as many members that

I could up to the level of my ability. And I enjoyed doing that. It is

with all the simple things in life that one enjoys; eventually,

someone will come along and take it away. I will not post in this

forum anymore, not that anyone would miss that. But I certainly will. <p>

Steve, can't you <b>please</b> do something about this? Perhaps this

should have been moved to the Feedback Forum. Regards.

[joachim_inkmann1]

Walter, I agree with every word. I have decided likewise for myself.

[thomas_janik]

Walter, Joachim:

 

Are you using a popup blocker? I have used various popup blockers and have no problem (you can download them from Google or Yahoo for free). Your comments on this forum are appreciated and I'm sure I speak for everyone.

[tony_cunningham]

Agree with above - Steve do you think we could find another less commecial home for this excellent forum?

[pmac]

<p>It's hard not to notice that two of the four above respondents have made no financial contribution to PN. How do you think they pay for all this stuff?</p><br><p>"Agree with above - Steve do you think we could find another less commecial home for this excellent forum?"</p><br>Tony why don't YOU try providing another less commecial home for this excellent forum?

[steve_rasmussen]

This subject has been addressed quite a bit on the Feedback Forum. See

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CaD4

 

This forum came from LUSENET, another Phil Greenspun site, becsuse Phil wanted to move all the photo related forums to Photo.net. LUSENET was turning into a "free for all" and I thought it was a good idea as well. But the ads started on Photo.net and the powers that be, would not stop them. I do not have the power to transfer this forum unilaterally to another repository. With help, we may be able to transfer it back to LUSENET. LUSENET was supposed to be dissolved shortly after our transfer but that never happened. I don't know why. I will investigate a transfer back to LUSENET if we get a consensus from our members here and upper admin Okay.

[dave_cheng1]

I use Netscape all the time for all my web applications including viewing photo.net. I don't remember ever did anything and I never got

any popups, none! I have IE on my computer. I ocassionaly use it and

I can run IE and Netscape at the same time. I often open half a dozen Netscape windows. I do not get any popups. I noticed that there is a popup blocker manual at the top. Be default it is enabled. It showed 913 popups blocked. Try it. Don't let them take away the fun from reading and posting on photo.net.

[nikos peri]

Two words: Fire and Fox. All you're left with are the marginally annoying (and outlandishly irrelevant) keywords at the begining of the thread.

[tony_cunningham]

> It's hard not to notice that two of the four above respondents have made no financial contribution to PN. How do you think they pay for all this stuff?

 

I am one of those. I tried to pay a couple of years ago, but they would not accept my money because I was not US based.

 

> Tony why don't YOU try providing another less commecial home for this excellent forum?

 

It had crossed my mind that I might make a server available at some stage if this forum needed to move, but I did not want to tread on Steve's toes. Also many forum members might like the facilities on offer here. A move back to LUSENET might be a good option.

[steve_rasmussen]

I looked into going back to LUSENET and found that it is not an option. There are technical problems with the site and Phil suggests moving the remaining forums to an advertisement based site. I don't see that we have much choice, except to remain here.

[WJT]

Thanks, Steve, for at least investigating the options. Perhaps I am atypical in this, but when something annoys me (such as the incessant mindless hawking in a popup) I relegate that vendor to a black-list of "Those Whom I Will Never Buy From". But I suppose that is really not the issue here. Regards.

[steve_rasmussen]

Walter, I am not a big fan of unregulated capitalism, which is what I believe pop-ups are all about. There is a dark side to capitalism, an ugly side, one that has caused problems not only on this site with people leaving, but in the US in general.

[WJT]

Amen to that, Steve. Regards.

[dr_smith]

Ok, let me say up front that I haven't contributed to photo.net. Why? I run my own site for presenting my work, and I don't really need to pay for a second site to do the same, nice though it may be. In the end, it's a matter of economics. The discussions could just as easily be done on usenet - the original, free, discussion technology. Did I mention, usenet was an always has been free? Not only that, the technology for organizing a discussion, what has or hasn't been read before, is far better on usenet than any website ever has been.

 

Anyway. As for advertising, I've seen photo.net going downhill for a while on this subject. In recent months it has gotten to be much worse. I do hope the owners of these sites will take a lesson from the many observations here and elsewhere that intrusive advertising drives away visitors. At some point, the population of users will diminish to where the cost of bandwidth and hardware is more than adequately covered by the advertisers. From that point forward, the site will only flounder in its popularity, never really growing the userbase as the ads become self-limiting. Those whom are annoyed by the ads will flee to some other less-intrusive site. usefilm.com? mpix.com forums? pbase.net? usenet, even?

 

I hope someone who makes the decisions will be listening to this thread. It's a shame to see such a great community-oriented site be pushed to the wayside by greed. After all, if it really is a lack of money, did anyone do a fund-raising drive with the members of the site before all this advertising started?

 

Ok - I'm done... it's starting to look like a book and I'm preaching to the choir.

[WJT]

Well Doc, it looks like you have been here a couple of years, don't do much rating in the Gallery, have only one photograph posted, and have responded in the Forums just a few times. So with that kind of minimal involvement on this site I would certainly agree with you that you should not have to subscribe. But you are not the typical case.<p>

There are people here who have hundreds of photographs posted, have been extraordinarily active in the Gallery and Forums, and who have done so for longer than just a casual amount of time. And they have not paid a cent for all of these features. They should be the first to be targeted to ante up, so to say.<p>

The idea did not originate with me and it has been said before elsewhere, Brian needs to cultivate subscriptions. And then, work to keep those subscribers happy. Thank God he turned off the Intellitext for subscribing members! It was a step in the right direction. Regards.