Disabling in-text ads on Neowin

[Vice]

We have the same amount of adverts on the site as when I joined staff 5 years ago

Five years ago logged in users saw Intellitext Ads on the forums?

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I think he's looking for more transparency to be honest. Servers, bandwidth, staff cost, subscription revenue etc.

If neowin is really struggling then I would be more willing to donate...

With the introduction of Tier 2 subscription, extra ads and now this, it just seems that the management are getting greedy.

To be fair - the Tier 2 subscription was introduced upon member request. Not because the management are greedy.

[Jeston Veteran]

This might be a bad time to bring this up since there is a pretty heated argument going on right now, but I just wanted to say I see the Intellitext ads, but on the front page only. I'm leaving them on for now since I don't spend too much time on the front page anyway, but there must be a bug somewhere.

[Piggy]

This might be a bad time to bring this up since there is a pretty heated argument going on right now, but I just wanted to say I see the Intellitext ads, but on the front page only. I'm leaving them on for now since I don't spend too much time on the front page anyway, but there must be a bug somewhere.

You're not the only one.

[DaveLegg Developer]

This might be a bad time to bring this up since there is a pretty heated argument going on right now, but I just wanted to say I see the Intellitext ads, but on the front page only. I'm leaving them on for now since I don't spend too much time on the front page anyway, but there must be a bug somewhere.

Thanks for reporting this, take a look now, should be sorted.

[Jeston Veteran]

Thanks for reporting this, take a look now, should be sorted.

All gone, thanks Dave! :D

[Steven P. Administrators]

I agree on the donation link at the top. You guys should try that. :)

This goes to show why we updated the previous theme, because we actually had a donate tab in the navigation bar; it was used maybe 3 or 4 times since January.

Also my post about having to pay staff is true, but it was also meant tongue-in-cheek. Yes, we do have to pay a lot more people on the Neowin team than we did 2 or 3 years ago, and I do want to offset that, but not at the cost of the site skydiving and not moving with the times.

I should probably also mention that this year has been all about giving stuff away, specifically Tier2 subscriptions, which block our ads, so as well as taking, we do our best to give back too.

[CentralDogma]

I?m certainly glad that there?s a way to disable them, otherwise, I would have done it myself.

I don?t mind unobtrusive ads, but Vibrant?s ads are certainly not unobtrusive.

[ccuk]

This goes to show why we updated the previous theme, because we actually had a donate tab in the navigation bar; it was used maybe 3 or 4 times since January.

Also my post about having to pay staff is true, but it was also meant tongue-in-cheek. Yes, we do have to pay a lot more people on the Neowin team than we did 2 or 3 years ago, and I do want to offset that, but not at the cost of the site skydiving and not moving with the times.

I should probably also mention that this year has been all about giving stuff away, specifically Tier2 subscriptions, which block our ads, so as well as taking, we do our best to give back too.

I am a little perplexed by the whole money issue. Is Neowin a business designed to make a profit... Or a forum designed to self sustain?

The way I see it... It has become so over complicated it's going to eat itself. You are paying for writers who in my opinion aren't writing frequently enough (front page stagnant days at a time), also who aren't writing articles with enough meat and are ignoring the best resource you have on this forum, its members. I see so many members posting news and interesting posts way before the front page receives a sniff, and they do it for free. Why not use this instead of paying for dull, uninspired, outdated and contrived articles?

Updating the forum theme is a needless expense. Why pay for something which is quite literally not needed? You don't need to update an entire theme to add an intelligently placed and designed donation bar to the forum.

Also there seems to be a great deal of hypocrisy with many actions of the staff in terms of saying one thing in one month, and doing the opposite the next.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

I am a little perplexed by the whole money issue. Is Neowin a business designed to make a profit... Or a forum designed to self sustain?

The way I see it... It has become so over complicated it's going to eat itself. You are paying for writers who in my opinion aren't writing frequently enough (front page stagnant days at a time), also who aren't writing articles with enough meat and are ignoring the best resource you have on this forum, its members. I see so many members posting news and interesting posts way before the front page receives a sniff, and they do it for free. Why not use this instead of paying for dull, uninspired, outdated and contrived articles?

