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Regarding our recent increase in advertisements

Antvasima

Antvasima

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Hello.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, our new advertisement partners are in the middle of setting up a new advertisement system to be able to pay for our bills, as the person who owns our forum has lost a lot of money from continuously paying for this, but the settings have not been finished yet.

I initially wanted to have an advertisement every 50 posts for logged in members, but the owner of this forum and our system administrator initially insisted on one advertisement after every 10 posts + 1 video advertisement after every 3 hours in order to be able to earn enough money to pay for our expenses.

The owner of this forum later told me to tell you all the following:

"Inform them that our ad provider takes some time to settle in on in which locations to show ads with the best performance and least user friction."

He has also asked to check how many of our views that are generated by our logged in visitors. If it turns out to be only a relatively small percentage, he will be likely be inclined to significantly reduce the advertisement pressure for you.

You can also sign up as Patreon supporters to remove our advertisements completely.

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Patreon Supporter Benefits

As many of you likely know, we have launched a Patreon subscription service, so our members can donate to help keep our forum sufficiently financed to continue, and would greatly appreciate help from our community and visitors who are willing to help us out. To become an active supporter of our...
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Setsuna_tenma said:
Fine but this really screws with mobile. Most times the ads take up a lot of slave and the close button isn't there on mobile so there is just an ad taking the bottom part of the page
Click to expand...
Okay good so i wasnt the only one to notice this, it loads an unclosable ad on both the top and bottom of the screen and then loads ads in-between posts

It makes the mobile version of the forum basically unusable
 
Antvasima said:
I will mention this to our system manager and forum owner.
Click to expand...
Screenshot_20230725-161437_Samsung_Internet.jpg


For reference this is what i mean, even if you hit the X on the bottom ad the space stays blocked, and on mobile this happens no matter where you go on the site
 
If ads become too intrusive, people will take active steps to avoid them, by using ad blockers or not bothering with the forum. If they're unintrusive, people are less likely to do that. Many forums and Web sites have ad banners at the bottom of the page, at the top, at the sides, and at certain points in between parts, like maybe having the forum pop one up after every 10th post in a thread or something. Ads that can just be scrolled past rather than seriously interfering with the forum's function.

And I would suspect many people who aren't users read the forum. This will increase if you link the forum to more pages in the Wiki. Best to give them ads as well.
 
Also maybe put most of the AD'S on the top and bottom, because if there is some at the bottom then that means less ads in the middle or getting in the way of the thread
 
Ant has mentioned before that this will be fixed, and it may take some time.

In meanwhile, either donate or use an ad blocker to fix the issue (and I prefer former if you are a constant mobile user)
 
Here is what our system manager just told me:

"We just moved to a new system unknown to us, and our target is to optimize everything based on user feedback, especially when they requested us to give them a few days to analyze everything and provide our input.

Anyways, let's do this:

1. Create a notice informing users that we have started an ad partnership with a new ad provider, and we need 3 to 4 days to evaluate everything so that users are aware of this.

2. Create a thread asking users to provide feedback along with unexpected ad placement so that I can send this to the Ad provider for a fix. This applies to all the pages where they see unexpected ads, whether on the login page or mobile or a page with 11 ads."
 
I think the ad appearing below the screen looks good, despite yesterday appearing at the top of the screen and at the bottom at the same time, I can put up with it.
 
I legit thought my browser was broken but it's reassuring to know its actually the ads causing the weird formatting/gaps on the pages and others have experienced similar issues.

I understand the site needs $$$ but it's very intrusive seeing ads/ad space in every two to four replies on threads (just makes it harder to debate and evaluate arguments or points, one of the main reasons people are here to begin with) but I understand the problem is known and a solution is in the pipeline, judging by the above comments.
 
Our system manager has read your feedback here and said the following in response:

"These are genuine problematic issues, and we must fix them. No worries, I will discuss it with them today and improve it individually.

I have already asked them to get manual placement support.

They are offline now."
 
It's unfortunate but the situation demands this much at the very least.

I don't foresee this happening, but if we suddenly expected a significant increase in our current Patreon support funds per month (say. 50-100%), would that allow us to reassess how intrusive we must be in terms of how many ads everyone else sees?
 
I’m sorry for y’all gotta go through all this; anyhow, I can understand Ant here. More ads and funding definitely is something crucial for maintaining our forums. I think we should use an adblocker instead rather than decreasing the quantity of ads which would also decrease our forum’s funding.

Anyways, if this was an issue then I’m glad it’s being resolved.
 
The_Axiom_of_Virgo said:
I legit thought my browser was broken but it's reassuring to know its actually the ads causing the weird formatting/gaps on the pages and others have experienced similar issues.

I understand the site needs $$$ but it's very intrusive seeing ads/ad space in every two to four replies on threads (just makes it harder to debate and evaluate arguments or points, one of the main reasons people are here to begin with) but I understand the problem is known and a solution is in the pipeline, judging by the above comments.
Click to expand...
1. Yea I though the site was getting hacked by a spammer or something.

2. I agree and hope things can be resolved in a way that's best for the site owners and user experience.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
It's unfortunate but the situation demands this much at the very least.

I don't foresee this happening, but if we suddenly expected a significant increase in our current Patreon support funds per month (say. 50-100%), would that allow us to reassess how intrusive we must be in terms of how many ads everyone else sees?
Click to expand...
That would greatly help, yes. My friend the site owner seems tired of continuously losing money from financing this site.
 
Our forum system manager has asked for help with listing all the wrong advertisement placements and show us screenshots to better illustrate this.

Help with this task would be greatly appreciated. 🙏
 
Antvasima said:
That would greatly help, yes. My friend the site owner seems tired of continuously losing money from financing this site.
Click to expand...
I have to ask, if it's not financially viable to run the site at all, why struggle so hard to keep it going? Surely it's unreasonable to expect your friend to continuously run the site out of his own pocket? Wouldn't it be preferable to just let the site die as oppose to having it limp along at the expense of somebody else?
 
It isn't like I want this site to just die after spending almost 9.5 years organising the building of it to become the most popular and professional one of its type that has ever existed in this world, and also suddenly throw the hard work of many thousands of members over the years into the garbage can, or just abandon the few thousand current members who have found refuge and community here, but I also preferably want my friend to make some money from financing this endeavour. He is somewhat wealthy, but nevertheless.

Meaning, I want this site and community to thrive and continue, if that wasn't clear from the above.

Anyway, you are heavily derailing, and we still greatly need help with the task that I mentioned in my last post above.
 
Last edited:
Antvasima said:
Our forum system manager has asked for help with listing all the wrong advertisement placements and show us screenshots to better illustrate this.

Help with this task would be greatly appreciated. 🙏
Click to expand...
Anyway, this task is genuinely important if any of you want our current advertisement situation to actually improve.
 
In the worst case scenario in which the forum lacks the finances needed to function, would it be feasibleto use discord? they have a forum like feature, and i can think of a few advantages over the current system
 
In the worst-case scenario, migrating to Discord and creating a custom bot similar to Xenforo is an option, though it would require significant time and possibly an investment. Discord's popularity has contributed to the decline of traditional forums, with many large companies and communities using it. However, it's better to encourage small donations, like $2, to support the site regularly instead of thinking of other options in terms of the possibility of it may drive us to that endpoint.
 
Last edited:
One small thought is that once the ad system is optimised to be as unintrusive as possible without sacrificing money, send an announcement around asking people to turn off their adblockers for this site, if they're using one. Many people use one by default.
 
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