I think this is an excellent idea.

I don't believe in the pay model for a couple of reasons.
first most content can be found for free somewhere else. that might not be a valid reason for this site but most of them.
Second paying means most of the times for me (outside of the US) that I should use a credit card (I don't have) or paypal. Both I don't really trust and are a major inconvenience for me I rather use a local online paying method (Ideal)
Third how much is this content worth it might differ per person what they can or are willing to pay and if you go for cheap and many people but the administrative cost might take up a large percentage of the price. Money not spend on the site or content.

I would rather see sites focus more on a idea generated by I believe one of the creators of thepiratebay. Where a person reserves a fixed amount of money per month and divides it over all the sites he thinks are worth it. This way you can set your own price limit per month, give very small donations to many sites, have a large site that hopefully provides localized ways to pay and hopefully has very little administrative cost for the content sites because they only have to deal with one paying entity. It all sounded very good maybe too good to be true but I could see myself using it where I don’t see myself paying by paypal or credit card for every site I visit and enjoy.


[edit]
Found the website flattr . com/beta/
[/edit]

I block ads by default. The vast majority of ads on the internet bother me, and I've chosen not to put up with them. I also habitually install AdBlock on computers I fix for others, because it makes a huge difference in the number of repeat service calls, thanks to the large number of "Click here to scan for viruses!!!1!" ads out there.

However, because I'm not a complete jerk, I try to support sites I visit frequently. If I find the ads to be unobtrusive and relevant, I leave the site whitelisted. In being supportive, I can tolerate most types of ad as long as they make sense, don't interfere with the content, and don't use a bunch of CPU power.

Sadly, SPCR fails these three checks. As a test, I just took a peek at the main page with AdBlock disabled. I see some perfectly acceptable ads around the margins, but then right in the middle of the page, interrupting the content, is a huge Google ad for one of my other, totally unrelated hobbies. Presumably this is Google tracking me and giving ads that are relevant to me, but it's jarring to see that hobby on a computer site. If it weren't in the middle of the page, I probably wouldn't think much of it. But then it gets worse.

You've got text ads.

I've been trained by years of internet usage, especially reading sites like Dan's Data, to click on links in the text. It is incredibly jarring to click a link I think will take me to an interesting tangent and find myself staring at an ad instead. But your text ads aren't even the irritating false links. No, your text ads spawn little Flash tooltips which not only slow the computer down and cover the content, but are also surprisingly hard to get rid of.

So, you're blocked. I have chosen to support SPCR through donations rather than ads (haven't given anything for a while, though; have to do that soon).

It sounds like you're opposed to a pay wall model. That's not what I'm suggesting - I think the pay wall model is terrible. In my idea, the content would all still be there, just with or without ads depending on subscription status. And non-payers could go on blocking ads if they want. It gives consumers another reason to support a site.

My issue with the pay model I suggested is that it could further enable the problem! We end up having to pay to not be annoyed, or not be infected with malware. Let's say we currently have the following options:
1) we are annoyed by ads and the site gets paid.
2) we are not annoyed because we block ads and the site doesn't get paid.
3) we are not annoyed because we subscribe and the site gets paid.

Option 2 is only an option because most sites haven't tried something like Ars' Friday experiment. As soon as sites block content when a browser blocks ads, option 2 disappears for us.

Given options 1 and 3, what's to keep a site from relaxing ad-policy ethics to coerce more people into paying?

One persons vote is not going to make a lot of difference, but for me the problem with the ads on SPCR (whenever my adblocker is disabled for some reason), is actually 2 problems.

1, Many of them are for US/Canadian websites (not all products are available elsewhere, at a sensible price).

2, And far more annoying than the first, most of them move, I obviously know why, but its really annoying trying to read something when things are constantly moving on-screen.

I have disabled ABP on several websites, but not for SPCR for the above reasons. I would gladly igore any ads on SPCR that I was not interested in, and click on the ones I was interested in if only they did not go against point 1 and 2.

Sory if others have already pointed this out, I skipped right to the end without even reading the ad-blocked article - need sleep.


Andy

I am terribly sorry. I HAD NO IDEA that silentpcreview ran ads. Adblock Plus just makes it so transparent. Just did the internet explorer test, and it turns out the front page is stuffed with obnoxious, animated ads.

Now that I know that you do run ads i'll unblock the site in adblocker, except for the flash.

Or is there some way to donate money straight to silentpcreview, to compensate for my adblocking ways?

I never adblock anything

Adult A.D.D. makes dynamic advertising torturous for me. Low-contrast or static ads are fine, but things that move, flash or change --including that wretched EndPCNoise ad-- drives an icepick into my brain.

I recommend asking your suppliers and advertisers for low-intrusion ads or low-contrast ads. The Amazon ad is a fine example; white-on-green is low contrast (at least on my monitor) and doesn't overtly distract me. And since I did all my Christmas shopping at Amazon last year, it seems to work.

My problem is that I usually have anywhere between 30 and 150 tabs open at any time. If I allow ads and Flash (also blocked until I click something) all those tabs will eat up my CPU. If there was some way Firefox could stop spending resources on ads and Flash in inactive tabs things would be different.

yeah mostly sarcasumor ,but,

My tinfoil hat prevents me from keeping any information of any importance on my machine, so im not worried.

We could always boot to a live distro, once a week or so, for auto clicking all those SPCR malware ads with no risk to a members main system...

Welcome to SPCR sleiN13, BTW!

I like the subscribe-to-avoid-the-ads idea.

