Disabling in-text ads on Neowin

[Lovell]

No it isn't, like I said we sustain the website through the ads, and thats about it.

Often enough we have funds to send people to tech events, and upgrade our servers, but I haven't gotten rich from it yet or been able to buy a new flashy car, let alone a house from running this show.

I was actually refused a mortgage this year, so yeah. But, thats my problem.

There you go, ?20 towards your mortgage :laugh:

[Simon Veteran]

There you go, ?20 towards your mortgage :laugh:

we love you :p

[Steven P. Administrators]

Trust me, I am not accusing you of lying. I am just saying that there may be something you overlook while getting the statistics. I gave an example earlier. Let me reiterate: I almost always keep the front page open for the recent community activity box. But that doesn't mean I value the front page more than the forums, even though the front page is open most of the time. Is it not possible that since anyone who types in neowin.net ends up on the home page and the articles on the home page get more exposure, leading to more clicks on the front page articles? That was the only reason for asking for a poll like that. I was not questioning your integrity. You have been on this site for longer than me, have contributed a ton more than me, and definitely have a larger right to make decisions. I am just trying to provide suggestions that would help the community grow.

Also, the "vocal minority" would almost certainly vote the same way as the entire community. From what I can see, it is an unbiased sample. There is no correlation between front page lovers and people who are vocal.

Your argument is like saying (for example) that because ad blocker exists and you use it, then everyone must use it meaning we'd have zero income. Surely you can agree that it's a bit of a weak argument?

Dave pointed out the stats on articles, so unless you and everyone else is opening different articles everyday throughout the day just to see the latest forum activity box, well that works for us and our page rank at Google! (Y)

There you go, €20 towards your mortgage :laugh:

Thanks, you rock! (Y)

[ccuk]

Exactly my point, you're calling us out based on assumptions you're making with no information at all to back them up.

You see, I was interested in having a civilised conversation about this. I want the site to improve.

But all I have seen from staff in this thread is quite honestly unwarranted hostility. I have asked fairly serious, and what I consider, well laid questions. I am happy to be proven wrong, but I thought the idea of a forum, was for people to share their opinions. Why does it all have to be so hostile?

How about a little transparency then, some of us aren't teenagers and are actually well versed and knowledgable in the tech world... We can and are willing to help. Sometimes things need a little out of the box thinking, as well as a bit of honesty... The latter of which sometimes feels a little lacking. The postings by staff in this thread indicate that the front page is considered to be of far greater importance than the forum, and as such, this is being reflected in the tone of the posts. A shame really, as a lot of the members of the forum are those who have stuck by you for a great number of years; loyalty means a lot then?

Silence doesn't mean they are happy... It means they haven't spoken either way.

Also please make note, that quite often critisicm is misconstrued as moaning.

[SimplySchizo]

on chrome, i get the link, but no popup when hovered over. not using any blocker. also accepting 3rd party cookies and pretty much all allowed.

[Duality]

Well at least there is an opt out. I voiced my ire about the inline text ads in another thread and to be honest, opting out is fine by me (now I know I can) - only takes a minute or so. And because of that I will continue to whitelist Neowin from any adblocker I use - and I will be upgrading to a T2 sub to save me the effort of opting out again every time I run CCleaner (which is quite regularly).

I also support a more obvious donate button and a cool scale to show targets and current donations etc - I think that is a pretty good idea.

To the staff: the re-introduction of inline text ads was always going to be a controversial topic, I certainly think a poll of some sort would be a good idea. Maybe even a mailshot to the e-mail of active forum accounts to encourage participation? I don't know - Never run a community of this size myself. I certainly think it would be an idea to try and guage the general sentiment towards them from as many people as possible and make an informed decision from that.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

on chrome, i get the link, but no popup when hovered over. not using any blocker. also accepting 3rd party cookies and pretty much all allowed.

Mine works here on Chrome 6.0.408.1

I don't have any third-party apps or blockers installed.

[Steven P. Administrators]

@ ccuk: The opinions of one or more staffers doesn't necessarily reflect upon the whole site, my opinions or even Redmaks (who is a co-owner).

Some staff find the news pages incredibly important, but I personally am more swayed towards the forums. You may notice that while news staff are giving away stuff on the news site, I am about the only one giving away subscriptions and involving subscribers (those who help sustain our site by paying for it) in the ongoing progress of the site. We have an MVC program, requested by me and implemented by our supervisors, and we spend hours responding to these posts right here, even when we could just say screw it and lock the thread/censor any negativity to this type of policy change.

