Okay, something has to be done here. Since the Tapatalk thing this site keeps getting cluttered with more stuff, to the point I've blocked half that garbage in AdBlock and userscript the hell out of the site to make it usable for me.
I thought why?
Why don't I just make a post talking about the problem in a nice and respectful manner? Nah, just kidding, read the thread prefix.
It's time to stop.
Since that update the forums kept being plastered full of ads and stuff, partially not even user-removable.
Look, I was okay with that CRIB banner and that lovely image of George that created Freedom!Banners in unison. Now we have that alongside with the following cherry-picked examples taken from incognito mode (aka what new users see when opening the page):
Now that's kind of obnoxious. To me it's just spamming people's screens with garbage, at this point far worse than this. Why, you may ask, it doesn't fill half your computer screen? Well no it doesn't, difference is that that example had one button to click it all off. Closing all that garbage down requires you to click three buttons to just remove the stuff you see when first opening the page. As I'm also talking about mobile here, some of those X buttons are stupidly tiny so you need to perfectly hit it too.
And now to my favorite part: The non user-removable garbage.
These have gotten more continuously, at this point I'm pretty sure you add those all the time just to annoy users.
The entire time writing this thread I'm having this wonderful box on top of the screen (coincidentally it's on every /forums page). What box you may ask?
This piece of ****.
Here we are, defending the Freedom! Network against the commonly said point that it's a scam and a "Get Rich Quick" scheme while every page has what on top? Exactly, a dog gone "Get Rich Quick". That's not that bad you say. Well god damn it is. But THE PIECE OF CRAP ISN'T EVEN REMOVABLE UNLESS YOU BLOCK THE DIV IN ADBLOCK.
"why did you enter the contest without anything?"
> "I wanted to get rid of this huge message".
Point is, this message requires you to scroll down for any content while adding Jack **** to the website. At least add a X to it or limit where it's shown in case someone (I know, it sounds unlikely to you) just doesn't give a crap about the contest and the 200$ in game keys anymore. I appreciate you want to get people to join the contest but not like this.
And now on to the elephant in the room:
Chat.
Chat has kind of always been a pain in the ass to use on mobile but it was usable. Now here's a question:
WHAT WERE YOU SMOKING WHEN MAKING THIS?!
Yes, you're seeing that correctly. The already small chat window has the header like always, then the rules, like always, THE CONTEST INFO THAT ISN'T REMOVABLE WITH FIXED PADDING AROUND IT TAKING UP 10% OF YOUR SCREEN ESTATE, the tabs taking up another 10%, then what you came for, the chat, coming in with a strong EIGHT AND A HALF LINES TO READ AND SCROLL THROUGH, directly followed by... AN AD TO BECOME MEMBER OF THE MONTH! THIS IS DEFINITELY WHAT I'VE OPENED CHAT FOR! WOO WOO
In short: Chat is a nightmare. You fill more than half the window (in maximized mode, may I add) with ads while people want to use the chat. Besides reporting and liking just not being a thing on the last eight lines anymore, the problem are the eight lines.
I came to open a chat window, not to learn how to become MOTM, how to join the contest or how to add ten inches to my size. The last one was sarcasm though at this point I wouldn't be surprised if that happened too.
Now I know what you're saying there:
But LW, use the chat page on mobile...
Well, I tried that. Let me wrap the experience up saying it wasn't better by much. Now there's an improvement though it's still crap, have a look:
It's 15 lines. Still kind of a bad joke for the amount of lines there could be if there weren't ads but at this point I'm happy with it.
In short: The recent influx of ads being thrown onto the forums hoping they stick is garbage. When the whole forum redesign happened I was against the one thing spinning around announcement posts though at this point that isn't bothering me anymore. The Forums literally look like garbage now, it's a new banner every month at this point. While I may have resulted to using explatives at parts in this post which may not make the post look that honest this is how I feel about these. At this point I feel like the forums aren't supposed to be for people talking to each other anymore but instead to spam events and advertise garbage all the time with the goal not to let anyone avoid it. I'm pretty certain I'm not the only person getting ticked off to these ads and I hope something will be done.
EDIT: Reading through this quite a bit I feel like I need to include this
"Garbage" count: 7
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Hey LW001,
Thanks for taking your time to write this post. I can clearly read the frustration in your voice and hope that we can make this a better experience for you and everyone. I will discuss this with my Forums admins and see what the overall feelings are about the level of adverts/promos is like. Please keep in mind that we are really trying to get people to use Tapatalk as a mobile way of accessing the forums knowing the amount of time people as a while spend on their mobile devices.
As for the contest and the Member of the month we are trying to make people aware of how to get involved and create some excitement and fun around it. We are giving out hundreds of dollars in software to the winners and it’s going well. That’s not saying that there may not be too many adverts in your opinion.
Thanks for letting us know your thoughts on all of this we do appreciate it and will review it going forward.
Mike
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I agree we have too many ads and pop ups at the moment. When we initially had the image ad banners added to the forums they were supposed to be added to the top side and bottom of the forums but I was able to convince "the higher ups" to have only a single image banner at the bottom. All notices at the top should be x-able is that a word...?
I've removed the chat ads and the non closeable notice up the top. Will discus with the forum team how we can clean up with forums a bit better for user experience as well.
I've removed the chat ads and the non closeable notice up the top. Will discus with the forum team how we can clean up with forums a bit better for user experience as well.
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I understand you want people to use the app instead of the site, though in my opinion the site should still be usable. And I'm pretty sure the prizes do cost a fair amount more than the forums ever bring in
and understand the reason for making ads to get people to it, though I don't think it'll make people stick around on the site when the first impression they get are three pop-ups covering the entire screen on mobile...I'm all for this stuff being closable. The CRIB/MOTM/George show banner at the
Hey I may have kicked off some nice change here, this complaint tag might actually work
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Hey all!
It's been quite a while since I've been active here but I think this is a fitting post for me to make an appearance on as it is one of the reasons I'm not active anymore.
Basically, it's the state of these forums. They are nothing like they used to be. While there have been some really good additions I have grown tired and am annoyed with the new layout and more.
Rather than be that guy who goes off on a rant for hours I'm going to instead suggest some solutions that could make the forum experience more enjoyable:
Thanks and Happy Halloween!
It's been quite a while since I've been active here but I think this is a fitting post for me to make an appearance on as it is one of the reasons I'm not active anymore.
Basically, it's the state of these forums. They are nothing like they used to be. While there have been some really good additions I have grown tired and am annoyed with the new layout and more.
Rather than be that guy who goes off on a rant for hours I'm going to instead suggest some solutions that could make the forum experience more enjoyable:
- Personally I'd love if there were a seperate forum style that was like the forums before the new layout (the freedom overhauled but without the new banners, sliders, featured spaces and everything, hopefully you know what I'm talking about).
- Have a dedicated place for bug reports and such that isn't mashed in with all the other suggestions and posts.
- Give the user an option to collapse certain elements in the sidebar or wherever else (should only take a few lines of code).
- And overall just listen to user feedback but don't take it too far. Know where the limits are and if you start to see that even a small percentage of users are unhappy then go straight to looking for alternatives without interrupting other stuff.
Thanks and Happy Halloween!