darthmoogahttp://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/how-to-get-rid-of-poppressed/page/2?replies=38
Many issues have already been discussed about the disappointment WordPress posters are feeling at the sudden appearance of Poppressed ads on their blogs - and I can really empathize with folks whose blogs have a strong text bent. The pictorial ads just warp the visual space to a point where the blog is no longer what it was - but I digress a little.
My intent is highlight for management and the dynamic at play in some WordPress user's disappointment here - I being one of them. The issue of ads being promised in initial disclosures by WordPress during a user's signing in kind of moot. With the exception of pro-bloggers or those transferring pre-existing blogs, most people start small. A post here, a post there and joy - and then the whole thing begins to snowball and before you know it you have posts that are mini-web sensations on Google and yonder. Mini cyber landmarks, if you will. And while you are doing this the creative matrix is uncluttered and studiedly non-commercial, despite WordPress's initial caveat that it reserves the right to stick ads wherever and whenever it wants.
The WordPress management should have taken the un-besmirchable road (if you will excuse the coinage) and worked with human psychology instead of against it. What would this have entailed? Well, having place holders for the so called ads could have gone a long way towards alleviating the discomfort some of the WordPress users are experiencing right now. Go Daddy (not the best of ) does it on its free webstarter pages: i.e. it clearly puts its plugs at the top and bottom of free web starter pages and nobody sooner or later. Ad place holders - even with non-descript WordPress plugs - would have averted this whole brouhaha. The shock by posters of seeing Mrs. Jay-Z with her t*ts almost hanging out is real - especially for people whose content is antithetical to that. Beyond that is just the raw commercial rub and the distinctive patina these ads lend to people's blogs.
The promise of removing these offending ...... does not pass the sniff test. Management DID NOT WORK WITH HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY HERE. And they are the pros who really should in the name of being good, credible businessmen.
WordPress, is management doesn't know has a certain appeal that goes beyond dollars and cents. Call it the Craigslist appeal. The introduction of these Poppressed ads after eons of non-appearance goes against that Craigslist ethos. It evokes the pain of a Brazilian wax in places where the sun don't usually shine.
Extreme Cautionary Tale: Citibank and perhaps other banks too - has a 7 day withholding rule which stipulates:
“We reserve the right to require seven (7) days advance notice before
permitting a withdrawal from all checking, savings and money market
accounts. We currently do not exercise this right and have not exercised
it in the past.”
Guess what would happen if the TARP addled-bank started trying to enforce that rule?
While the Poppressed development is not of the same order and magnitude, it is distressing all the same. And I, for one, am seriously considering leaving WordPress with some of my more serious content and shelling the bucks to have it hosted on some other hosting site. Note that I WILL NOT PAY WordPress to remove the graffitous ads on an annual basis. Pure principle here. Nothing to do with nickels and dimes.
I may not be the canary in the coal mine, but trust me, WordPress is gonna lose a lot of serious content. The dreck will stay - along with the real big guys - and a hole in WordPress's ecosystem will be created. If that's what the management wants, so be it.
My name is Mooga, but you can call me Darth.
disembedded
