I was looking up how to block some certain non banner ads the other day and I found many sites talking about how it is unethical to block ads.. So what do you think.. unethical or a save of time. I think it is mostly the latter, only to a very small extent the first.

Maybe I should just go to bed..

I would like to know what is unethical about blocking ads. I can rip them from newspapers or magazines. I can mute the TV or change the channel to avoid ads. It seems to me to be an individual coice. On the other side, is it ethical to watch ads?? I think not.

L8R

No. I own the computer that I use the browser on. Anyone else's ethics stop at the RJ45 on my mobo's I/O panel.

I believe that most advertising methods are completely unethical and I go as far as to make a concious effort to buy as little products possible that are advertised. Block away .

edit: fixed the italics

Most arguments I've seen to this effect say that since advertising pays for the site, that blocking the ads prevent revenue and therefore hurts the site I'm looking at.

My take is:
a) I'm never going to click on them, so looking at the ads only hurts the site's viewer click-thru ratio and by blocking them I am helping the site, and
b) If the site cannot be self-sustaining without advertising, then it deserves to die anyway.

Advertisers are leeches, and I despise them. They've basically destroyed television and radio, they'll eventually do the same to the web. If I made a website and cannot pay for it either out of my own pocket or through selling subscriptions or through donations, then I'd take down the website. Tough, but there you go. The website may be a great resource, but if nobody was willing to buck up for it then clearly it wasn't all that great.

ADS? which ADS

Firefox + Adblock extension... and the web is nicer, (and faster, even on a ADSl or cable connection).


I fully agree.

Thank you for your insight. Shall we pull the plug on HA?

Or shall we send you the bill? What's your address?

linus: same setup here pretty much.

Garf: please do not pull the plug

Eh? Otto42 did mention subscriptions and donations as alternatives to self-sustainance. Perhaps this proves that HA deserves to go on.

So I'm correct to assume that you think FOX and The Simpsons should die because it couldn't survive without advertisers?

Good luck running a site on donations and subscriptions alone. We sure couldn't and I'm sure we still can't...

0.4% of the members (which are again approximately 1/4 of the users) donate, so
that's 0.1% paying users

Otto42, you should probably leave this site, since it has no right of existence in your world.

If we must, why not put ads back? I don't like them but I would rather have ads than no HA.

No worries! HA won't go.

I'm just pointing out that the reasoning, that a site that must support itself through advertising is worthless, is total bollocks.

By this reasoning, HA should have died approx. 1 year ago. So why is Otto42 still posting here? Until a week ago the site was add-supported.

You're right, that is total bollocks. Fortunately, it's not what I stated in the first place. Might want to reread what I posted instead of simply making things up.


I wouldn't know, I block 'em.

Are you certain of that? Have they tried to survive without advertising? I mean, I'm pretty sure they make a small fortune on merchandising, you know.

I block ad's since most of them I've encountered are obtrusive in-your-face, and I don't appreciate there usage of tracking. We aren't in the days when a single 468x60 ad (animated, or static .gif) would have sufficed. Now sites big and small have them at the top, middle, side, and bottom of a single webpage, and when trying to read text the animated gifs are really distracting.

My biggest gripe about Web ad's that use images is they slow down the loading of sites, anyone using a dial-up modem will know exactly what I mean. I can't count how many times a website won't load completely just because of the ad server the site uses is running slow, or is down.

I still conclude we (should have) shut down the site.

there's nothing wrong with advertising on web sites. it all depends on the number/placement/distraction factor of the ads. HA had one ad banner at the top of the page that i barely noticed. is that really so bad? i dont think so. if you can't stand to look at ads, then block them or don't go to the site. web sites that need ads to pay the bills are just like anyone else that has to work to pay the bills - you may not like it, but that's life. as for blocking ads and ethics - i dont see what's wrong with blocking ads. if youre not going to click on any ads anyways (which i actually advise you don't do because of spy/ad-ware and cookies and such) then it's all the same to the web site if you block the ads or not. i cant speak on behalf of web masters, but they'd probably rather have people come to their site with adblocking than have no one come to their site at all.

So who here has ever clicked on a google ad? I havent.

i don't mind viewing ads, especially if they help a good website stay open. what i don't like is how intrusive these ads got over the years. spy cookies, web bugs, browser hijack scripts, these are all extra baggage that you get by simply viewing most ads. it's a blatant violation of privacy and that's why people got smart and started blocking ads altogether. that's not unethical.

