Wikipedia and Their Awesome CSS Skills



  • Presented without comment:

    (Click to embiggen.) (Screenshot actually sent to me by a friend who doesn't have a DailyWTF account.)



  •  If I promise to read the personal appeal from Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris, do they promise to lose the banner?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    (Screenshot actually sent to me by a friend who doesn't have a DailyWTF account.)

    You mention that just so that none of us should inadvertently think you were actually reading about medieval Italian neoplatonist philosophers?



  • @da Doctah said:

     If I promise to read the personal appeal from Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris, do they promise to lose the banner?

    That banner made me feel guilty about using Wikipedia for free. 

     

     

    So I installed AdBlock.

     



  • At least it looks the same on all the browsers.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    So I installed AdBlock.

    Some sites (Ultimate Guitar in particular) will show an annoying popup telling you not to adblock.

    So I add that popup to the blacklist.



  • Wow. If that dude looks anything like a typical "programmer", then it's no wonder the vast majority of them are borderline aspies.



  • What does a Wikipedia programmer even do? Their software hasn't changed since it was founded. There's still no WYSIWYG editor, there's still no way of viewing deleted articles, there's still-- oh wait those changes would remove "power" from the Admins and so they'll never happen.



  • @ltouroumov said:

    At least it looks the same on all the browsers.

    Pretty loose definition of "same" you have there... There, let me fix that for you:

    @ltouroumov said:

    At least it looks crappy on all the browsers.

    Hm... can do better:

    @ltouroumov said:

    LOOKS CRAPPY ON ALL THE BROWSERS!

    There, now it's good.



  • Ok guys, you'll have to clue me in. Is it crappy because the button's border overlaps with the text? Because it seems perfectly fine to me - the text is still readable.



  • If we're going to play "spot the WTF", you'll find my patience flushed down the toilet real quicklike.



  • Pehaps it would have been a better idea for Wikipedia to get Mr. Harris to use his skills to make their ad campaign less awful. Like, actually making the "close" button work.

    Also I don't understand why Wikipedia does this. They say "no advertising" but this IS an advertisement in a way. Why don't they just put a goddamned PayPal button on every page like every other website that relies on donations?



  • @Mo6eB said:

    Ok guys, you'll have to clue me in. Is it crappy because the button's border overlaps with the text?

    I believe that is what my friend was getting at, yes.

    @Mo6eB said:

    Because it seems perfectly fine to me - the text is still readable.

    Because "readable" is all that matters? Christ, you have some low-ass standards.



  • @nexekho said:

    Some sites (Ultimate Guitar in particular) will show an annoying popup telling you not to adblock.
    So I never go back to thoses sites.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @nexekho said:

    Some sites (Ultimate Guitar in particular) will show an annoying popup telling you not to adblock.
    So I never go back to thoses sites.

    That's probably what they're after.

    Obligatory explanation that people who block ads are dicks. I don't feel like typing it up again, but just imagine I did.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    @nexekho said:

    Some sites (Ultimate Guitar in particular) will show an annoying popup telling you not to adblock.
    So I never go back to thoses sites.

    That's probably what they're after.

    Obligatory explanation that people who block ads are dicks. I don't feel like typing it up again, but just imagine I did.

    And I don't feel like cuing the obligatory and similarly doubtable comeback about how I wouldn't have bought the advertised products or even followed the banner links anyway.



  • @derula said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @El_Heffe said:

    @nexekho said:

    Some sites (Ultimate Guitar in particular) will show an annoying popup telling you not to adblock.
    So I never go back to thoses sites.

    That's probably what they're after.

    Obligatory explanation that people who block ads are dicks. I don't feel like typing it up again, but just imagine I did.

    And I don't feel like cuing the obligatory and similarly doubtable comeback about how I wouldn't have bought the advertised products or even followed the banner links anyway.

    Or the massive security hole that is letting strangers-of-strangers embed content, often in Flash of all things, in pages you browse.

    You mentioned a while back your home machine boots slower than your supposedly loaded-with-junk work machine. If you browse without a good adblock, it's really no surprise...



