Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love
While I was linking to this great Ars Technica article, it was quickly picked up by Hard|OCP and SilentPCReview. The article will most likely hit home for the highly intelligent and very technical MissingRemote visitors we have. The simple rule is that if you enjoy the content a site provides or utilize their forums, please disable any ad-blocking programs you have, such as Ad-Block Plus and NoScript. The sites you enjoy take great strides to provide content and forums for your enjoyment, so you can be assured that they do their best to not be intrusive with any advertising. Personally, I use ABP and NoScript all the time, but I make the effort to disable them on sites I visit frequently.
If you read a site and care about its well being, then you should not
block ads (or you subscribe to sites like Ars that
offer ads-free versions of the site). If a site has advertising you
don’t agree with, don’t go there. I think it is far better to vote with
page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything
in return. I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity
feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people,
the families, the careers that go into producing a website. People talk
about how annoying advertisments are, but I’ll tell you what: it’s a lot
more annoying and frustrating to have to cut staff and cut benefits
because a huge portion of readers block ads. Yet I’ve seen that happen
at dozens of great sites over the last few years, Ars included.