It's tricky. The SE concept is somewhat flawed - like all the "free" internet "services" that make money from advertising, just in a slightly different way.

@andy256 oh yeah, and there are some parts of it that are just a disaster. the presumably paid-for ubuntu one, for example is a fast churn of newbie questions and hardly any upvotes, let alone answers. Why answer when at best you're going to get one or two votes?

Essentially our answers drive advertising $$$

@andy256 Yes. But they try to do that by having the best answers. That intermediate goal of really good questions and answers that show up well in Google searches is more what I concern myself with.

@andy256 most of Stack Exchange's revenue is from SO Careers though. They don't even display advertising on SE sites, only on the trilogy.

@nhinkle that's interesting. I'm one of the awful freeloaders who aggressively adblock so I don't see any of it. When I look at other people's computers I'm often shocked by how intrusive the ads are. Or the autoloading videos, advertising or not.

@Mσᶎ I do have adblock, but I turn it off on sites I like to support. When you have >200 rep there's hardly any ads on Stack Exchange anyhow.

Yes, the ads are mostly directed at casual google-byes. I don't use an adblocker, but autoloading video ads drive me crazy.

I also whitelist simple google text ads.

I would blacklist instead of whitelist but some sites just have too much garbage on them.

@nhinkle @Mσᶎ Ok. Convinced. Do you use a browser add-on or sth like AdBlock (which looks like an addon also)?

@andy256 what browser?

Heh. I use Firefox and Chrome.

Adblock Plus on Firefox, Adblock on Chrome are what I use.

Ta. I'll check 'em out :-)

@andy256 add-ons, but several. Adblock, Adblock Plus, FlashBlock, Facebook Disconnect (in Chrome), add Ghostery and Self-Destructing Cookies in Firefox.

That's at work. I use a more thorough set when I'm at home, but for work some of them interfere with testing our website(s) because the test tools rely on doing less than desirable things. Much as anti-piracy tools make debugging executable programs harder...

Thanks.

Hm. we all got a new badge today.

@Batman what's the badge? Or is "we all" me too? One sec

"Explainer"

Ah, I would never have noticed if you hadn't pointed it out

bicycles.stackexchange.com/a/24953/7044 This answer was a comment + copy of my answer, but Gary Ray edited out the comment... so now it's just a copy of my answer

ah. i just hit the flag button.

@Mσᶎ And now it's deleted due to not following our attribution policy.

@freiheit thanks.