If you think staff are being hostile by responding to your posts, then I'd have to say that you don't get around much. Try this on a few other forums in our genre, and you'll know what I mean ;)

[SimplySchizo]

Mine works here on Chrome 6.0.408.1

I don't have any third-party apps or blockers installed.

I'm on Chrome 5.0.375.55 (updated mac version) though I doubt that would make a difference. No 3rd party blockers here either.

Hmm... I'll try and dig deeper.

[surrealvortex]

Your argument is like saying (for example) that because ad blocker exists and you use it, then everyone must use it meaning we'd have zero income. Surely you can agree that it's a bit of a weak argument?

Dave pointed out the stats on articles, so unless you and everyone else is opening different articles everyday throughout the day just to see the latest forum activity box, well that works for us and our page rank at Google! (Y)

In your adblock example, the sample set is 1. If you use the poll, the vocal minority will definitely be a lot more than 1. That is the difference. If you ask 1000 random people from the forums to anonymously tell whether they use adblock or not, you will have a clear indication of what percentage of people use adblock in the entire community.

As far as the stats on articles are concerned, look at the amount of real estate you give to articles on the home page. I am sure that if you make Spy the home page for the day, and allocate the same size as the recent community activity box to the front page article links, you will see a huge boost in the forum hits and a steep decline in the hits for front page articles. I am pretty sure your Google page rank will increase even further.

All of us want the community to get better. We just have contrary opinions. I am just requesting you to check if my suggestions have any merit. I am not requesting you to make any changes.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Am I the only one who's irritated by complaints in a thread which shows you how to disable the in-text ads?

The one thing we all can agree upon is that we want Neowin to survive in its current form. Running a site the size of Neowin obviously costs money. Now - does the management resort to annoying Flash banners placed all over the site? No - the ads on here are pretty unobtrusive in my opinion (I looked at the front page and forum as guest earlier).

The in-text ads are annoying, granted; yet they're an additional source of income. Neobond showed in the opening post on this thread how to disable them. Did he have to? No. He could have told the community to suck it up.

Then there are the armchair experts who think they know better how to run the site than the management themselves. Unbelievable.

I for one will continue to do my part to support the site by re-subscribing once the current subscription runs out.

[ccuk]

@ ccuk: The opinions of one or more staffers doesn't necessarily reflect upon the whole site, my opinions or even Redmaks (who is a co-owner).

Some staff find the news pages incredibly important, but I personally am more swayed towards the forums. You may notice that while news staff are giving away stuff on the news site, I am about the only one giving away subscriptions and involving subscribers (those who help sustain our site by paying for it) in the ongoing progress of the site. We have an MVC program, requested by me and implemented by our supervisors, and we spend hours responding to these posts right here, even when we could just say screw it and lock the thread/censor any negativity to this type of policy change.

If you think staff are being hostile by responding to your posts, then I'd have to say that you don't get around much. Try this on a few other forums in our genre, and you'll know what I mean ;)

Maybe that needs to be brought into check then. This isn't a big corporate entity, and I would have gone along with the thinking that staff should be singing off the same hymn sheet.

I get around more than enough, but then again a lot of the other sites I frequent don't change much of their structure all that often and don't seem to be suffering from it either.

I guess I am just a little confused as are some others from the look of the posts, as to where it is neowin is trying to move into. Is this a large community forum, or is it actually a news site? If the former, then the community as a whole need in my opinion to be involved a lot more as a whole. If the latter then I personally think it has a long way to go. I went to other sites during this flip flop of posts, and they have at minimum 8x more articles posted today compared with here. If Neowin is going to be pegging itself as a news site, then it needs to start upping its game somewhat.

[Steven P. Administrators]

In your adblock example, the sample set is 1. If you use the poll, the vocal minority will definitely be a lot more than 1. That is the difference. If you ask 1000 random people from the forums to anonymously tell whether they use adblock or not, you will have a clear indication of what percentage of people use adblock in the entire community.

As far as the stats on articles are concerned, look at the amount of real estate you give to articles on the home page. I am sure that if you make Spy the home page for the day, and allocate the same size as the recent community activity box to the front page article links, you will see a huge boost in the forum hits and a steep decline in the hits for front page articles. I am pretty sure your Google page rank will increase even further.

All of us want the community to get better. We just have contrary opinions. I am just requesting you to check if my suggestions have any merit. I am not requesting you to make any changes.

