Banner blindness is the phenomenon that many/most people who surf the web regularly tend to completely ignore anything in web pages that looks like an ad banner. They don't even notice what those banners are saying. (This is actually a lesson in good web design: Avoid presenting relevant information in a form that looks like an ad banner. Most people will completely miss it.)
I have noticed recently that I "suffer" from this same phenomenon in most web forums with regards to "stickified" threads: I tend to, more or less subconsciously, completely ignore the "sticky" threads at the beginning of a thread list. This is perhaps because, quit ironically, they seldom contain interesting information (although in some cases they might.)
I perhaps started noticing this a bit ago when I was looking for a problem I had with a software library, and I searched the support forum for said library for that problem using its search functionality. There was indeed a thread dedicated to that exact problem. Then I noticed that said thread was right there on the front page of the forum all along. It's just that it was stickified, which is why I didn't notice it. Quite ironic, when you think about it.
Does anybody else "suffer" from this?
Completely unrelated, but I never noticed the TASvideos logo in the up left hand corner until today.
But yes, I tend to miss relatively important information due to skimming past it unconsciously. 1st world problems.
Myspace was terrible for this, which is probably why Facebook began to eventually take over with its simplicity (see Yahoo vs Google). But alas even Facebook has fallen to the same pitfalls. I only register about half the screen when I'm browsing Facebook.
Maybe sticky's need a tier level association to avoid entering disclaimer threads.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Warp wrote:
I tend to, more or less subconsciously, completely ignore the "sticky" threads at the beginning of a thread list. This is perhaps because, quit ironically, they seldom contain interesting information (although in some cases they might.)
I think I can expand upon that psychology a little bit.
When you browse a forum, you usually look for the posts you're interested in that people are actually replying to. Sticky threads... are almost never like that. For the most part, sticky threads tend to be "read once, then forget" topics, like forum rules or announcements, basically anything the mods/admins want people to see before anything else. They're not dynamic, not many people reply to them (as they're usually closed), and you don't gain anything new from going back and rereading them, so the natural outcome of doing that over an extended period of time is that you just subconsciously jump past those threads as you're expecting them to all be the same "FORUM RULEZ PLZ READ!!!" across every forum you visit.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of other people like that on any forum. I tend to only look at new posts, myself, so I'm a little blind to almost every other thread until there's new content or I gain an interest in said topic and look up the thread on my own.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I have complete banner blindness unless it's a chick shaking her boobs. Maybe we should add boob shaking gifs to the really important sticky threads.
At first I thought that would be a good idea, but the problem is that it might result in "boob blindness".
I almost always use adblock, so I'm not sure I've even developed banner blindness. But I have a bit of sticky blindness. And like Warp says, it's kinda ironic, because those are supposed to be important threads, but they are often the most boring. But they are often meant for newcomers. If I browse a new forum, I tend to notice them more.
