Jimquisition: The Adblock Episode

[WeepingAngels]

Ad Blockers - Do not link to, advocate, or admit to using ad blockers

I'm considering getting one of those Publisher subscriptions (I used to think they were only for content publishers; silly me), but these draconian forum policies dissuade me. That, and I really don't like some of the content posted on this site, and would rather none of my money go towards them. I'll probably get a subscription anyways, because Jim asked so nicely. (Thank god for Jim.)

Fears out.

P.S. I think it would be absolutely hilarious if I managed to get this account banned after purchasing a subscription.

I thought the same thing, I was willing to go get the $20 ad free sub and then I thought about the rules on this site and decided I probably wouldn't last a full year.

It blows my mind that you can't simply say "I agree" on this site.

 

[Zato-1]

Thanks for the candid explanations Kross and Marter, I can definitely see your side of the argument now and I mostly agree with your policies as you've stated them. Forums without moderation are a disaster waiting to happen, and this moderation is plenty reasonable.

 

[Solo-Wing]

Ad Blockers - Do not link to, advocate, or admit to using ad blockers

Wow.
I can understand limiting conversation about piracy (it is illegal in a fair number of countries) and banning profanity and porn (to keep things tasteful; and for legality reasons), but ad blocking? That seems rather draconian.

Well they don't really ban profanity. As long as you stay on topic and don't actually aim the insults at another user in a hostile manner you can fucking swear like a fucking sailor as much as you fucking want. I mean a significant portion of this sites content have a lot of Profanity in it. Jimquisition included. Fuck.

But I will say now this entire thread is like walking in a minefield for most of the people posting here. This is a sensitive topic like Piracy for obvious reasons. It can and will damage the Escapists reputation which will cut into profits in the long run which is understandable.

 

[Marter]

No offense but this is a meaningless technicality that ham-strings the discussion in this thread. It's like watching parking attendants wait for a timer to tick over. You can't have a meaningful conversation about the video with these things being enforced here. Mod enforced skirting around the issue is gutless and not in the spirit of the video. Being so rigid as to be unable to let a small distinction in the rules slide to avoid excess moderation in a very specific thread on that subject is just plain bad community engagement.

I use Ad-block plus and No-Script for the reasons posted in no less than four other unmodderated posts that admit or imply this. But i have a white list that this site has been on ever since before i was in the publisher club. I don't see why anyone should get moderated for saying that in this thread. It is NECESSARY to the discussion. Without it the discussion cannot take place. Jim is asking people to ad the site to their whitelist. For that to be possible thay would have to be using it in the first place. But they can't sate that fact in the forums? It boggles my brain.

Enforcement of that rule here seems nonsensical. It would be like a Jimquisition about swearing without being able to admit you swear. It would be silly. This is getting near Monty Python territory.

Nobody in this thread, to my knowledge, has gotten warned for saying they use it and have this site whitelisted. So that's not a valid complaint, because it's not happening.

It's not necessary to state your personal history with ad blocking to discuss it. And nobody has been warned for simply discussing it.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

That... doesn't make any sense. How is admitting you currently have adblock worse than saying you used to use adblock? How about the people, including myself, who say we've added the Escapist to our whitelist, isn't that implying that we use that-which-shall-not-be-named? I'd figure that the reason the Escapist forbids mention of the unmentionable in order to prevent flame-wars but that's clearly not the issue in this case.

It indicates change. A bunch of people in this thread have said they've now turned off adblock/whitelisted this site thanks to the video. Why would we punish them? We haven't been punishing people who say they've whitelisted the site.

But your rules say admitting to using ad blockers is banned. It does not say that admitting to using them and white-listing The Escapist is allowed.

You should either enforce your own rules or not. You seem to be making them up on the fly, even as another moderator (Topaz) said there was no choice in the matter.

The reason has to do with the advertisers; it's not about preventing flame wars.

Nice to know you think so highly of your users.

 

[IceForce]

There are tons of Facebook comments admitting to and advocating Adblock. These comments are published on the same page as the main article - and they are not being removed or censored.

So, how are we to believe that some forum comments admitting to Adblock use that are buried in low-traffic forums, are supped to have more influence on advertisers than the Facebook comments that you proudly display on the main page?

I've brought this point up before.

Here on the forums, we're not allowed to insult people or do a raft of other things. But in the Facebook comments, I see insults and all manner of other rules being broken.
And those Facebook comments are on the same page as the content, unlike this thread.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

By that virtue then the damage has already been done. What is the point of moderating people when an Escapist contributor has advocated on behalf of Ad-Blocking services? Wouldn't that put off prospective advertisers far more than a few random forum posts? That does more to the 'image' of the site than anything a forum post could do. This is an offical video in which Ad-block is not just mentioned, it is openly advocated in many cases and advertisers BLAMED.

But in the discussion thread of the video in which all this is done there are sill moderation of people who say "Yes i use Ad block and here is why. But i understand why i probably shouldn't". You must see how ludicrous and surreal this seems.

Yeah, seriously. I have skimmed through this thread and I am utterly appalled at all the warnings I've seen dealt out. No offense to the mods, as I understand this is a tough line to walk, but yeesh.

I would love to be able to talk about this topic in an open and honest fashion. I would love to discuss things like this:

can we get a list of all the third parties we need to whitelist in order for the advertisements to work? Standard operating procedure is to block everything except what proves necessary in order to get the content to display.

Do you have a list of all the web domains or IPs I would need to whitelist in order to get the Escapist's ads to display properly? For some reason, when I've asked for this information in the past, companies have seemed reluctant to share it. Instead they say insane things like "whitelist everything and disable all your security software." One time a website even went so far as to suggest I disable my virus-scanner!

