Remove Google ads

[CyberShadow]

IIRC, Walter Bright said that he'd be OK with removing the ads, and will accept a PR which will remove them.

@WalterBright: Could you please confirm/merge this?

[dnadlinger]

Ping. I Agree with the change, fwiw.

[quickfur]

ping @WalterBright

[DmitryOlshansky]

Waiting on @WalterBright

[ghost]

Well if he said it was ok, we should go with it. We can easily revert this if it was a mistake. Merging!

[CyberShadow]

We can easily revert this if it was a mistake.

But how will we revert all the lost profit? :P

[ghost]

All .5$ cents of it, you mean? :)

At least we'll get a response from W if suddenly he can't afford hot-pockets anymore.

[ghost]

And of course let's not forget someone actually has to sync these changes to the website, so no harm done, yet. :)

[WalterBright]

I don't agree with the change,

1. I find it interesting what ads Google decides to run, since they are based on the web pages content.
2. Apparently our readers find them interesting, too.
3. The ads pay for the site hosting.
4. The ads are at the bottom, and don't interfere with the content in any way.

[CyberShadow]

I find it interesting what ads Google decides to run, since they are based on the web pages content.

You can enable the ads on a private copy of the documentation, this is not a good reason to litter the public pages.

Apparently our readers find them interesting, too.

Source? A click-through rate of 1% means just that - 99% of visitors do not care about the ads.

The ads are at the bottom, and don't interfere with the content in any way.

They still slow down page loads, and allow Google to track website visitors who do not have an ad blocker. Some graphic ads can be very distracting if they come in sight.

The ads pay for the site hosting.

How much is that?

You can use my unclaimed hotel/airflight DConf funds to pay for hosting if it comes to that. I would rather prefer that than to have my favourite programming language embarass itself down to such a low level as to put ads on the official website. Is D's financial backing so poor that it can't even afford ad-less hosting, like some amateur GeoCities site? I think it's degrading.

[andralex]

FWIW I also agree we should pull the ads. Argument (1) is irrelevant - community's interests should come before some minor personal curiosity. Even if there might be evidence for (2) (is there?), site ads are reviled by a silent majority who won't bother to let us know. There is validity to (4) in the sense that poo in a corner is better than poo in the middle of the room - if the ads were any more prominent the situation would be indeed considerably worse.

That leaves us with (3) - ads pay for site hosting. We should assess how much revenue site ads bring and find some way to replace it.

[dnadlinger]

@CyberShadow, @andralex: +1.

[WalterBright]

site ads are reviled by a silent majority

Are they really? We all accept without comment or notice ads in web services we use every day - google, twitter, reddit, etc. I don't know anyone who refuses to ride the bus because he reviles the ad painted on the side, or anyone who hates airlines because of the ads put in the seat pocket, or refuses to read a magazine because of the ads.

One reason for that is the ads on those do not interfere with the use/enjoyment of the product. I even prefer the "ad supported" Kindle, because the ads are not intrusive in any way, and they are certainly more interesting than that awful screensaver. I raise an eyebrow at the people who post instructions on how to hack the Kindle to disable the ads - what exactly have they accomplished other than having a fun time hacking?

Notice I didn't say ads on TV - because those ads are intrusive and detract from enjoyment of the show. The same goes for "pre-roll" ads on youtube, the various flyover ads on web pages, and the web pages that force you to click-through the ad to get to the content, and the ones that split up a small article into 10 pages just to serve more ads.

We didn't do any of that. A small google ad at the bottom of the page doesn't interfere, doesn't take away, doesn't even perceptibly slow the page load down (I stopped using Amazon ads because they took 40 seconds to load).

I disagree also that an ad is necessarily "poo". I buy hot rod magazines for the purpose of perusing the ads, because they are targeted to what I am interested in. I'm not the only one - a more nuanced view of ads is justified.

I understand there are many people with a pathological distaste of ads. Those people are already using an ad-blocker plugin, so this discussion is irrelevant to them.

[DmitryOlshansky]

08-Sep-2014 06:10, Walter Bright пишет:

site ads are reviled by a silent majority

Are they really? We all accept without comment or notice ads in web
services we use every day - google, twitter, reddit, etc. I don't know
anyone who refuses to ride the bus because he reviles the ad painted
on the side, or anyone who hates airlines because of the ads put in
the seat pocket, or refuses to read a magazine because of the ads.

Please stop. Take a look at all major programming languages web sites.
It's just hilarious to put a bit of ugly adds at the outskirts of our
web pages. Plus unlike magazines/etc. our community doesn't make
revenues out of adds and never planed to (I hope).

Dmitry Olshansky

[ghost]

Just tell us how we can help finance the website, I'd be happy to chip in.

[andralex]

@WalterBright and I have reached an agreement on this: dlang.org will stay ad-free.

[quickfur]

Yay!