Flash ad on home page
 

Dear Jeremy,

Please review the flash ads that are now playing on the home page. I just viewed a flash banner that had a penguin with a green head band firing a rocket at something.

Green head bands and rocket launchers are iconic images of both Hamas and Hizbullah.

Perhaps this is a visual pun on the Open source warfare metaphor but associating the Linux mascot with Hamas and Hizbullah "colors" is not something that I would recommend.

Thorn168

Thanks for the feedback. To be fair, the company in question has light green as its color and I think the context of the ad is pretty clear. You may want to contact them directly if you think it's an issue.

--jeremy

That ad is no longer showing.....What is the name of the company?

I didn't catch the name of the company because the flash rolled over before I could see it.

If you have the contact info I am willing to contact them about it, "just because it is one of the those things".

Thanks,

Thorn168

Judging by the description, it was probably an Untangle ad. At least 3 Untangle employees actually participate here at LQ, so it's very possible they'll see this thread. To be honest, I have seen the ad many times (both on LQ and elsewhere) and did not associated the same thing you did when I saw it.

--jeremy

I finally saw the ad--I see nothing wrong with it. The color green and a picture of a rocket are pretty generic stuff.

Green peace members wear green bandanas, but they are not Hamas or Hizbullah. AFAIK, LQ does not support none of the conflicting sides so it's not an issue. Would an ad about America's Army be correct then? I could also object.

OK I guess I am just reading something in the ad that was not intended to be there.

Hey Jeremy. Love the site. Have for many years.

Dude - what's up with the ads. I have nothing against generating some revenue but man - what's it going to take to beg you to get rid of Flash content?

Yes, I know it's easy enough to turn off in Firefox, but damn man - I'm watching the LAMEST ever Solaris ad I've ever seen in my life.

EDIT: It's not so much the ad itself, but the fact that it spams three different places on the page, and slows any non-plugin enabled Firefox browser to a screeching halt with it's load times. BLEH! /cry

'It's Open Source, it's free'
'It runs on all three'
'It's got something for you and me'
'Come to us and see'

Are you frikkin' kidding me man?

Do I have to donate to help keep you guys in business or something? Please don't let stuff like this go under the radar. Your forum is a fantastic tool - would hate to see it go to waste with junk like this.

Other than that, keep up the good work. Great and fun site.

We are certainly sensitive to what ads we run, but the ad in question here is highly relevant to the LQ audience. In addition to having one of the most stringent ad policies, we generally run significantly less ads than most other sites of similar size. We even give you a way to completely disable ads for the entire site (http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/member.html).

--jeremy

b1f30,
It appears that for $35/yr. you can turn them off, as well as ALL the rest of the LQ ads.

jeremy,
If I do manage to find the $35 in my Social Security retirement budget, can I disable only the flash ads? They are the only ones that have bothered me so far. I agree that the usual LQ ad is nicely targeted, & therefore useful to the membership.


I have, in another thread, accused flash ads of making LQ "look just as unprofessional & trashy as avatars would". Because I referred to the bunch of Splunk ads that were bothering me, my comment seemed disingenuous. Because the thread was about avatars, I did not pursue the issue.

In fact, my objection was not to Splunk flash ads, but to Splunk flash ads, indeed to ALL flash ads. I find their motion distracting, & the distraction unprofessional. This may be a brain defect, an undiagnosed very mild epilepsy, but I can't concentrate on a page where I can see the motion of a flash ad -- the distraction makes it unusable.

I have solved my personal problem by disabling flash. I accept that that means I can't use YouTube. So far, LQ is way more important than YouTube, so that isn't a great loss. If I ever change my mind, I'll simply track down all LQ flash ad sources, or even all LQ ad sources, & block them at my perimeter firewall. dnsmasq will make that very easy. I hope it doesn't come that because I want to see the static ads & support LQ by viewing them.

WHOA WHOA... I take it back.... MORE ADS PLEASE!

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com...zIIHq7Si4TRpKw

:-D

ROFLMAO!

That is a good one!

Cheers