  • @derula said:

    And I don't feel like cuing the obligatory and similarly doubtable comeback about how I wouldn't have bought the advertised products or even followed the banner links anyway.

    And then in this THEORETICAL argument, I'd have to point out that:

    1) It doesn't matter, as your eyeballs on the ad still holds value even if you do not click the ad. (Hell, there's an entire branch of advertising based on this, so-called "brand advertising".)

    2) It also doesn't matter because the host of the website has politely said (implied) to you, "the tradeoff for reading this content is looking at ads" and you are saying "fuck you" to them in response.

    It's a good thing we aren't having this tiresome debate.



  • @nexekho said:

    Or the massive security hole that is letting strangers-of-strangers embed content, often in Flash of all things, in pages you browse.

    You mentioned a while back your home machine boots slower than your supposedly loaded-with-junk work machine. If you browse without a good adblock, it's really no surprise...

    You do realize blocking Flash and/or disabling JavaScript is a completely different issue than blocking ads, right? Apples, meet Oranges!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    host of the website has politely said (implied) to you, "the tradeoff for reading this content is looking at ads" and you are saying "fuck you" to them in response.
    No, I have said to them in response "You have deliberately made your advertising so obnoxious and annoying that It's difficult to concentrate on the actual content of the page -- so fuck you".



  • @El_Heffe said:

    No, I have said to them in response "You have deliberately made your advertising so obnoxious and annoying that It's difficult to concentrate on the actual content of the page -- so fuck you".

    The only way to effectively make that response is to stop viewing the content. Otherwise, you're not making any statement at all. You're just being a fucking dick.

    Additional: how do you know the advertising is obnoxious and annoying if you block the ads? So you're full of shit on that little point, as well.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You do realize blocking Flash and/or disabling JavaScript is a completely different issue than blocking ads, right? Apples, meet Oranges!
    If you're blocking Flash, you're pretty much using Adblock anyway. That's my experience from using University machines without Adblock. Everywhere uses Flash. Not that maybe 10% of the ads I see are genuine ads for products or services, but SMILEY CENTRAL and Make Yourself A Cartoon! When big names like YouTube are hosting ads like that and big names like Gizmodo are having their ad servers hacked to driveby download, I would argue it's unsafe NOT to use Adblock.



  • @nexekho said:

    If you're blocking Flash, you're pretty much using Adblock anyway.

    If you're blocking Flash, and the ad server doesn't have a failover, then fine-- no ads. I have no issues with that. But that's not what the term "ad blocking" implies, it's a completely unrelated issue. Conflating two completely unrelated issues is usually not an effective debate technique.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @derula said:
    And I don't feel like cuing the obligatory and similarly doubtable comeback about how I wouldn't have bought the advertised products or even followed the banner links anyway.

    And then in this THEORETICAL argument, I'd have to point out that:

    1) It doesn't matter, as your eyeballs on the ad still holds value even if you do not click the ad. (Hell, there's an entire branch of advertising based on this, so-called "brand advertising".)

    2) It also doesn't matter because the host of the website has politely said (implied) to you, "the tradeoff for reading this content is looking at ads" and you are saying "fuck you" to them in response.

    It's a good thing we aren't having this tiresome debate.

    See! That's why I didn't actually say it, because I wanted to spare you writing up those points I already knew of and even semi-agree. Hell, even if I had said my point aloud it wouldn't have made it a real argument because I wouldn't have tried to defend it. Stop acting like you're the king of the fucking world for averting an argument that would never have been one, had you not implied that you didn't want to make it one. Geez.



  • @derula said:

    See! That's why I didn't actually say it, because I wanted to spare you writing up those points I already knew of and even semi-agree. Hell, even if I had said my point aloud it wouldn't have made it a real argument because I wouldn't have tried to defend it. Stop acting like you're the king of the fucking world for averting an argument that would never have been one, had you not implied that you didn't want to make it one. Geez.