Updating the forum theme is a needless expense. Why pay for something which is quite literally not needed? You don't need to update an entire theme to add an intelligently placed and designed donation bar to the forum.

Also there seems to be a great deal of hypocrisy with many actions of the staff in terms of saying one thing in one month, and doing the opposite the next.

Let me clear up your misunderstanding of the front page and news writing. Yes, we pay news writers for their contributions, which may not be a whole lot, and isn't something you should quit your day job for. It isn't like we are paying for full-time writers. All of our writers are part-time, and work on their own free time.

Second, the front page never stays 'stagnant' for more than a few hours, which usually happens over night (excluding weekends). Me and the rest of the editors make sure this does not happen. I can't recall a day where we didn't have a completely fresh page for members to read. Weekends are a lot different, as almost 95% of the companies out there are not producing news, products or anything else, and the bulk of everything occurs during the weekday.

As for going back to "copy and pasting," we have noticed a huge change in comments, views and overall better feedback from members when we switched to original content. Using content submitted by members from other websites would basically be going back to the old methods, and as Steve said, "skydive the website."

As for the other issues, I will leave that up for Supervisors, Developers and Admins to comment.

[_neutrino Veteran]

Honestly the best way to get rid of ads here on Neowin is the Sub 2, Rather than disabling them or using some sort of blocking software, its not that big of a cost, an you have the knowledge you are directly helping out :D

[Neo003]

Well finally got tired of the damn ads and since I was already sad about you guys giving me the useless sig below, I decided to join back to sub 2. Now I can say 7 years with Neowin and 25 bucks later all I got is this crappy yellow sig :laugh:.

No seriously

[petrossa]

I found that blocking ads is best done with the help of some form of contentblocker. I have it now so that if i log in or not no ads show, nor do the shiny stars, nor the eyesore badges.

And were is midnight ^%$#$ I demand midnight back. :crazy:

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I found that blocking ads is best done with the help of some form of contentblocker. I have it now so that if i log in or not no ads show, nor do the shiny stars, nor the eyesore badges.

And were is midnight ^%$#$ I demand midnight back. :crazy:

Midnight has been back for days..

[ccuk]

Let me clear up your misunderstanding of the front page and news writing. Yes, we pay news writers for their contributions, which may not be a whole lot, and isn't something you should quit your day job for. It isn't like we are paying for full-time writers. All of our writers are part-time, and work on their own free time.

Second, the front page never stays 'stagnant' for more than a few hours, which usually happens over night (excluding weekends). Me and the rest of the editors make sure this does not happen. I can't recall a day where we didn't have a completely fresh page for members to read. Weekends are a lot different, as almost 95% of the companies out there are not producing news, products or anything else, and the bulk of everything occurs during the weekday.

As for going back to "copy and pasting," we have noticed a huge change in comments, views and overall better feedback from members when we switched to original content. Using content submitted by members from other websites would basically be going back to the old methods, and as Steve said, "skydive the website."

As for the other issues, I will leave that up for Supervisors, Developers and Admins to comment.

I have no misunderstanding of the front page news. We are frequently told that people work part time and aren't paid a lot... But at the end of the day, it all adds up. And when times are hard something has to give, start working smarter and not harder. It feels like you guys are trying to reinvent the wheel or something with the front page, I am sure you have a much better understanding of the analytics pertaining to page views between front page and forum, but it feels like an awful lot of focus is thrown at the front page when it offers little compared with the forum.

For the front page to work, it needs a lot more news posting with more accessible categories, with a lot more information and in a more timely fashion. Whilst you can argue that the news is better, that is relative, and as such I beg to differ. You only need at most two people to spearhead intelligent articles from the forum and maintain coherency.

The moment money becomes the incentive to be creative, everything goes to the wall. I believe you could get many fantastic articles for the front page, by merely offering the right incentive, one that does not involve money.

[Jan Veteran]

Why not incorporate both Paid news and free news?

[petrossa]

Midnight has been back for days..

My bad. darknight ofcourse :blush:

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

My bad. darknight ofcourse ??:blush:

Ahh, you mean Darkside... it's coming eventually. Give the developers some time and it'll magically re-appear in the skin chooser.