Great point WarpZone.

But yeah, I'd love to talk about this stuff in a practical sense. I'd love to talk about how we as viewers can provide money to the wonderful people here at the Escapist without exposing our computers - where I keep my job records - to whatever crap the internet sees fit to throw at it.

But I can't. I have to talk in the theoretical. I have to be vague. Because heaven forbid that I talk about a piece of legal software that I may or may not have installed on my computer.

Note: And no, Mods, I am not admitting to anything. I have not admitted to or advocated for anything. And that's the problem - until we feel safe doing so, we can't discuss the safety aspect of this topic in a meaningful way.

 

[Ibbathon]

Less than a minute after posting, the post gets flagged with a warning. Such vigilant moderators! I'm tempted to try some experiments, to see if the warning process is partially automated. But that's probably getting too close to site-trolling.

I'm not a troll. I just like poking bears.

 

[Marter]

But your rules say admitting to using ad blockers is banned. It does not say that admitting to using them and white-listing The Escapist is allowed.

You should either enforce your own rules or not. You seem to be making them up on the fly, even as another moderator (Topaz) said there was no choice in the matter.The rules also say that "Discussion of ad blockers, pedophilia, illegal acts, and pornography is never allowed." So it's clear that this thread *is* an exception, right? It's been moderated consistently in this regard.

Do you want leniency or do you want the rules followed to the letter? It can't be done both ways. We've given the thread leniency. People are complaining it's still not lenient enough. Now you're saying here you want it done exactly as stated in the CoC, which would hinder discussion.

Nice to know you think so highly of your users.

They're not my users and I didn't make the rules.

 

[Vareoth]

Ad Blockers - Do not link to, advocate, or admit to using ad blockers

I'm considering getting one of those Publisher subscriptions (I used to think they were only for content publishers; silly me), but these draconian forum policies dissuade me. That, and I really don't like some of the content posted on this site, and would rather none of my money go towards them. I'll probably get a subscription anyways, because Jim asked so nicely. (Thank god for Jim.)

Fears out.

P.S. I think it would be absolutely hilarious if I managed to get this account banned after purchasing a subscription.

I thought the same thing, I was willing to go get the $20 ad free sub and then I thought about the rules on this site and decided I probably wouldn't last a full year.

It blows my mind that you can't simply say "I agree" on this site.

Yep, I've actually had a year subscription on another account that I have long since abandoned. Totally worth it in my opinion. You get great video quality (and a whole bunch of other stuff) without all the annoying ads.

So now I'm outweighing two options. I can buy a subscription again, but reading this thread full of folly leaves me with a distasteful feeling. Or I just stick with the ads and deal with it.

I'm so bad at deciding. But Jim Sterling is a very sexy devil though. Such a persuasive voice...

 

[Marter]

snip

The proper way to go about it would be to talk to the tech team because if an ad is crashing a browser that's a technical problem. No, that's not a valid reason.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

What day is this? Tuesday is Bob day, not Jim day. Well lucky us, today gets to be Jim and Bob day. Jiob day? Boim day?

Anyway, topic at hand: I simply can't lay blame on the advertisers. Sure, they're the ones who create the awful, intrusive, format screwing adverts... but I firmly believe that each and every individual site is entirely responsible for the content that they serve up. From the main content, to the forums, and yes, even the ads.

If (hypothetically) one of the ads here on Escapist started showing hardcore pornography during this episode, against whom should we rage? The video producers and pron company, or the website owners. I think it's the latter. And it's not just the Escapist by any means. EVERY website that runs ads should know what content they're showing, and make sure it doesn't interfere with the reason we're here. I'm here to see videos. And if something ruins that, well, I'm either going to try and fix it or simply stop watching.

Actually, I've just had a thought (it hurt a bit). Jim, if you're listening, how much clout do you have in regards to ads associated with your videos? Do you have any say over which ads get shown along side the content you've created? I think that would be a good point to argue, and one for which you'd definitely have the moral high ground. You provide

In the end though, I think we've passed the point of no return for the majority of users. Once adblock is installed, we'd never know if ads got better. Companies could learn their lesson, switch to unobtrusive ads for products that we genuinely want at prices we get excited about ... but we'd never know, because they're blocked and we don't see the improvement.


This is all hypothetical of course. Just a thought experiment, as it were. I can neither confirm nor deny my personal status vis-à-vis additional browser software


A thought though ... bigger picture (wait, that's the other video today) if a website wants to beat adblockers. Why not host the ads locally? From a design perspective, the whole reason adblockers work is because ads are pulled from different sites. When 90% of the page I want comes from www.escapistmagazine.com, and the other 10% comes from something.ads.com ... well, that's not a tough nut to crack. I'm not sure how it would work for revenue purposes. The external sites allow them to track viewership, but I'm sure you could solve it. And it would then give the individual website the same leverage I mentioned earlier. Actually seeing and controlling their own content, instead of giving google (or whomever) 100x50 pixels to do with as they please.

I've rambled enough. I think

 

[Marter]

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Just so y'all know, you don't lose your subscription or any of the non-forum benefits if your forum account is banned. You still get ad-free viewing, HQ videos, etc.

 

[IceForce]

Less than a minute after posting, the post gets flagged with a warning. Such vigilant moderators! I'm tempted to try some experiments, to see if the warning process is partially automated. But that's probably getting too close to site-trolling.

This thread is filled with moderator comments, so that would explain why posts in here are getting flagged so quickly.

 

[Ibbathon]

Just so y'all know, you don't lose your subscription or any of the non-forum benefits if your forum account is banned. You still get ad-free viewing, HQ videos, etc.

Oh. Darn. That's nowhere near as amusing. Thank you for the notice though.