You might be surprised how many people are still using Internet Explorer! I guess only a hacking forum or other very technical forum would be mainly visited by highly security-conscious people. For most intentions and purposes demanding flash etc is probably alright.

I sense a tone of criticism in your post, and you won't like it if the same tone is mirrored back. I hope it was not intentional, and I am sorry if I have misunderstood you.

Wow. How particular resource can force me to run client-side stuff? To run JS i need to download it to my machine and run it here in browser, but what if i have it disabled? The script is ignored, that's all. Same with Flash: how do you force me to run it if i have Flashblock or, better than that, don't have Flash plugin installed at all? And there's even more: i can disable cookies, caching and history and stop sending referrers, and you'll be unable to find where i came from or what are sites i visited recently. I can build a firewall and filter any request from your site, just about anything i want to filter. I can create a chain of proxies, it makes finding my real IP a bit problematic. And so on, it's just a question of how paranoid i am.
I (and most of sane users i believe) will never be a member of any forum that forces me to do things, be it running scripts or Flash or even subscribe to RSS feed or email newsletter. Internet is all about choices, man: you try to force me to do things, i leave and never come back, period.

Ulysses_

You are deluding yourself if you do not think that people who spend a significant portion of their time on the internet are not security-conscious people(at the level we are talking about here). Sure a lot of casual visitors on the net are not running adblock(or the equivalent thereof) but the majority of people out their (which virtually any forum will want) are. I am not talking about programmers or hackers, but the vast number of individuals out there who spend an hour (or more) a day, virtually every day, on the internet. In this category are many grandmothers, office workers, virtually all HS students, and the vast array of just regular people in our societies.

You can shut off javascript and flash in IE and there are utilities available for it that block adds too.

What is the 'etc' that is referred to there?

My own two cents: any website (forum or otherwise) that *demands* that I have Flash enabled, I leave, because to me, it's NOT alright. That's all there is to that. As for whatever the 'etc' might be, there's a very good chance I have that disabled as well.

There are only two websites that I can think of, that I visit, that require *anything* of me on my end: LQ, and my online banking site (which requires JS).

LQ I can even use with everything disabled, but the functionality of the site is not near as good, so I give LQ free reign (except for flash ads if there are any).

As for Flash, webmasters who *demand* I have it, can go stuff it as I hate the stuff, and it's a waste of bandwidth in general.

Demanding stuff of folks these days doesn't get one very far.

NOTE: I'm not giving you attitude, so please don't take my post the wrong way, if it seems a bit 'ranty' -- I'm just trying to add more perspective

Sasha