I like it like that, I think it gives the visitors a choice to click rather than forced to, Nice site!
Maybe you can change the color of the fonts in the ads to grey. This will complement the layout and color theme in your site.
A few things I'd do: - Change your general links to a colour slightly lighter than black, grey even - Change your AdSense ad title text to slightly lighter than black, but darker than the rest of the links (psychological targeting, I use it on every site and it works great, people are also slightly blind to black text, but not the slightly lighter than black colours). - Disable "Advertise on this Site", it's the "onsite advertising" option in your AdSense config, this will raise your CTR slightly (or a lot, depends on your traffic and navigation), in the long run, this can equal big $$$ and the tradeoff is great - It's good that you used a linkunit on the 2nd post as opposed to any other types of ads since I've found anything larger than the link unit will actually drive away members (or lower signup rate) - If you add a quick reply box, consider placing a square ad unit next to it and integrate it so they look like they're part of the same panel, this works great for lurkers! I've seen very few people do this but it's a great trick Just a few I could think up, too sleepy, going to bed now, hope this helps