That Piece Of Crap Hewlett-Packard Ad

[AJenbo]

We had an Office 2010 ad on our page untill i started making alerts on load and every 10 sec warning the user that the site was down and they should contact the admin. Turns out there ad is pinging there server very 10 sec and if it failes it will bring up an alert, and some dayes there server isn't responding

[DeepDayze]

I don't think that's the point, allquixotic. There are two problems here:

1. Many site owners believe that their users owe them something (this site's owner acts the same way). It's the other way around, a site thrives on its users. No users, and it will die.
2. Some people believe that you should turn off adblock if you like some site. That's not going to help unless you think money grows on trees. Money on the Net is earned because people click on stuff AND subsequently spend money. I can turn off adblock and click on ads all day, but I have never bought something on the Internet which was linked to me directly through an ad or an affiliation link. If I do get an affiliation link, I remove the affiliated part because I don't believe the person who linked me should be getting any money out of it. It's a poisoned culture.

I myself am a site owner. Admittedly, it's not a tenth as big as phoronix, but it has its fair share of users. I don't have any ads, and I ask people to donate. I don't get enough donations each month to cover the costs, but as the vps I'm hosted on costs practically nothing (less than 30 usd a month), it's no biggie.

The problem is that people pay too much for hosting and do not use their resources wisely. Practicularily in the US, VPSs are way too expensive. You can get a dedicated server in Germany for US VPS prices. There's no reason for these prices, other than to pseudo-justify having to place obnoxious ads (actually, all ads are obnoxious) on the site and pretty much treat your users like mindless sheep.

I don't care about Michael's lifestyle, that's his thing and has nothing to do with this site. To be honest, I don't care the least bit about benchmarking, either. I only come here to read news about FOSS, and I assume that if this site becomes too much of a hassle to use and reports too much about Macrap or Windows, a better, free (as in free of ads) alternative will arise, and it will be for the better. This is the good part about this world.

Very good post, I myself believe in striking a sensible balance for Michael's desire to make money without alienating the users of the site. Having a site filled with obnoxious ads that interfere with navigation or reading content does more to piss off or end up forcing users to use adblock/flashblock to block the objectionable ads. Ads are a necessary evil for a major site like this one, but done right it'll make everyone happy including Michael himself.

Another thing are the quality of the articles themselves. While Michael's benchmarks are well done and have good visual aids, there are articles that are rather content-free and are more Mac or MS oriented that aren't relevant to the site IMO. The comments in the forums should be a good venue for providing feedback about such articles and Michael should take those comments into consideration where applicable.

[susikala]

...

I can't agree with most of what you wrote. Most of the content here is static, means it can be easily cached and doesn't require a lot of resources. Even if I took what you wrote about getting a server for $250 for true, I'm sure it's an amount this site can more than easily gather through donations, which proves my point.

Why is this site using vbulletin, for example, where most other foss-related sites use a free (and virtually equivalent) FOSS alternative? Here's a way to spare money without changing anything, but I don't see it getting done. I only see bitching around about adblock, the phoronix premium programme being shoved everywhere, overrepetition of internal links I already saw over 10 times, and so on. Mind you, it's something that's developed over time as phoronix has grown in popularity and has somewhat become a monopole in its niche. It is _bad_.

Your comparison with buying a car isn't entirely correct. Sites are something completely modular to use (and you don't buy and 'own' them, you only visit them). You come and use whatever you want, and for you, only that portion of the site is relevant. I don't see why I should donate, or see/click on ads (if what you said about it is true, which I don't believe; I have yet to see myself money paid for page impressions), for something I don't even use, need, or ever asked for; something many Linux developers themselves often take with a very big grain of salt; and something that is advertised and driven with more than a healthy amount of populism. For me, those things aren't relevant and not needed. I can be still considered a user, because a user isn't someone who uses all the aspects of a site, it's someone who uses at least one.

I stand by what I said before; if the site's owner forces the users to pay/view ads for something they may not be interested in, or if they turn on their ad block user filter (which I doubt exists, but I don't mind being proven wrong), or if they continue using such a bashing and degrading attitude toward people who use their computer the way they want (which is the true spirit of FOSS, as someone here ironically mentioned) they will lose a whole fraction of users. This is the reason it hasn't been done yet. The clientelle here is too sensitive for such draconian attitudes, and Michael knows it.

[cookiecaper]

I know I've said this several times, but often on a new browser install I won't even notice ads until I come to Phoronix. Phoronix is almost always the site that pushes me over to installing AdBlock. *Everything* on here is so obtrusive, from the highlighted tool-tip words, to the Flash interstitials, to the 3-4 large animated (generally Flash too) square blocks on each page. Frankly I'm surprised that *anyone* browses Phoronix without AdBlock -- it's practically unusable with the ads in place.

