I know that SummitPost earns revenue by placing ads on the pages I read, and I accept that. I understand that this is part of enjoying a "free" service.

Us users must mind our manners when posting in the forums, and we must keep our audience in mind when writing articles and other submissions.
In the same way, advertisers must remain sensitive to the users' enjoyment of the SP pages, when designing their ads to catch our attention.

My Firefox browser allows me to install "Adblock Plus", an add-on that can filter any image or frame from any web page that I download.
When I add a URL to Adblock's list, I still see the empty rectangle, but I am no longer aware of what was there.

I have the power to block any ad from my browser, any time, at will.
I have not done so.
Until today:

1. There's a talking video embedded in the bottom-right corner of page 1 (I think): the URL is http://c3.openx.org/ ...
2. While I'm at it, I've also blocked rhyang's red-and-purple blob: his URL is http://i42.tinypic.com/ ...

I would not have noticed the video except for the sound-track. Now it's gone!

Oh! Does anyone know of a way to block that annoying red-and-purple blob with internet explorer? That would be a great enhancement.

After those initial ad-blocks, I realized that I did not actually know who was in my list. So I deleted them all, and actually the ads on SummitPost are not a problem to me at all. So I decided to cool-it and let things happen. For a while.

Today I opened a "forum" page, and a vocal dialogue started telling everybody about a dish-washer (or something). It's a video, on the bottom of the forum page.

It got the AdBlock Axe right away!

Here's the URL I've put on my list:
http://c3.openx.org/ "Industrial Strength Ad Servicing".
Their title is "Ad server solution for publishers"

Gone!

This one works good too, it blocks all scripts so video and animations etc go away from any site until you allow them. Rather than "blocking" what you don't want, this blocks everything and then you tell it what to allow. The first time you go to site you trust you will have to tell it to allow that site, for example ESPN won't work right until you allow it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/

It's unfortunate that summitpost is allowing video ads on the site. I hate getting blasted with audio that cannot be turned off (other than turning off the sound on my speakers) to hear about laundry detergent or some other spam.

Visual ads are one thing -- you can read them or not -- but video ads that run automatically are over the top.

Ironic, from a site where moderators went ballistic about posting an announcement about a climbing-related book under the "Gear" category ("An ideal section for classifieds, as well.")

WingLady wrote:It's unfortunate that summitpost is allowing video ads on the site. I hate getting blasted with audio that cannot be turned off (other than turning off the sound on my speakers) to hear about laundry detergent or some other spam.

Visual ads are one thing -- you can read them or not -- but video ads that run automatically are over the top.

Agreed. It's disgusting, this culture that finds it acceptable to use more and more pervasive advertising methods. If you're in business and you can't sell your product without being obnoxious and annoying the crap out of your fellow humans and generally being a nuisance to society, you really don't deserve to be part of society. Die. Shrivel up. Blow away.

I just hit the reload button and the annoying talking ads go away most of the time.