That depends.. do you count paid placement (getting bumped closer to the front of a search result) as an ad?

if the site's adds arent intrusive (mean popup/under) you should leave them alone, unless we all want to start paying for web content

The purpose of ads arent to "leave alone." The purpose is to click on them so google gives money to the site.

I've clicked a couple of times through this website. In fact the once, I seem to remember I posed a question, and the generated advert gave me the response..

Can you tell us how much (more or less) does HA cost, what's most expensive (diskspace, bandwidth?), and who pays for most of it? I'm curious...

I think that it's partly because most HA members are kids or students - people who don't earn money yet. When you start to earn more serious money, you most often are too old (in many meanings) to get involved into things like web-forums. I'll even start a poll to check it out... OK, here it is.

Umm come on, no need to say such things. Otto42 is a fine member and I'm pretty sure he didn't mean that HA is worthless and should cease to exist, he just stated his general opinion about web-advertising...

The problem is the combination of CPU and bandwidth, with peaks of 300-400 concurrent users and traffic over 500G/month, with spikes of 700G in the past. Diskspace is not really a concern, it's mainly the bandwidth that limits your options. We can't have bandwidth run out (the site would be down), and exceeding it is generally ludicrously expensive with most hosters.

Then there's the problem of having a reliable hoster - we had mixed experiences with this in the past.

The server is currently privately funded by the admins and member donations (HINT HINT).

You can take a look at available hosting options and see what kind of offers are available for a dedicated server that must be able to deal with approx 1000G/month, and be at least a fairly high end P4 or Opteron.



I don't really believe this. It's not like a student can't afford anything, that we're asking much (anything will do), and quite a few people spend loads of time at this site. Once good excuse was not having a credit card, but nowadays paypal doesn't need that anymore



I'm simply responding to the exact statements he made. He effectively said that we should have shut down the site. I did found that inappropriate.

Would it be stupid to think about a simple home adsl connection for the bandwidth?

most providers I know that sell reasonable priced flatrates have a paragraph included that allows them to discontinue their service for big power-users.
another possibility why this might not be an ideal solution is that someone trusted and knowledgeable would have to look after the machine regularly. that means no vacation etc.
otherwise it sounds like a good idea to me.

There are probably some that do not have such provisions, as there is no such a provision in the case of my dsl access.


That is a problem, and is why I am still not hosting mp3-tech on my adsl connection.

...and here's another thing to worry about with those of us who have been on the 'net for awhile. I actually haven't bothered with ad blockers for quite awhile, and never saw an ad on HA in I think two years now.
I didn't notice SPCR had ads until some thread mentioned a character in one.

Also, while OT in a OT thread , ads aren't too bad if not annoying and contextually correct (Asian RAM & mobo companies can sure make annoying ones, though). Even animated ads are fine if they are on the top/bottom of pages, rather than down the side. It's when something that distracting can't be easily taken off of the viewing area that people get pissed off.

Ads have a place, and aren't evil in themselves. However, someone claiming another person's perogative to rid their own client side of the ads is wrong.

Various forums in the past tried no ad subscriptions, AT being one of the largest, and the result was simply that it didn't make up the difference. Value-added subscriptions could work, but what is there to add?

This site has ads?

Where?

I am pretty sure that you will get into trouble when you are putting out over 1000G per month (constant upload of 2-3Mbps).

I could not find any *affordable* hosting in Europe that provides the kind of bandwidth HA needs, which is why I seriously doubt it can be gotten for a good price with a DSL line.

One thing that seems to have a lot of site admins and advertising companies confused is that ads aren't really relevant anymore. In the days before the Internet they were. They were a good way for people whose products and services were unknown to make themselves heard.

But things are different now. A dozen unbiased reviews of any product or service are 30 seconds and a few keywords away. When somebody is in the market for a new motherboard, he or she doesn't simply click on the first motherboard ad they see and purchase it. Likewise with hosting: You google. You shop around.

It is incredible to me that ads generate revenue at all. I have never clicked on an ad, not out of principle, but because the person selling the thing is probably not going to give me an objective opinion of its worth. Ads are annoying because they are a waste of everybody's time. I think otto said it best:

My calculation should be wrong because to me 1000Gb per month is about 400kbps.

same here. 3MBps upload would be something like 770GB per month TTBOMK. are downloads a big part of the traffic (I would guess not)?

maybe this is the reason for the high number, including a (although big) safety overhead?

