Adverts in the forum posts now

[Ken Thompson]

Is that really necessary?

[dreamer]

Pathetic

[JCH]

I can guarantee I shall never click any advert foisted upon us in a forum posting. They are wasting their time.

[Matthew / BPL]

It’s not hard to block ads. I figured out how to do it on my phone and computer in about 20 minutes each. I only block ads on sites like this one that use them in a disruptive manner like this one. I’m offended to have ads on a site that I pay for and that they are formatted in such an obtrusive manner.

[Monte Masterson]

Is this what BPL had to do to survive? I just saw an annoying ad on an actual post. It was a gun scope I believe. Pathetic is the right word. I’ll always value BPL for Gearswap, but when I say the Golden Age is over, I mean it’s really over.

[bjc]

Ad Block Plus

 

[Matt Orr]

I installed adblock and don’t see any ads at all.

[monkey]

John H – they might be getting paid for number of views, as well as clicks. Just install AdBlock as a browser extension, absolutely free, and all ads will disappear.

I do wonder why they even bother, surely there can’t be much profit when majority of people use adblock of sorts, and the rest have long developed a thing called “ad blindness”. And virtually no one will ever click on an obvious ad. Totally pointless, except lowering the image of the site.

This is the link to the Adblock extension: https://getadblock.com

[George F]

Wow, I just paused my AdBlock to see what the fuss was about and you aren’t kidding. Annoying ads on the side are part of life these days, but to actually insert them in the posts is over the top. Come on BPL, a little restraint please.

[JCH]

Monkey, I have my privacy locked down and ads blocked on every device except one…the first gen iPad mini that I use on the couch and which is generally what I use to peruse BPL. Unfortunately that device does not support the new iOS ad blockers :(

Maybe I should just stop spending time on these forums?

[Paul S.]

John H,

I recently upgraded from an iPad mini to a mini 4 and the performance is night and day. My old mini was so slow it was nearly unusable for many tasks.

One caveat, BPL is so slow it’s like going back to my old mini, pretty disappointing after enjoying the improved performance everywhere else.  And the weird autocorrect behavior on BPL is quite frustrating at times. I write my long posts in Word or Notes to help that aspect.

[Matthew / BPL]

And the weird autocorrect behavior on BPL is quite frustrating at times.

I’m so glad to hear that it’s not my imagination.

[Matthew / BPL]

Whoa. I just disabled AdBlock and refreshed.

Lame!

[Diane Pinkers]

I was unable to use that ad blocker add on for my Chrome browser on my Android phone. Had to download a separate browser with ad blocker. Still, makes for much better browsing on BPL.

[Rodney Ackerman]

I also recently noticed their being inside the posts and wonder what the financial reason is for all that annoyance. It’s got to be about the money.

I can easily ignore them, but sometimes these old fingers are too heavy and I get routed away from the screen I’m browsing (growl).

One more bother in the ever evolving world of Internet. <sigh>

[Jennifer Mitol]

Yep…adblocker works like a CHAMP on my mac!  I didn’t even know what you guys were talking about…

 

[Kattt]

Not running Adblocker ( yet..) but this is awful.

[monkey]

I find it kind of sad, as during past few years I felt no need to use Adblock – my brain learned to subconsciously ignore the ads on the side of webpages; my computer has been powerful enough to load the clutter without delay; and none of the pages I regularly visited used advertisements intrusively.

Until now – BPL sticking them right in the middle of members’ posts. Its hardly a rocket science that they do it precisely because of the “blindness” that people have developed to ads on the sides. So they now place them in the centre. Sigh.

Pointless? Its an understatement. As Rodney noted above, it won’t take long for people’s brains to learn to ignore the new placement. So the only profit BPL can hope for will come from the “old fingers” accidentally touching the ad.

Pathetic is indeed the more appropriate sentiment. Total disrespect to members visiting BPL forums, intentionally detracting from their ability to browse the messages, preying upon their mistakes, and on top of that harming BPL itself through creating a poor user experience which will undoubtedly affect the members retnetion/growth.

[Matthew / BPL]

^well said

[Danny Milks]

Agreed with all of the above. The ads in the forum posts detract greatly from the experience. I’ve always loved BPL because of the clean interface, but now that is gone.I shouldn’t have to install hardware just to use a website that I already paid $100+ to use!

[Stuart .]

Every few years people talk about the imminent demise of BPL. This year, with the glitches after the platform migration and all the “tweaking” going on, I think we’re closer to that than ever before. Content is king, and it is way down. Throwing obnoxious ads in the way will drive people away even faster.

[JCH]

No one should be surprised when soon…like so many other sites have (looking at you Wired.com)…BPL will soon restrict/refuse content delivery to those the ad blockers enabled.

OTOH, imagine how much more free time we will all have when we stop spending time on BPL!!!

[Todd Stough]

There really are a lot of ads lately.  Why is it that other sites which don’t charge for membership like Hammock forums don’t need ads all over the place to stay open?

[Noah K]

nm

 

[Ken Thompson]

Sure, but that linked article above is talking about free sites not a subscription based one like BPL. And yes it is simple to block per site, not all.

Edit: Now that Noah has deleted his post, you can just skip this one. Or you can read the post he linked to here

[Author]

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