    It's actually a very sophisticated up down all around meta-troll.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Additional: how do you know the advertising is obnoxious and annoying if you block the ads? So you're full of shit on that little point, as well.

    Haven't we gotten beyond giving ads the benefit of the doubt? </p. <p> The two types of ad that I simply cannot stand are those with any sort of animation (usually flash, of course) and the ones that double underline, and cause a popup if the mouse ever goes over them. I haven't been running an ad blocker lately, but whenever I come across a new server serving up those fucking popups, my hosts file grows a little bit bigger.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @derula said:
    See! That's why I didn't actually say it, because I wanted to spare you writing up those points I already knew of and even semi-agree. Hell, even if I had said my point aloud it wouldn't have made it a real argument because I wouldn't have tried to defend it. Stop acting like you're the king of the fucking world for averting an argument that would never have been one, had you not implied that you didn't want to make it one. Geez.

    It's actually a very sophisticated up down all around meta-troll.

    That's true, but I've been SpactateSwamp the whole time!



  • @boomzilla said:

    The two types of ad that I simply cannot stand are those with any sort of animation (usually flash, of course) and the ones that double underline, and cause a popup if the mouse ever goes over them. I haven't been running an ad blocker lately, but whenever I come across a new server serving up those fucking popups, my hosts file grows a little bit bigger.

    I have third as well: Ads hosted by shitty CDN which is down when the actual site is up. Like 99% of the time the site won't load until the ad request times out.

    I don't use hosts file for those, but the Opera's content blocker. Tho, I also generally won't bother blocking if I'm visiting that site just once.

    Currently my urlfilter.ini is 61 lines long and doesn't include any generic (*ad* etc) ban. It does include some ad networks tho (like tradedoubler).



  •  my hosts file is around 600k - almost the size of conventional memory required by command and conquer



  • @boomzilla said:

    the []ads] that double underline, and cause a popup if the mouse ever goes over them

    Oh I hate those, as in want to stab them with a rusty spoon.

    @boomzilla said:

    whenever I come across a new server serving up those fucking popups, my hosts file grows a little bit bigger.

    I use a custom proxy.pac to redirect my browser to a server which instantly returns HTTP 403. I find this easier to maintain in my case.



  • I use firebug to temporarily delete a particularly obnoxious ad that really distracts from reading the article, but usually I do nothing.



  • @derula said:

    That's true, but I've been SpactateSwamp the whole time!


    Filed under: made, Fucking, TRUE, hell, Content is king, points.internet, points["internet"]++, how many tags will I put on this post geez, we already knew that, internet.points

    Your script deserves a raise. ;)



  • @bannedfromcoding said:

    @derula said:
    That's true, but I've been SpactateSwamp the whole time!


    Filed under: made, Fucking, TRUE, hell, Content is king, points.internet, points["internet"]++, how many tags will I put on this post geez, we already knew that, internet.points

    Your script deserves a raise. ;)

    It anticipated that and already gave itself Internet points, so I consider it done.



  •  @blakeyrat said:

    there's still no way of viewing deleted articles
    Yes, when you delete an article because it is heavily biaised, does an apology of nazism, call to kill people, is insulting or can bring any other legal troubles to wikipedia services, it's probably a good idea that people are still able to read it by just mentionning on top "actually this article does not exist anymore" ....



  • @boomzilla said:

    The two types of ad that I simply cannot stand are those with any sort of animation (usually flash, of course) and the ones that double underline, and cause a popup if the mouse ever goes over them.
    Also: ads that appear in a layer on top of the rest of the content, covering the entire f-ing article you're trying to read. And then they go and put a little "x" icon in the upper right corner, but that one is just there to mock you, because it does not mean "close", it means "open this ad, and two dozen more, in a new browser window, and subscribe me to a bunch of spam mailing lists while you're at it".

    On the other hand, I don't mind banners around the content, not even if they're animated. Those are taken care of by my own built-in filters.