You are going to have to take my word on this, but hits overall was pretty poor in 2008/9 and for the past year they have climbed and climbed on the front news page, because we actually do more interesting stuff now. You may not like it, but as Dave tried to point out, we've seen the news pages become more popular than the forums for unique hits, we have Microsoft helping us to implement a webslice for the front page so that they can showcase it on their official site. If we were doing a poor job and had little or no footprint on the web, do you think that Microsoft would be bothered to encourage us to add a webslice? They requested it, not us.

Just something to think about.

Edit @ ccuk: You have to be kidding right? We started as a news site with a forum in 2000. That has had its ups & downs, mainly because we were no longer allowed to leak stuff, and had to search other avenues for "entertainment" on the front page. We are a forum community as well as a news one and always have been. You are entitled to your opinion, but I'd rather listen to people who have a clue (like Microsoft) who obviously see us as significant.

[Jeston Veteran]

Am I the only one who's irritated by complaints in a thread which shows you how to disable the in-text ads?

The one thing we all can agree upon is that we want Neowin to survive in its current form. Running a site the size of Neowin obviously costs money. Now - does the management resort to annoying Flash banners placed all over the site? No - the ads on here are pretty unobtrusive in my opinion (I looked at the front page and forum as guest earlier).

The in-text ads are annoying, granted; yet they're an additional source of income. Neobond showed in the opening post on this thread how to disable them. Did he have to? No. He could have told the community to suck it up.

Then there are the armchair experts who think they know better how to run the site than the management themselves. Unbelievable.

I for one will continue to do my part to support the site by re-subscribing once the current subscription runs out.

+1, same here.

[Vice]

If you think staff are being hostile by responding to your posts, then I'd have to say that you don't get around much. Try this on a few other forums in our genre, and you'll know what I mean ;)

JoshX is now unable to access the site. But all other websites work okay. Has his IP been blocked from the sites servers (while his account is still operational and not reporting as Banned). He sent the message that he couldn't access the site through other means.

Just a coincidence or ?

[ccuk]

Edit @ ccuk: You have to be kidding right? We started as a news site with a forum in 2000. That has had its ups & downs, mainly because we were no longer allowed to leak stuff, and had to search other avenues for "entertainment" on the front page. We are a forum community as well as a news one and always have been. You are entitled to your opinion, but I'd rather listen to people who have a clue (like Microsoft) who obviously see us as significant.

Well that is very interesting. You have the important articles for sure... But I see pretty much all the other tech sites posting it considerably faster than yourselves. I would say that hands down, your layout and theme along with the way you can customise the front page to suit personal tastes is quite honestly the best looking on the web. There is absolutely no disputing that as far as I am concerned. I just feel that the frequency, number and scope of the news articles could be improved greatly.

I am merely trying to suggest a means to improve that aspect.

[Steven P. Administrators]

JoshX is now unable to access the site. But all other websites work okay. Has his IP been blocked from the sites servers (while his account is still operational and not reporting as Banned). He sent the message that he couldn't access the site through other means.

Just a coincidence or ?

It's a coincidence. He PM'd me and I went and checked myself if another staffer added his IP to the banlist, it wasn't there. I didn't get a response from my PM back to him tho.

Well that is very interesting. You have the important articles for sure... But I see pretty much all the other tech sites posting it considerably faster than yourselves. I would say that hands down, your layout and theme along with the way you can customise the front page to suit personal tastes is quite honestly the best looking on the web. There is absolutely no disputing that as far as I am concerned. I just feel that the frequency, number and scope of the news articles could be improved greatly.

I am merely trying to suggest a means to improve that aspect.

Thanks I appreciate those comments. We're always looking for ways to improve the news, and i'd be the first to agree that we can always use extra bodies in that department, but unfortunetly those people are very hard to come by, and even harder to entice away from other sites. You may have noticed that we have a guest poster by the name of Julio Franco, from Techspot.com I have been trying to encourage this sort of cross-site posting partnership but haven't come very far, and our senior editors are very picky about what goes up.. it must be original for example, so we can no longer C/P exclusives over from other sites as a policy.

[surrealvortex]

@Mephistopheles

Complaining/Suggesting improvements. Glass half empty/glass half full. I am sure we couldn't have reached 9 pages without digressing a little :p

@Neobond

I am not disputing the fact that front page hits have improved. I am trying to say that you are equipping the front page with a nuclear powered triple blaster, chucking the forums a water pistol, and still expecting a fair result.

[Steven P. Administrators]

You are going to have to explain it a little better than "giving the forums a water pistol" over a nuclear triple blaster on the news pages?

We haven't taken anything away from the forums at all, except old themes..

