Lately, many of the sites I have been going to from here have what I would consider obnoxious sidebars. They are filled with ads, links to more content, social button groups or (the very worst) the smug ironic-looking face of a blogger and a total of 3 navigational links. Copious amounts of my monitor pixels are dedicated to these, while the actual content I am there for gets very little attention by comparison. It is almost comical how much disappears with a tool like Stylish. But I digress...

Which sites do I mean? Wired, Tech Crunch, BBC, Huffington Post, NY Times, Kotaku, Gizmodo (Gawker anything, really), Engadget, ArsTechnica, the list goes on... I won't point out blogs of individuals, but you know who you are.

As a community with many web professionals, do you feel they have actual value? For those using them, have you measured or noticed any benefit to their presence? Why are they so common? I would hazard a guess that for them to still be there, they must be doing something right. Or have we just thought of nothing better and they are the 'de facto' standard now?