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Comment by DrSprout | Hacker News Reader

What really turns me off to StackOverflow is how much the ads flow into the content and are really difficult to ignore. I know that they've got a user-base that needs some extra coaxing to look at ads, but it really diminishes the site's utility, and fundamentally I think this sort of thing should be an open repository of knowledge like Wikipedia.

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Once you get 200 reputation, I believe the content ads that appear inline disappear.

Thanks for pointing this out. If you're using StackOverflow and are annoyed by the ads, consider giving back to the community and voila, no ads! I would estimate that it takes ~5 answers to hit the 200 points you need.

I prefer having unobtrusive ads for everyone. I'm not a "no ads" person, just a "ads should not get in the way of the content."

The worst thing for me right now is that when there's a question, there's an ad located right where the header should be.

Could something as niche as StackOverflow be supported through a donation system like Wikipedia?

I don't necessarily have anything against ads, but less obtrusive ones would be nice, and more importantly the core data should be free.

I don't see why something closer to Reddit (but with a slightly more evolved interface) couldn't function as a non-profit in StackOverflow's place.

The core data is free, both through the API, and through the data dumps that happen every several months.

Presumably they'd like the money coming in to blast past supported into the realm of profitable.

Meh, if they did do this, I could see the blogosphere bitching every couple of months because SO is asking for money.

Its almost as if...

    The only winning move is not to play

Ads do suck, but it is a small price to pay, and for us, the end user, that price is free, for the service the site provides.

I see this article follows typical codinghorror-notation.

EDIT: I think SO and reddit are "ads done right". Anyone remember '97?

I think SO and reddit are "ads done right".

I don't particularly agree on SO, but on Reddit - totally. I frequently click on the ads there because advertisers seem to make the effort to make them fit into the gamut of typical Reddit links (because most advertisers are Reddit users, I guess). The "open source" ads on SO are good, but there needs to be more of a "users are the advertisers" revolution going on across the Web.

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