A tangent thought: if the ads are really annoying, people may not spend the time to participate as much, and then fewer people are attracted to the site, because the quality isn't there... I for one would run away screaming if I had to endure the "loud" and flashing ads on some sites.

Conversely, I find some of the text ads (a la Google) are actually helpful at times.

I'm blocking "http://static.2mdn.net/viewad/*" but i'm not sure if these ads were blocked on other website first.

As most of you, i dont like fancy flash blinking contrast colors ads. Sometimes ads are really badmade javascript that can ruin your CPU usage and slown down things, other times they simply use too much space and start to deform the site layout.
I get very sad as most of the things on ads aren't available directly for Brazil...
I've run a site my own once, and i can tell you my clicks worth nothing...
Some companies simply ignore clicks/views from Brazilian IP, others go even far and disqualify you if you have too many Asian clicks!

I clearly don't believe in the payed model, just take a look at adult sites, they pirated like hell... some will pay, some will pirate, then many will have it for free. So lets keep it free.

If you look at the prices to host 500 MB ten years ago, and now (free), what about bandwidth limit? Same, just getting higher and higher. I know it's not the case for a site like SPCR, but maybe in the future...
Maybe with the new concept models of P2P-HTTP (where you share page you're viewing, etc).

If SPCR ever gets paying membership to get ridd of ads, I'll be buying one!

Concur with everyone here. Don't mind ads if they are static, relevant and nonobtrusive. Relevance is hardware ads on this site etc.
Ads at the very top and bottom and sides are fine.
Might be interested in a paying option to get rid of ads.
Edit: Wanted to add, that I look a lot more on the ads when they are placed top bottom and sides. The ads placed in the middle of text I scroll past fast and don't pay attention to.

That's very ignorant btw. FYI, pretty much EVERY site runs ads! Unless they are something like government funded or actually selling you something themselves.



Yes, it's possible to donate. I think there's a link to that on the front page.

Hey, Mike. I use AdBlock too. Simply cause I hate excessive bothering advertisment (who likes it?), but if you need us to click some banners -- just tell us which ones, and we do a lot of clicks each time attending SPCR

P.S. Well, I added exclusion for silentpcreview.com in AdBlock rules )) Just because I love this site. And... should I click some ads too?

Q: How did you make the exception for SPCR? I just looked and could not see how to do this.

That does not make any sense whatsoever. It's not good for the user, not good for the site and not good for the advertiser. Sorry but it's imho a very bad idea.

And no. Not we. I won't do it. I will only click on ads that are relevant to my interests AND not annoying.

And btw, I do see several animated ads on this site every time I visit.

That's how I do it. You can edit rules directly too, but I don't enjoy that method.

This exactly what I did as well. I actually moved from IE to firefox because of the availability of a powerful ad blocker !!!

On the top of your web site you could encourage people to make an exception for SPCR, and I believe many people will understand the request, if it's limited to this page.

I found the answer for me in FireFox.



In the Tools/Add Ons/Filters, I added a filter:



Okay, I'm wincing every time I view the site now. Here's another website that I support (and blog for) that I'm about to send $50 to avoid seeing their ads:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/support-ecomodder-com-have-ads-removed-get-bonus-180.html

Last night I saw the Top Gear episode where the guys have to create a VW television ad. One of the rules for creating a VW ad goes something like: don't shout at the consumer. Intelligent people prefer to be spoken to. I think if site ads are well-targeted and take this approach, they're far less annoying and often actually useful.

Providing useful information to inquisitive people is an excellent way to get ad clicks. Blaring, intrusive, dancing baloney is not.

I will add my voice to the numbers decrying the inline text ads. Mousing over a link (even accidentally) doesn't indicate a desire to have an unrequested animated popup on my screen. Ditching those would go a long way toward convincing potential consumers to unblock ads on SPCR.

For Opera users:
Just right click on the site (or hit F12) go to "Edit Site Preferences..."
Then select tab Content and uncheck "Enable Content Blocking".

This will disable the content block for SPCR. It's not a fully functional white-list, but it works.

The pic above for Firefox is perfect. I don't know how many people use Chrome (I don't but I've been testing it since this article to see how the ads display in different browsers).

If you have Adblock for chrome you want Browser Button for AdBlock to allow you the simpler method of enabling ads in Chrome with Adblock.

Saw that too.
That show last night was a perfect example of how ads should be thought about.

Can we have VW make the ads that appear on SPCR? They might actually be able to save the internet...

I don't mind banners of any sort, they are easily ignored or sometimes contain interesting content. But pop-ups or pop-overs/unders, they are a nuicance and I generally avoid sites that use them to discourage their implementation.

we need more of an adhider instead of adblocker.

that way the advertisers think we are seeing the ads because they are still downloaded to our PC just like they are when no adblocker is in place...only the adhider addon would just not display the adds to the user. as far as ars can tell we all saw their super cool ads, but our browsers just didn't actually display them to us.

I run noscript and adblock+ on Firefox to keep my sanity and to help prevent malware issues. I whitelist the content as needed with noscript. My compromise is to add flashblock and then whitelist spcr with adblock+. Flash/blinky ads make me go postal.

Well, I can't disagree with you, zombie-clicking(or even automated) isn't a solution But I personally don't need a one of the products that are being advertized here at SPCR. If I need something particular -- I do search myself, then buy at the appropriate place.

Maybe I'm not the marker(active buyer), then I shut up...

I'm one of those who find the flash ads either innocuous or mildly entertaining. Perhaps it's because I like the companies that run the ads -- Antec, Corsair, etc. Aren't those ads generated differently than, say, the Amazon ads? Don't they come from SPCR's servers, while the others are third party?