The site is still here because others are viewing the ads so they are still making enough revenue to keep the site running.
This site is still here even though I HAVE ADBLOCK TURNED ON, as do I imagine a bunch of other people. In fact, I have the little box in the corner that says "turn off ads" available to me. I haven't clicked it, but I could. So, specifically for Slashdot, it doesn't matter whether it have Adblock or not, my experience it the same. And so is Slashdot's. They aren't getting any money from me. They never have. And yet, they still manage to hang around giving me free crap. Imagine that!
If they asked me to pay, I'll consider the request, and maybe will or maybe just go away.
They did ask you, that's why they keep reminding you about the Subscriber benefits. You just choose to ignore their requests because they aren't demanding it.
So the fuck what? They asked me to donate my firstborn for their blood sacrifices as well, and I turned that down too. "But, you're depriving them of a blood sacrifice, how can you do that?" Sheesh.
So why are you here if you're not getting anything in return? You've made over 100 comments, so surely you're getting some benefit from the site? Just because you're not getting a tangible reward (like a wallpaper? That's worth paying for!?) doesn't mean that the site doesn't offer any benefit.
I bet you are just wracked with guilt when you take a free sample of a cookie at the mall and don't run and go buy a cookie, plus a soda. So I get a benefit, so what? If they said, Pay up, or we can't let you read/contribute/mouth off any more, at that point, I'll decide whether it's worth it. Until that day, I'm eating the free cookies.
You have a skewed way of thinking. You actually value the advertisers more than the websites you're visiting. That's just weird.
You have it backwards - I tolerate the ads so I can support the website. I don't visit the website to view the ads, if that's what I wanted I'd just to to the advertiser's site directly.
And I don't tolerate the ads at all. Not one fucking little bit. If the sites can't figure some way to make money and thus fails, fine by me. I'm not insisting they have a paywall or not. I'm not insisting they let me have stuff for free or force me to pay. THEY ARE THE ONES GIVING AWAY FREE SHIT. I did not demand it. But I'll take advantage of it, until such time as I can't anymore. Do you think they are crying in their beer about it? If they were, they WOULDN'T BE GIVING IT AWAY.
There was a site a while back that detected if you had ad blocking software and didn't let you go any further if you did. Fine. I never visited the site. Didn't help him, and didn't hurt me. Don't know if the guy is still around or not. Don't care. If he is, fine, he figured out how to make it work, good on him. If not, well, probably shouldn't have tried to force ads on people. Funny how that just worked out that way.
What a bunch of fucking pussies. I don't have to look at the goddamn ads. At all.
Let's reiterate. I DON"T HAVE TO LOOK AT THE GODDAMN ADS.
Newspaper comes, I throw the ads away without reading them. Website comes up, I block the ads. They don't want me there, they can block me. They don't have to give me their content. If they are just going to hope beyond hope that maybe I'll click an ad, well too bad. If I want the content, and the only way to get it is to pay, I want it bad enough I pay. Otherwise, I go elsewhere or just forget it.
So who am I hurting by doing this? People who's business model is to HOPE I click on a particular area of the web page. And that's a good business model?
The Tao is like a stack: the data changes but not the structure. the more you use it, the deeper it becomes; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.