I don’t expect any policy here to be permanent. This is a proposal “for now”. At this point in the other poll there are:
(24) Totally ok with status quo or whatever
(19) ok with status quo, adblocker is a thing anyway
(17) ok with status quo, but prefer ads for things that don’t suck
Some of those are multivotes. I think (60) of those are unique. That’s 60 people who are some kind of ok with ads.
There are (13) people who prefer no ads, (9) of them strongly.
In the discussion there are a lot of people who feel something like getting revenue from ads to pay the people who work is a good thing, and one person who feels strongly that people who use the site should pay either by donating or seeing ads. I don’t know about everyone, but I think banning adblocker would be a very unpopular idea generally and I’m sure none of the current admins want to do that either.
The software has the ability to create a public group that opts out of ads that all users will be able to control. It may not be obvious to new users how to do this, but they can ask. This may be seen by some as a feature and by others as a bug. But, I propose the admins create this group and start it off by manually adding everyone in the previous poll who said they prefer not to see ads. As I see it this is functionally equivalent to allowing adblock, it’s an incredibly simple solution, it has met with at least some approval from most of the people having disagreements in the last thread and it’s close enough to what just about everyone wants that I’m asking you to not just vote yes if you think it’s the greatest possible policy in the world, but to vote yes if you think it’s acceptable, close enough to the will of the community, and a good idea for us to proceed with it for now.
Should the admins create a group that allows opting out of ads and start it off with people who said they don’t want to see ads in the previous poll?
I feel quite strongly about my “no” vote, because I don’t think voluntary ad opt-out should be managed by administrators here (unless it is an automatic and equal setup, like everyone that hits TL3). Adblockers are already a form of voluntary opt-out.
For what it’s worth, I am one of the individuals that voted “prefer to not see ads” in the previous thread, and I do not use an adblocker and likely never will with this site.
I believe the public opt-out group is managed by users. You will be able to go to your profile and join and leave that group at will. I understand that this is essentially duplicating adblockers, but I believe it makes a difference to some people.
This is a complicated subject. It’s a valid point that posting is a contribution. Content is the value. And, lurkers may become posters who may become donors and/or workers. I really wouldn’t want to discourage anyone - at least not based on whether they donate or see ads.
Do I have it right that there are about 200 active users and ads generate $20 per week? I must have this wrong for you to be angry with individual posters over 10 cents per week of support.
Maybe he’s mad because he’s been accused of being a tyrant and a Stalinist and having some other people go “that’s taking it a little too far, but…”. I know it sounds like a joke when you’re a casual observer, but it was only partly in jest and it doesn’t sound so funny when you’re in zz’s position.
I realize that, and did before, and I’ve intentionally made all these votes public. I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed about in not donating (I don’t), I don’t think we should have bling or special treatment, but I think we can handle everything being transparent even if it enables people to see who are donors and who are “free riders”.
I don’t know if you want people to explain their vote but …
I voted No since it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to (1) say that we need ads to operate and (2) allow anyone to opt-out of ads at anytime. My preference would be to make opt-outs (voluntary or automatic) available only to special members (donors or TL3).
We don’t “need” ads to operate. Look at viewing ads as a form of donation. Anyone already can opt-out of ads at anytime. I don’t quite get why SA had a big problem with just using adblocker, but I REALLY don’t get why anyone has a problem with allowing opt-out,when they know anyone can just use adblocker.
The rationale behind allowing people to opt-out vs everyone at TL3 not seeing ads is that 90% of users will be at TL3 so virtually nobody will be getting ads, and virtually nobody will be in a position to opt-out of ads who isn’t already at TL3. We can even have an announcement in The Lounge that only TL3 users can see explaining how to opt-out, so the frequency of someone not at TL3 figuring out that there is an opt-out group and how to join it is going to be relatively low.
zz seems pretty adamant that he will quit if ads are not allowed (which is pretty close to what you two are proposing, i.e. 90% of users will not see ads…). I took his post seriously in the other thread that those who choose not to see them are free-riders who do not support the site. He later said that he was partly joking so not really sure…
zz also said he’s cool with something if greg and I are. SA is also cool with this. That had me thinking that objections had been overcome while writing a policy that allowed everyone else to get pretty much what they wanted.