They certainly generate revenue. Did you think HA used to have ads just to annoy the users or something?



Do you people even bother to read my posts?

Garf, my post was in response to yours. The sort of people who generate revenue for Hydrogen Audio's ad sponsors aren't smart enough to be educated consumers and get the facts before they buy. These are not the sort of people you want to encourage to post here.

Weird maths going on here

2.9Mbps up == 1000G up/month.
1.5Mbps up == 500G up/month.

Of course this is an average, in reality it's not evenly distributed.

I would be surprised if you can get a line that can cope with this in Europe for a reasonable price (compared to US). If you can, I'm moving over there to start a hosting business

Yes, there's some safety overhead. Most hosters sell 250G 500G 1000G etc. It's also hard to predict traffic or how the site evolves.

I don't see how putting the ads away makes those people go away from HA. I'm pretty sure that ads weren't *attracting* them.

I do agree the ads usually didn't fit with HA - a big reason why they're gone.

uh uh... I'm not a very mathematical person, but my calculation was
xMB * 60(sec) * 60(min) * 24(hours) * 30(days) = number of MBs per month, what in this case is (for x=3) 77760MB ~ 770GB.
does that look very wrong?

(sorry for the 'off-topicness')

A bit wrong. It looks like you slipped a decimal and started with 3 megabytes/sec instead of 3 megabits/second. Starting with 3 M I ended up with 7.776 e 12. Divide by 8 bits/byte and get 972e9 byte/month. slightly off as the average month is over 30 days, plus adjust for the power of 2 thing (ie whether you think a kilobyte is 1024 or 1000 bytes)

hmm, gotta look into that, thanks.

You are fully right, a 2Mb upload line would be quite costy here.
But most adsl lines have about 600-700kbps upload and are quite cheap.
Anyway this does not address the reliability problem.

uhmm, well afaik with dsl almost all use different numbers for download and upload right? (in case of a server you will get lower number for your users download, right?)

Sometimes I looked at the ads on HA. They advertised audiophile snake-oil products and cd rippers and stuff. I either don't want that or allready have it.

I have yet to see an ad on the internet for stuff I actually want/need. I don't buy expensive electronic gadgets without first attempting to find a thurough review of various devices. I don't buy cars because of an ad. I don't choose my bank or insurance company because of ads. I originally had a huge list here of stupid crap that is offered to you in ads but I just deleted it. You know what I mean.

I think it is unethical of companies to market sub-standard products or services as bleeding edge, state of the art, industry's leading... . (That often come with license agreements which require you to sell your soul.) There are so many products on the market today that can only survive because of gullible, ignorant people who fall for the advertisement. This is especially true for internet ads, which cost way less than a TV clip. So the cleansing effect high prices have in the "traditional" media sector work to a much lesser extent on the internet. Anybody can market his cheap crap. Even the guy who just wrote his CD ripper as a transport vehicle for spyware to bombard me with more penis enlargement, viagra, $$$ DON'T MISS THIS FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY $$$ etc. mails.

Interesting direction this thread is going.. I would love to make a donation sometime soon, I'm just not in a great position to do that right at this time.

Why not compromise? Host the main forum scripts on a fairly reasonable host, and put your static files (avatar images, perhaps also some non-essential CSS and JavaScript, etc...) on someone's kindly donated DSL line. That way you'd save a decent amount of bandwidth and it wouldn't be too bad if the DSL line died occasionally.

You would

1) Add significantly more administrator work.

2) Add another point of failure.

3) Not gain anything (static content is not an important bandwidth eater, moreso because it's cached at the client side!).

4) Probably not be cheaper either (price of server that can power the forum's PHP with average bandwidth + DSL line that allows running servers, isn't necessarily cheaper than just finding a host with more bandwidth allowance).

I think this has actually been tried or considered in the past (static.hydrogenaudio.org existed at some point).

It's going to be hard to improve our current situation (I am very happy about it so far). The good thing is of course that hosting is getting cheaper, not more expensive

Yes, adsl is assymetric. That is why I mentionned 600-700kbps of upload. Usual downloads speed are in the range of 2Mbps for out of cities, 5-7Mbps for inside cities and 10-15Mbps for a few lucky ones. (at least this is the current situation in France).

This upload speed would probably be enough, but as Garf mentionned drawbacks are more potential downtimes and the need for more administration.

Not really - the 600-700kbps is the peak upload speed. We peak way over that. The users tend to come in floods (links being posted on websites and so).