Until then the Black theme might be a good compromise for you.

[DaveLegg Developer]

I am sure you have a much better understanding of the analytics pertaining to page views between front page and forum, but it feels like an awful lot of focus is thrown at the front page when it offers little compared with the forum.

Current activity: Ignition: 4793 Guests & 502 Members Forum: 1659 Guests & 360 Members

This pattern is consistent throughout the day, at any one time there will always be more members and guests on the front page than the forums.

[ccuk]

Current activity: Ignition: 4793 Guests & 502 Members Forum: 1659 Guests & 360 Members

This pattern is consistent throughout the day, at any one time there will always be more members and guests on the front page than the forums.

And on average what percentage stay longer than a few seconds, and what percentage jump into the forum from the front page?

[Vice]

Current activity: Ignition: 4793 Guests & 502 Members Forum: 1659 Guests & 360 Members

This pattern is consistent throughout the day, at any one time there will always be more members and guests on the front page than the forums.

Not really a surprise that the domain root is where everyone comes to :laugh:

Try switching the Forum from /forum/ to root directory and see what happens :woot:

[petrossa]

Ahh, you mean Darkside... it's coming eventually. Give the developers some time and it'll magically re-appear in the skin chooser.

Until then the Black theme might be a good compromise for you.

(Y)Better. Couldn't see the ?selection box, so i randomly clicked on the righthand corner till suddenly the box appeared. But darknight it isn't

[Simon Veteran]

Not really a surprise that the domain root is where everyone comes to :laugh:

Try switching the Forum from /forum/ to root directory and see what happens :woot:

It doesn't work like that. More people are on the front page at any one time than are on the forums. If people were going to the front page only to click through to the forums, the forums would have higher numbers, wouldn't they?

But no, the front page has significantly more people online. Contrast that to when we had copy and paste news: there were always more people on the forums.

[shockz]

I have no misunderstanding of the front page news. We are frequently told that people work part time and aren't paid a lot... But at the end of the day, it all adds up. And when times are hard something has to give, start working smarter and not harder. It feels like you guys are trying to reinvent the wheel or something with the front page, I am sure you have a much better understanding of the analytics pertaining to page views between front page and forum, but it feels like an awful lot of focus is thrown at the front page when it offers little compared with the forum.

For the front page to work, it needs a lot more news posting with more accessible categories, with a lot more information and in a more timely fashion. Whilst you can argue that the news is better, that is relative, and as such I beg to differ. You only need at most two people to spearhead intelligent articles from the forum and maintain coherency.

The moment money becomes the incentive to be creative, everything goes to the wall. I believe you could get many fantastic articles for the front page, by merely offering the right incentive, one that does not involve money.

Reinvent the wheel? How... We aren't the only site that pays news reporters for content. We started this system about 2 years ago. The front page hits improved significantly, and in fact continue to go up every quarter.

We do have "accessible categories". Simply click the category link (or even make your own by using tabs) and you're set to go.

As others have stated, the amount of total payout per month for news reporters is dwarfed by server operations and development. The benefit of having paid reporters to create articles that increase hits and returns far outweighs the amount we are paying them.

As for spearheading member articles to the front page, almost 99.99% of BPN articles on the forums are copy and pasted. We might as well turn the frontpage into an RSS reader if we're going to do that... Before the switch over to non-copy and pasted news, this is exactly what we did. The frontpage was stagnant and nobody really used it.

[Simon Veteran]

maybe they're just bots, because i personally dont know of anyone who goes to the main page, or why they even would.

Oh. Then you're right, my bad.

In real life? I don't know anyone who visits Neowin. Guess that means we don't have any visitors, right?

The entire point of this site is for the community powered forum, and it seems like you all are tryin to get away from that and become and actual online tech news magazine, which probably isnt going to ever actually happen.

Incorrect, actually. Neowin is and always has been a news site, first and foremost. It was a news site when there wasn't even a forum attached.

The forums have blossomed into a huge knowledge base, but the news is the centerpiece that ties everything together.

Final point: the bots do a lot more indexing on the forums than on the main page.