    Because I am aware that web site operators need money to keep their services running, I used to run adblock with a very liberal policy, starting with an empty rule list, and only putting stuff in there that really annoyed me by actually disturbing my reading experience. Besides the pop-in-front ads and the double-underline pseudo-links, about the only other thing that (dis)qualified was stuff that started blaring away with sound unasked-for as soon as the page was loaded.

    That was, until I caugt a nasty drive-by trojan from some compromised banner ad. On that day, I'm lost my tolerance and started using a full adblock rule list. I'm just not going to expose myself to that kind of vulnerability again.



  • @Anonymouse said:

    And then they go and put a little "x" icon in the upper right corner, but that one is just there to mock you, because it does not mean "close", it means "open this ad, and two dozen more, in a new browser window, and subscribe me to a bunch of spam mailing lists while you're at it".
     

    You're overreacting.

    But the overlay ad is indeed the most horribly obnoxious of all ads and a good reason to quit the site entirely.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    But the overlay ad is indeed the most horribly obnoxious of all ads and a good reason to quit the site entirely.

    They kinda suck, but most of them go away pretty quickly, and you can get on with whatever you were doing. The worst are the supposedly contextual ads that are usually double green underlined that pop up with an ad for some stock fund, or something else that's pretty unrelated to anything. It's hard to express how angry these make me. I've been very close to going back to full blown ad blocking because of them. I'd almost rather turn off my spam filter than be subjected to those ads.



  • @boomzilla said:

    I've been very close to going back to full blown ad blocking because of them.
     

    You can probably snipe them with a shot of Greasemonkey and/or Stylish.



  • @tchize said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    there's still no way of viewing deleted articles
    Yes, when you delete an article because it is heavily biaised, does an apology of nazism, call to kill people, is insulting or can bring any other legal troubles to wikipedia services, it's probably a good idea that people are still able to read it by just mentionning on top "actually this article does not exist anymore" ....

    That's a good point.

    But what if the article deleted is simply a stub that didn't develop fast enough for their tastes? Or a really long, lovingly-written article on something they consider "non-encyclopedic"? Or a long, lovingly-written article with no references? Or a business that happens to compete with some Wiki admin's business?

    Look, if Wiki admins didn't use deletion as a way of solving all of their problems, I'd agree with you. But right now, Wiki's deleting tons and tons of useful content... sure they don't consider it useful, but maybe I do. If someone starts a stub article, they don't bother giving it a few months to grow anymore, they just delete the thing the first time an admin spots it. If an article is written perfectly but on a topic they don't like, delete. And of course the corrupt Admins delete articles for little or no rational reasons at all. I don't know if you've gotten the news, but Wiki's run by douchebags now.

    Besides, Admins can already see deleted articles, so that's a pretty severe power imbalance for the encyclopedia "anybody can edit".



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Or a business that happens to compete with some Wiki admin's business?

    What wiki?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I don't know if you've gotten the news, but Wiki's run by douchebags now.
     

    Was there a time when it wasn't run by douchebags?

    That's a serious question. In my personal experience, people who habitually edit Wikipedia are the kind of people who use their anonymity as an excuse to act like self-important fuckwits. Sure, there are some normal people among them, but was there ever a time when those normal people weren't a small minority?



  • @blakeyrat said:


    2) It also doesn't matter because the host of the website has politely said (implied) to you, "the tradeoff for reading this content is looking at ads" and you are saying "fuck you" to them in response.

    Just hold on a cotton-pickin minute: exactly what content are you talking about here?  You mean the content that we all write and contribute and don't get paid anything for? 

    I don't think the argument is very strong for sites that are full of user-generated content such as this one.  Sites with real journalism, sites that create their own content, they might have some justification in using that argument, but not sites that are basically volunteer efforts through and through; the site owner is already getting such a huge value from their users in the form of the savings of not having to employ professional writers that they shouldn't rush to complain about a few pennies here and there of potential advertising revenue.




  • @DaveK said:

    Just hold on a cotton-pickin minute: exactly what content are you talking about here?  You mean the content that we all write and contribute and don't get paid anything for?

    The point is the social contract, not what service the website offers (whether it be content, aggregation, whatever.)


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