People should do whatever is best for them. That includes the members and the ownership.

If it makes sense to pay for something, then pay. If it makes sense to protest pop-ups, do that.

My point is, I don't buy the "be good for the sake of goodness" policy. Geoff would be a fool to run this site if he didn't hope to make a profit off of it, people should equally try to benefit from the site. If you think it makes sense to donate, live with pop-ups, etc. . . to ensure that DVDTalk can survive and you can continue to use it -- do that. If you think it will survive just fine without your help, and you want to maximize value out of it by giving nothing back and reaping all the benefits, do that.

DVDTalk, like many other dot-coms, is a business and it will (ideally) do whatever is best for the business. Do what is best for you.

Geoff,

It's still popping up on every page I click on, for me.

shaun3000 do you have cookies enabled?

Thanks god its over....for now that is.

Fixed for me. Thanks.

Some popups ok - what happened last night. ugh (although I figured out the workaround...)

Surprised i didn't post here Geoff?

Pop-ups are my big pet peeve but forunately i wasn't here last night. Sounds like it was awful.

What is this "pop up ad" thing people speak of?

I have pop up stopper and have never seen a pop up get past and when I turned it off, i only got one per session.

People should stop moaning and whining since this is a free site and the mods and adms aren't paid for their work here.

I could throw feces at you for no charge if you like. I expect you not to go somewhere else and not to complain.

das

Man, aren't the mods and adms gonna to back me up here?

Come on, man! Are you comparing thrown feces to pop ups? Gimme a break! Yes, pop ups suck but would you rather start paying for a membership, or have DVDtalk close down? Everything comes with a price.

No ... I'm saying that the fact we don't pay for membership does not mean we cannot have a valid opinion of the way the site could or should operate. We pay for the site just by being here, albeit not enough obviously. The mantra "the site's free, so stop complaining" is tiresome. When the members of a free site do not like something to an extreme level, they have two options: leave or voice their opinion. I don't think anyone would be served if a significant portion of DVD Talk just up and left, so dialogue about the things we like and dislike about the site's operation are both healthy and necessary.

Everything does come with a price, and when the price outweighs the quality of the good or service, it is the patron's responsibility to speak out. Thankfully, there are proper channels (like the Feedback Forum) to effectively express likes or dislikes without simply leaving, making the administration have to guess what's wrong.

I'm glad you run a pop-up blocker that prevents the site from getting the ad-revenue they would generate. As for the rest of us, who allow the pop-ups to come through and support the site ... I think it's fair for us to speak out when we're not pleased and a little hypocritical for those who block the ads to tell us we have no right to express those thoughts.

das

I agree that people do have a right to complain, but some of them were going overboard with the complaining.

The way that I see it is that DVDtalk has become so popular that it is hogging a lot of bandwidth and is raising costs to keep up with the bw demand.

That is the way it is. There are millions of other websites that have great free info, services and updates, etc, but many of them do have pop ups. Like hotmail, abcnews, etc, but it is still free after all.

I do support DVDTalk by subscribing to their newsletter and clicking on the ad links. Again, I say that everything has a price, but in the case of pop ups, it is a small price to pay.

Well why doesn't Geoff make it a pay site. Membership could be say $5.00 per year. That would give him some extra cash. Gods knows I have saved more then $5.00 in the past 3+ years.

No new members. You essentially cut off your membership supply. Not the best business model.

das

Fixed it. I had IE6 set to block third-party cookies. I told it to accept cookies from kleinman.com and the ad went away. Yeaa

Geoff would be out of business in 3 months with your $5 figure. I guess you aren't aware of the costs of running a site?

While I can understand all the bitching and whining, and have even taken part in it to an extent, I cannot understand the heavy-handedness of some of the posts, not the least of which is the soon-to-be-infamous poop analogy.

It seems to me that this situation is completely under the control of the complainers, and not one is willing to take at least partial responsibility. I’ve accessed this forum from four different computers running under four different versions of Windows and two different versions of IE. Not once have I been plagued with the “pop every time you click” phenomenon. Why is that? Could it be that some of you have done some tinkering and in the process have served yourselves up a plate of poo?

What changes have you made to your settings that has caused this? And, more importantly, why haven’t you inquired about it? It’s far too easy to blame Geoff for all this, n’est pas?

I’m just guessing here, of course, but for every emotional outburst in this thread, there are a WHOLE BUNCHA folks who a) haven’t had the problem (most likely) or b) have got better things to do with their time than worry to about it.

This forum is what it is. This forum, tomorrow, will be whatever it will be tomorrow. In spite of Geoff’s assertion to the contrary, things will get worse (depending on your POV) re advertising. Denial cannot alter that. If you’ve been paying attention during the past six months or so it should be clear.

As bushdog has so eloquently put it, “Do what is best for you.”

My greatest concern at the moment is, when I finally got the V popup, why, oh why, did I select the wrong answer? I just don’t understand where my mind has gone.

“That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”

[/rant]

That's not fair. It appears obvious that there was a glitch in the code that Geoff fixed. The complaints were with the lack of knowledge and assumption that this was the intended functionality of the pop-up. I don't think anyone has a problem with the pop-up in its intended form. I certainly don't. But it did appear every click. This isn't hyperbole or some tinkering on our side. It happened. People who didn't experience the phenomenon can either believe it or not.

A pop-up every few hours. Fine. No problem. Annoying, but tolerable. A pop-up every click? No. Too much. I'm sorry some people did not experience this and are under the false assumption that the users somehow caused this problem or are exagerating its effects. Since the moment Geoff posted that he fixed the problem, it's been fixed. I've only had a few pop-ups today. I've done nothing to change my settings since before this issue or after it, and not to point fingers, but I'm not too thrilled with the implication that we've overblown an issue that wasn't real. I just farted. The fact that you didn't see it doesn't negate that it happened. You may believe it wasn't magnificent, and that's your opinion; but you're most certainly wrong if you believe it didn't occur.

What's best for me, and most of us, is for the forum to survive. It will not survive if there's a glitch in the system pissing off the users, and no one posts about it in the Feedback forum. What's the point of the Feedback forum if we don't respond to the changes? If we dislike something, we have a responsibility to tell the administation. It's certainly better than everyone just leaving without saying anything. Yeah, the tone of some of the posts hasn't been the best. But sometimes it's hard to be polite when everyone's telling you to shut up and quit whining about a legitimate issue that others are claiming you just made up or exagerated or caused yourself.

das

As I've said many a time, I do really appreciate everyone's feedback about the ads on DVD Talk. I take the comments you post here very seriously and never think that members of our forum should just 'shut up and deal with it' that's not how I operate.

I am going to close this thread and open up a new thread about ads on DVD Talk I encourage you to continue to voice your thoughts and feelings about advertising on DVD Talk and ways members can help support the site.

See: http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=227034

Thanks
Geoff