Skimlinks adverts

I have to say I'm most disappointed with this move.
For an indication of how your customer base feel about this intrusion, please this thread http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=164152

You may find the above interesting, as it is a discussion on this very forum.

 

Unfortunately, NoScript is only available for FireFox. Except AdBlock, Google Chrome doesn't have anything - that I know of - quite as good.

 

Adblock on Chrome removes the Skimlink ads just fine for me...

 

It does for me also. But Volund's point was to use NoScript to remove only the Skimlinks ads, not the banner ads.

 

Ah, OK. Yeah, there's no way to do that on Chrome AFAIK.

 

I am doing it to remove ALL adverts as I want dennis to lose ALL income that my visits would otherwise generate. Its the only way to get through to the money men.

 

I have mixed opinions on blocking all adverts. I understand and respect the decision to use ads in order to generate revenue. Personally I find ads intrusive and I'm not really interested in product recommendations. If I want something, I tend to look that product up and do my research; adverts are not going to persuade me.

I ran without an adblocker for a long time; re-creating my whitelists every time I reinstall any of my PCs got very tiresome. I found that I never really missed it; ads don't usually bother me, but I'm afraid that a line has really been crossed with Skimlinks. I don't want to see b-t go under or be dropped by Dennis because the cost cannot be justified when the site is not generating revenue. But at the same time, blocking all ads is the only recourse I have against the incredibly deceptive tactics that Skimlinks uses.

 

Like everyone else here, I am not at all a fan of them. Now I have to check to make sure links are actually posted by the user or if it was placed by Skimlinks.

 

So they asked, we said "no" and they still did it. Good....

 

if your using the beta version of chrome, in the options > content settings you can set exceptions to Javascript, blocking forums.bit-tech.net will disable the skimlinks, and leave the banner adds. unfortunately it will also disable the picture resizing and all the text options buttons on the message boxs so its not the best of help

 

That's like saying gay sex is better than no sex.

Sig added

I'm getting horrible flashbacks to 2 years ago

 

This, a thousand times. If you can please don't cut out all the ads, just the skimlinks if you really don't like them.

 

Lizard how about a deal. You get to keep the Skimlinks and in return you open the demot thread? Seems fitting.

How about the rule that we cannot post nude pictures, because this is a "family forum"? Think about what kind of message you are sending by letting a advertising company sneak in an editing posts without user accept?

By imposing this on us without including it in the forum rules we accepted to when signing up I say this is borderline fraud. I am a stranger to UK law but over here that is illegal.

 

I hate to say it guys but I told you so.

About 2 years ago Dennis Publishing massacred the PCPro, Custome PC, MacUser, PC Shopper, etc... forums. They split a single forum entity into individual forums.

The Meeting Place there went instantly from having 1 or 2 full pages of posts per day to having 1 or 2 posts per week/month.

They didn't listen to our protests and they don't give a flying f*ck. Because of that we split and created our own forum which is still going strong and is actually building up now and has a user contributed blog and merchandise shop.

Have we looked back since we moved? Not once.

www.x404.co.uk if you want to come check it out.

 

Before I go ahead and block all ads I've been having a look around and it seems that the skimlinks are not being targeted to either the partner forums or the for sale threads.

It's a good thing the for sale threads are kept clean of them, as I doubt BT or DP would want to deal with the fall out from any issues arising from their use there.

I take it the companies who have partner forums here pay for the privilege? As it is the only reason I can see for those threads to not be bothered by these ads. If this is the case then it implies that the userbases contribution is not of any value, hence filling it full of adverts and profitering off OUR work.

<not-being-serious.....>
I suppose we could also put a EULA in our footer prohibiting any ads or amendments to our posts without written consent and that by looking at the post you agree to the terms. Failure to comply would of course incur a stupidly large fine......
</not-being-serious.....>

As much as that thread was fun I doubt it will ever come back. It caused too much butt hurt for the mods.

 

I can understand where you're coming from Krikkit, but blocking only skimlinks is telling the commercial side of bit-tech/CPC that we have a workaround that we're willing to use. I for one didn't know about the Skimlinks until I saw these threads because I already had skimresources.com blocked by default in NoScript, but I still feel disgusted by what the practice represents and how it affects the posts I make for others who don't use these tools.

The point here is to take a stand and speak with our adblockers, not to just use the workaround and allow the commercial decision-makers to wait for us AdBlock/NoScript users to forget about the matter and the fact that advertising is piggybacking on our posts and distorting what we contribute to the forums that keep this place running.

Just so that I'm not misunderstood on this point: I firmly believe in whitelisting the sites I enjoy most and I have had bit-tech in my whitelist for a long, long time now simply because I want to support the site and the community. This isn't a puerile middle-finger in response to the site - When the skimlinks are gone, bit-tech will be back on the whitelist for me.

 

I'm very disappointed with these skimlinks adverts. I buy CPC magazine because, even though I get all my up-to-date info on hardware freely from this site, I can support Dennis Publishing buy paying for the magazine. The magazine has adverts and the website has adverts. This is fine.

What's not fine is seeing links in people's posts, which appear to be user-created, but are adverts in disguise. I like to know what's an advert and what's not. I also like to be able to write what I want to write, not giving Amazon or whoever a free advert.

Very disappointed. Perhaps my magazine sub isn't worth maintaining, if Dennis Publishing has to find intrusive revenue streams such as skimlinks.

 

I've never felt the need to install NoScript before now. None of the sites i frequent require it (all of which are also whitelisted in ABP). I'm really disappointed that bit-tech is making me feel the need for it.

Anyway, sig added, and i'll be checking the site without NoScrip waiting for these things to disappear.

Edit: Should we start adding a character to the end of real links? just a * would do the trick.

 

I've been slightly inactive over the last couple of weeks due to vast amounts of How I met Your Mother being consumed...this is what I come back to?

Very disappointing, I routinely click any link I see in a post because up til half an hour ago I knew that it would lead me to something relevent/interesting/funny and was intended to be seen by the original poster. Skimlinks remove this trust.

Anything else I could say about this dirty underhandedness has already been said countless times. Anywho, I will indeed now be installing adblocker despite never having minded the ordinary ads.

I'm no marketer but I imagine some revenue from ordinary ads is heaps better than none at all...

 

Thats acceptable.

To be honest, I'd rather make a small donation to the site to keep it up than deal with this crud.