IceForce said:
I'm still puzzled about why that rule even exists. Do they think they'll scare people away from using that software?
Is banning people from your site really the best way of dealing with people who block your ads?
The core of why it exists is that people who block ads are leeching resources, encouraging/enabling someone else to do the same is close to directly stealing from those of us who make a living off of this website. While we would all like to have a mutually enjoyable discussion about our views on the topic, our rent money makes it less flexible then most topics. While there's plenty of misunderstanding or non-personal reasons for running an ad blocker, we're generally disinterested in spending money on resources for these self proclaimed leeches. Please respect this.
The core of why we still insist on enforcing the advocacy rule in a thread like this is because people who can't read and comprehend the rules, so still casually break them are not people we want cluttering up such a discussion. It's very closely related to low content rule tolerance - there's acceptable levels of "low content", but it very quickly erodes out of reasonable boundaries when exceptions are made. There's thousands of people here, the moderators do their best to filter out those who can't follow basic instructions or take the effort to adjust their important internet words to the topic at hand. There's no
discussion spawned from such admissions, only cheer-leading, which does not help keep such a volatile topic readable.
If your argument vitally requires you to go against the policies we try to enforce for a readable discussion, please refrain from posting or maybe ask for assistance with phrasing your viewpoint from a neutral angle.
Also, moderators can make mistakes; because like most people, they are people. We do our best to be consistent (not having a litany of exceptions is part of that) Please make use of the appeals system linked in your warning message if you feel there was a legitimate error.
Warnings are just that, warnings. They don't do anything but collapse the one post (so others can hopefully see what to avoid) and send a message to the user. I'm sorry if that is unacceptable, but after many years of trying more lenient methods of dealing with large quantities of people having discussions and trying to get dissenting viewpoints banned, these policies tend to be the most reasonable/fair to all involved.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
IceForce said:
One would think such a site would want to take such feedback on board, to avoid people adblocking or simply leaving the site altogether.
We hate bad/obnoxious ads and will report them internally if we see them. We often don't see every ad on the site, so if something is particularly egregious, please take a screenshot if possible along with the domain or URL of the ad and post the information in the Tech Team group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/chat/Tech-Team]. We'll forward it along.
We've managed to get many ads toned back in how obnoxious they are, or disabled entirely (occasionally we get "they paid for that", but at least that's idiocy we're aware of so it generally doesn't block site content/auto play/other terrible things). People VERY RARELY bother to mention an ad with issues rather then block everything and say nothing, so we appreciate it when things are said.
We want people to enjoy viewing the site, and do our best to make it tolerable in the face of the only real revenue stream that pays to host websites. If you enjoy our content, please let us know exactly when/how things like ads get in your way.