[allquixotic]

I don't think that's the point, allquixotic. There are two problems here:

1. Many site owners believe that their users owe them something (this site's owner acts the same way). It's the other way around, a site thrives on its users. No users, and it will die.
2. Some people believe that you should turn off adblock if you like some site. That's not going to help unless you think money grows on trees. Money on the Net is earned because people click on stuff AND subsequently spend money. I can turn off adblock and click on ads all day, but I have never bought something on the Internet which was linked to me directly through an ad or an affiliation link. If I do get an affiliation link, I remove the affiliated part because I don't believe the person who linked me should be getting any money out of it. It's a poisoned culture.

Actually, Michael makes some fraction of a cent each time you click on an ad, even if you don't buy anything. He also makes money per ten-thousand (or hundred-thousand?) ad views, even without anyone interacting with them. The advertisers are willing to pay even for the off chance that one or two people out of 10,000 page hits are going to look at their ad and think about their company and products, even if they don't want to buy it by clicking the ad.

I myself am a site owner. Admittedly, it's not a tenth as big as phoronix, but it has its fair share of users. I don't have any ads, and I ask people to donate. I don't get enough donations each month to cover the costs, but as the vps I'm hosted on costs practically nothing (less than 30 usd a month), it's no biggie.

The problem is that people pay too much for hosting and do not use their resources wisely. Practicularily in the US, VPSs are way too expensive. You can get a dedicated server in Germany for US VPS prices. There's no reason for these prices, other than to pseudo-justify having to place obnoxious ads (actually, all ads are obnoxious) on the site and pretty much treat your users like mindless sheep.

You don't have to lecture me on regional server costs. I know it for a fact. I've paid for hosting in Seattle; to get a decent beefy box costs about $500+ per month. To get the same or even better hardware in Germany (e.g. Hetzner) costs about $180/month. I've been "exploiting" the affordability of German and UK hosting for quite a while.

What you have to realize is that for a site as large as Michael's, a VPS won't do. Plausibly, one dedicated server might not even do, unless it's a quad-CPU second-gen Nehalem Xeon system with 128GB of RAM and an iSCSI attached SAS 10krpm disk array.... Yeah, that hardware is freaking expensive no matter where you rent it from (or buy it, or whatever). So people usually end up buying a cluster of servers instead. Fairly high-end servers. Like, 24GB of RAM, one or two Nehalem-ish Xeons, and either capacious or fast HDDs depending on their storage needs. Those type of servers cost about $250 a pop, even in Germany. In the US, you don't even wanna know.

I don't care about Michael's lifestyle, that's his thing and has nothing to do with this site. To be honest, I don't care the least bit about benchmarking, either.

What you care about, and what Michael has to spend money on in order to take this site in the direction he wants, are two different things. If you say you only care about Honda selling you a steering wheel, and you don't want an entire car, are they going to break down a new Civic and sell you the steering wheel for $250? Or will they make you buy the entire car for $20k+. Yeah. What's more likely.

Michael's site is not juts about FOSS news. It's about that and benchmarking. Benchmarking costs money, because a large percentage of the hardware he uses, he has to buy. If he's lucky he occasionally gets a CPU from Intel or a GPU from AMD. But he has to buy system chassis, power supplies, motherboards, RAM, disks, keyboards mice and monitors, and all that other jazz. These are business expenses for him, on top of his server expenses and travel.

If you discard even all the stuff he spends money on "for fun" (e.g. lederhosens and German beer), he's still got quite a burn rate as far as operational expenses. Hardware for benchmarking, large-scale dedicated hosting (much larger than you're aware is even possible if you are thinking in terms of VPSes), and travel to important FOSS events. It's a lot of money, I'm sure.

You can't just take one part of Michael and just pay for that. If he can't fund his entire business, the whole thing will sink. You could wish all day long that he only do one particular thing and stop benchmarking or stop traveling, but that's not how his business is run, so it's too bad for you.

He has to pay for his business somehow, and while I don't think ads are the best way, I think there's a way to attain a happy medium by having ads that aren't irritating, and are as relevant as possible to the people viewing them. Maybe static banner ads (no animated GIFs, no flash) along the top and bottom that advertise Linux vendor things? Maybe Red Hat and Novell could pay for ads advertising their enterprise offerings. Oracle too.

A donation model of business will never work if that's your only source of income, especially not for a for-profit company. People talk a lot about donating on the internet, but in reality, people donate a lot less money (and a lot less often) than they say they will. Trust me, I run a site that gets donations, and I can't tell you how many times I've gone and spent a lot of time to do something to make someone happy, then let them see it, because they said they'd donate if I did it... well, I did it, and they didn't donate. Instead they just complained about the next thing that came to their mind, as if to string me along from one issue to the next like a fool, hoping they'll drop a pittance in my lap.