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

@Mephistopheles

Complaining/Suggesting improvements. Glass half empty/glass half full. I am sure we couldn't have reached 9 pages without digressing a little :p

@Neobond

I am not disputing the fact that front page hits have improved. I am trying to say that you are equipping the front page with a nuclear powered triple blaster, chucking the forums a water pistol, and still expecting a fair result.

True, some comments were constructive criticism, while others just irritated me.

Moving on: From what I can see the forums receive just as much attention as the front page does. The admins know which value the huge and knowledgeable Neowin community has.

[Growled Member]

I frequent ZDNet a lot, and I see Neowin stories mentioned quite a bit there. I'm not sure how we could improve unless we employed a full time news staff. I think our current staff does a tremendous job considering they do the work in their free time.

As to what this topic is really about, thank you for the info on disabling text ads.

[ccuk]

It's a coincidence. He PM'd me and I went and checked myself if another staffer added his IP to the banlist, it wasn't there. I didn't get a response from my PM back to him tho.

Thanks I appreciate those comments. We're always looking for ways to improve the news, and i'd be the first to agree that we can always use extra bodies in that department, but unfortunetly those people are very hard to come by, and even harder to entice away from other sites. You may have noticed that we have a guest poster by the name of Julio Franco, from Techspot.com I have been trying to encourage this sort of cross-site posting partnership but haven't come very far, and our senior editors are very picky about what goes up.. it must be original for example, so we can no longer C/P exclusives over from other sites as a policy.

Like I said, it's very easy to confuse criticism with the sound of moaning. I have seen many members on here posting some incredibly insightful and interesting content on the forum, is there any way to create a forum collaberated editorial which is pinned together into a coherent post by a senior news staff member? Something that can be published bi-monthly maybe to increase article count as well as create a bridge between the forum and front page activity?

[Steven P. Administrators]

Like I said, it's very easy to confuse criticism with the sound of moaning. I have seen many members on here posting some incredibly insightful and interesting content on the forum, is there any way to create a forum collaberated editorial which is pinned together into a coherent post by a sernior news staff member? Something that can be published bi-monthly maybe to increase article count as well as create a bridge between the forum and front page activity?

Well we have the reviews by members for members and essential guides forums. A few times I have ported these over to the main page and I should probably be doing that more often, because I read a great review on the HTC Desire a few days ago (it had been up for a couple of months already). But another problem here is considering the fact that when members get around to doing a review of something, often enough it will have been out a while, and we'll only end up seeing "old news" type responses in the comments. It's very difficult to keep people happy, because of those sort of responses it sort of gives us the feeling of "why do I bother?" too.

Going back to news, often enough authors will point to a discussion thread going on in the forums with a particular news topic, which involves the community and offers a new reader the perspective of our members too.

[surrealvortex]

Sorry, a bit sleepy. Didn't realize how unclear that was.

I am talking about exposure given in the home page. The front page articles get lots of exposure. The forums, not so much.

Imagine being a new user to Neowin. Most of the time, unless you do a Google search and a forum entry shows up, you land up on the home page. What do you see dominating the home page? Links to the front page articles. Isn't it natural that more clicks go to the front page articles?

Imagine being a regular. You type in neowin.net in the address bar and you again land up on the home page. Same argument as above.

If there was equal exposure to both the front page articles and the forums in the home page, I think the number of clicks on the forums will be more. Do you see where I am coming from? If my hypothesis is correct, you will only end up increasing revenue.

Edit:

I have seen many members on here posting some incredibly insightful and interesting content on the forum, is there any way to create a forum collaberated editorial which is pinned together into a coherent post by a senior news staff member?

This should apply only to material that is not time sensitive.

[Calum Veteran]

Breaking even is good enough (at least for a members who have been visiting this forum for 5 years like me). :)

Breaking even is good if you're not trying to make a living off running a website/forum. When somebody is making a living off providing something I enjoy, for free, I like to help support them in whatever way I can.

Like I said, it's very easy to confuse criticism with the sound of moaning. I have seen many members on here posting some incredibly insightful and interesting content on the forum, is there any way to create a forum collaberated editorial which is pinned together into a coherent post by a sernior news staff member? Something that can be published bi-monthly maybe to increase article count as well as create a bridge between the forum and front page activity?

Something I've noticed:

Some members in this thread have provided negative constructive criticism, in a polite manner; a couple of others have not been polite or constructive - I won't mention any names, but a quote from a post in this thread stands out to me: "...because i personally dont know of anyone who goes to the main page, or why they even would."