@patracy i cannot attach pics in messenger, so will post them here.
Not gonna make me feel guilty. People don't come to forums for the advertisements, they come to find information and get questions answered, and I do a fair bit of that… For free I might add… probably have even helped professionals here servicing their customers… I don’t care, I like helping people, its good Karma, and it is often a good mental troubleshooting exercise which I enjoy.
Banner adds(the ones you can scroll past) and require no interaction have always been with us. Usually top and bottom of each page of postings and don’t bother me in the slightest..
It is the ones that require your interaction to proceed, that annoy me, as they expend my time to no positive end. They are distracting…
The one that got me annoyed this morning was a lure, an obvious deception used by some to up their add click count by getting users to click on it, thinking it is a functional button in the forum, that will move them along the discussion path of the thread, instead it drags them to an entirely different site… Not a fan…
It was small, smaller than the CSM tire banner at the top of every page but all it said was “NEXT“ with an arrow. It was in the electric hydraulic pump discussion after Ohiobenz’s recent pic. Unfortunately I have yet to find another instance, but I suspect I will. When I do I will add an actual screenshot Or see whos site it goes to… Today was the first time I have seen this tactic on this forum…
it looked a lot like this though:
Then there are the ones that popup while shifting between pages or proceeding to the messenger application, and require interaction to proceed: Got one of these getting to Patracys message. These started in the past two weeks or so.
And then there is the bottom bar that shifts up to block the lower ~15% of the screen. You can collapse it with the small arrow provided, that drops it down to 1-2% of the screen, and of course if you miss the button it will often click on the add, taking you away from the forum entirely… These also are a fairly recent addition…
I have been a moderator and an admin on a few forums over the years, and one thing that may be going on is the people providing the forum engine and web space may have made changes to how the engine operates to pad THEIR bottom line, and not the forum owners. Clicks = cash, doesn’t matter how those clicks come to pass…
My .02…