No thanks.

[mcirsta]

I'll still use my ad-block plus

I think this site is great so I supported it by donating some money. It wasn't that easy, there's no obvious donate button on the front page or anything ( would that be too hard ? ).
I will not however disable adblock and I'm not really interested in phoronix plus for now.
My suggestion Michael would be to just put the donate button where people can see it and remind people once in a while to give some $ if they like the site. Even if people donate 2 $ it's still something ....
Also posting direct links to products on Amazon or Newegg should help.

[susikala]

Exactly. He gets his ads through syndication through IDG Network, which is a modern, evil evolution of a WebRing from the 90's. IDG brings lots of advertisers to him, but he has to accept their fairly liberal policy on what type of ads are permitted to be shown.

I want Michael to be able to continue to afford his crazy lifestyle (moving around all the time, buying tons of hardware, drinking expensive German beer, etc) as much as the next guy, but sometimes I think if you try too hard to make every last red cent you can out of a business, you end up screwing over customers and ruining your reputation, and you do worse in the end. This is one of those cases, I think: make less money in the short term by having advertisers pay less to host non-obtrusive ads, but in the long term, you will win in terms of customer goodwill. I definitely get that kind of vibe from LWN.net, but they write on a distinctly different topic than Phoronix (most of the time), so there's room for both sites to coexist.

I don't think that's the point, allquixotic. There are two problems here:

1. Many site owners believe that their users owe them something (this site's owner acts the same way). It's the other way around, a site thrives on its users. No users, and it will die.
2. Some people believe that you should turn off adblock if you like some site. That's not going to help unless you think money grows on trees. Money on the Net is earned because people click on stuff AND subsequently spend money. I can turn off adblock and click on ads all day, but I have never bought something on the Internet which was linked to me directly through an ad or an affiliation link. If I do get an affiliation link, I remove the affiliated part because I don't believe the person who linked me should be getting any money out of it. It's a poisoned culture.

I myself am a site owner. Admittedly, it's not a tenth as big as phoronix, but it has its fair share of users. I don't have any ads, and I ask people to donate. I don't get enough donations each month to cover the costs, but as the vps I'm hosted on costs practically nothing (less than 30 usd a month), it's no biggie.

The problem is that people pay too much for hosting and do not use their resources wisely. Practicularily in the US, VPSs are way too expensive. You can get a dedicated server in Germany for US VPS prices. There's no reason for these prices, other than to pseudo-justify having to place obnoxious ads (actually, all ads are obnoxious) on the site and pretty much treat your users like mindless sheep.

I don't care about Michael's lifestyle, that's his thing and has nothing to do with this site. To be honest, I don't care the least bit about benchmarking, either. I only come here to read news about FOSS, and I assume that if this site becomes too much of a hassle to use and reports too much about Macrap or Windows, a better, free (as in free of ads) alternative will arise, and it will be for the better. This is the good part about this world.

[allquixotic]

I don't think Michael has that much control over the ad system that he can control the size of them or stop Flash-based ads (and I don't think the ads would pay as much without being able to be flashy and obtrusive). That's what Flashblock (or just running your browser without Flash) is for.

Exactly. He gets his ads through syndication through IDG Network, which is a modern, evil evolution of a WebRing from the 90's. IDG brings lots of advertisers to him, but he has to accept their fairly liberal policy on what type of ads are permitted to be shown.

I want Michael to be able to continue to afford his crazy lifestyle (moving around all the time, buying tons of hardware, drinking expensive German beer, etc) as much as the next guy, but sometimes I think if you try too hard to make every last red cent you can out of a business, you end up screwing over customers and ruining your reputation, and you do worse in the end. This is one of those cases, I think: make less money in the short term by having advertisers pay less to host non-obtrusive ads, but in the long term, you will win in terms of customer goodwill. I definitely get that kind of vibe from LWN.net, but they write on a distinctly different topic than Phoronix (most of the time), so there's room for both sites to coexist.

[DanL]

I don't mind the ads as long as they are well placed (preferably at top and bottom of the pages) and not very big. NO Flash ads, please...and in return I'll gladly add Phoronix to Adblock's whitelist

I don't think Michael has that much control over the ad system that he can control the size of them or stop Flash-based ads (and I don't think the ads would pay as much without being able to be flashy and obtrusive). That's what Flashblock (or just running your browser without Flash) is for.

[DeepDayze]

I don't mind the ads as long as they are well placed (preferably at top and bottom of the pages) and not very big. NO Flash ads, please...and in return I'll gladly add Phoronix to Adblock's whitelist