Wired: stop blocking our ads, pay for an ad-free version or go elsewhere

Fair to me. I don't mind turning off the ad blocker as long as the site that I'm visiting isn't being ridiculous with it's ads. Wired use to be one of the worst. Imagine getting a giant ad that literally covered your entire page AND was using Flash. Luckily that has changed and everything looks much cleaner. But it was previous tactics that led me to use an Ad Blocker and you know what? My laptop is old and stank and I can't afford what little CPU processing power I have to be used by your goddamn ads. Sorry.

ZDNet does that. Very annoying.
 
Sounds like Wired will soon be re-titled to .... Extinct
Well, if we're going to do renaming by pun, how about if we go with something more on message?

A couple of my humble suggestions: "unraveled", "disconnected", or "unplugged".

Oddly, I always thought "wired", was most often used, (in contemporary slang anyway), to indicate being high on methamphetamine. In that context, I suppose their new name might be,. "crashed out". :D

Nah...Wireless is more appropriate.
 
Reading a web article without viewing an ad or paying a fee is just like shoplifting. Ad Block users are shoplifters.
That analogy is funnily out of context. My definition of shoplifting is not someone that refuses to watch commercials as they shop the local brick and mortar. The merchandise at the local brick and mortar does not have a free sticker on them with commercials playing all around. This would be the analogy if the local brick and mortar started complaining that shoppers were turning the commercials off as they shop for free. A website giving their content for free, does not make people viewing shoplifters under any condition.

A site that resorts to selling ad-free browsing is a site selling ad space not content. By your analogy the shoplifter would then be shoplifting ad space. The ad space is not why the person visited, so why would they be shoplifting ad space.
 
Actually... I don't understand them, I run a couple of sites and I'm already talking to an Anti-Adblock company to implement their solution in these sites and just circumvent the adblockers and bring nack the lost revenues.
 
Content providers like Wired need to provide content people are willing to pay for.

But what if people aren't willing to pay anything for any content? How many people would pay for TechSpot access, or any other quality site? GameTrailers is closing and that's a site I value, but I still won't pay for it. There's so much free stuff that people have no incentive to pay.
 
But what if people aren't willing to pay anything for any content?

That's completely irrelevant as there is plenty of content that people are willing to pay for.

The problem that Wired is having, and the problem that others are having, is that their content is valuable enough to get views. It isn't valuable enough to generate sales.

If they want money, they need better content.

Techspot is a good example. I would pay for their in-depth hardware reviews. They are top notch and provide me with every bit of information I want prior to making a hardware purchase.

I would not pay for their general news articles because that content doesn't stand out amongst the competition, who all offer the same thing for free.

They've also made some money off of the courses I and others have purchased from the TS store.

If you want money, you need people who want to give it to you. Trying to juice bandwidth with intrusive ads or adopting a "pay up or leave" stance with your readers is a surefire way to send them packing. That's a great plan if you want to go out of business standing on some fake moral high ground. Not so much if you want real growth.
 
Oh I would love to. But it is not always possible. A number of free apps that I use have no paid versions. Fortunately for me these don't throw up ads like crazy and I can live with it. In fact there were a couple that were so ridiculously bad that my Nexus 7 practically died. Got rid of them and it back to normal !
 
lol - you did say you had an active imagination. You may have gone overboard this round though. haha
Well, when I was a mere sprout of a stoner, we used to listen to comedy albums from, "The Firesign Theater", with titles such as, "How Can You Be Two Places at Once, When You're Not Anywhere at All?".

As you can plainly see, my flights of imaginative fancy may be due to my being influenced by psychedelic self medication during my younger days....

And as you should also be able to fathom, that sorts out the conundrum of "somewhere versus elsewhere", quite nicely...:)
 
Well I could stop using an ad blocker, ( Yeah right), but that would put me in the position of have to email all of wired's advertisers and explain that I make it a policy of not purchasing from bandwidth hogging greedy crooks like they probably are, because if their product was any good it wouldn't need advertising to start with.
 
Well I could stop using an ad blocker, ( Yeah right), but that would put me in the position of have to email all of wired's advertisers and explain that I make it a policy of not purchasing from bandwidth hogging greedy crooks like they probably are, because if their product was any good it wouldn't need advertising to start with.
You do realize their email has a spam algorithm same as yours, possibly stronger, right?
 
And if you think about it that is a bit of irony. They block you but want you to lift the block on them.
Only a bit?

I would hazard a guess, judging by this site's general outlook that even if your complaints do not hit the spam folder, they probably do have some machine generated boilerplate to tell you that basically, "want you think doesn't matter".
 
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Techspot is a good example. I would pay for their in-depth hardware reviews. They are top notch and provide me with every bit of information I want prior to making a hardware purchase.

I do think that Techspot is a good example. If it turned sub, most people would be happy to go to Anandtech, The Tech Report or a multitude of other sites which provides pretty much the exact same coverage. Perhaps a few staunch readers will remain, but I'd bet that fewer than subscribe to Wired.
 
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