[ianaphysicist]

Noted is the distraction from automatically changing carousels. I've found this a major area of concern -- not just carousels but any autoplay content, automatic slides, and text marquees. And beyond distraction, these elements assume a specific pace of reading and require the user to build UI understanding to get back to interesting content they glimpsed in passing. If the content is compelling enough to display, it's compelling enough to present well.

[GrinningFool]

We've come back around to <blink>, but with more obnoxious multi-element components. Even better, it's somehow accepted as a good thing to do.

[YCode]

Yet inevitably every middle manager thinks carousels are a great idea.

I'm convinced 9 times out of 10 carousels are installed because the customer got sick of looking at their own site.

[squid_ca]

I'll give you 5 times out of 10. The other 5 is the designer's solution to trying to fit 10 different stakeholder's crap "above the fold."

[Etab]

We once built a site (for a major consumer brand) where the client insisted on so many carousel slides that they started duplicating slides in the lineup because it had been too long since they’d been seen.

(Our recommendation was to avoid a carousel, but the client had to have it!)