New advertising behavior on the forum?

[francois]

Not sure what's happening but with Safari and no content blocker, things are excruciatingly slow. I can see empty adds with a green circle running forever…
If I use Firefox with blocking then things are back to normal (loading speed).
By the way I'm also a paid subscriber :-(

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... things are excruciatingly slow. I can see empty adds with a green circle running forever…

Yes, in addition to sheer annoyance, there is a significant loss of speed when loading pages.

This is what it looks like when I click on "Show new replies to your posts"

[Jim Kasson]

I am a member. I stopped seeing the new ads for a while, as of this morning, I'm now seeing them again.

I'm assuming this is a programming error. If so, please fix it.

Jim

[datro]

Josh,

Can you enlighten us as to why the ads are back for paying members?

It's even worse this time, with some very ill-behaved scripting going on which is causing significant performance problems for browsers. 

[Alan Goldhammer]

I guess they are trying to monetize the site as members stop paying dues.  This current blizzard of ads will keep me away.

[Jim Kasson]

Now we've got the same ad twice! Or has my computer been drinking?

[datro]

FYI...I just logged out of LuLa and logged back in and this seems to to fix things, at least for now.  So I'm guessing that the web team's new javascript cannot properly deal with a user already logged in; logging out and logging back in must reset something that allows the script to work properly.  Just guessing on this...

Anyway, Josh PLEASE setup a test offline site where this stuff can be tested first.  I'm starting to lose interest here with this kind of poor site maintenance.

Dave

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Confirming that logging out and in again resolves the issue.

[mcbroomf]

I'm getting them as well.  Not only that but on a well spec'd PC desktop they are taking a VERY long time to load.
I'm cutting bait until they are gone

[Jim Kasson]

Confirming that logging out and in again resolves the issue.

Not for me. And the ads take so long to come up, while they are keeping the actual content from loading.

[mcbroomf]

Mine have gone now.

I really don't understand the logic though.  "Let's put ads on the pages for those that don't subscribe so that the experience will be so miserable that they will pay to make it go away"

[Jeremy Roussak]

I really don't understand the logic though.  "Let's put ads on the pages for those that don't subscribe so that the experience will be so miserable that they will pay to make it go away"

That's very widespread behaviour. I assume it works.

Jeremy

(I have nothing to do with the management of the site other than as forum moderator, by the way, and have had no involvement in decisions on advertising.)

[francois]

Speed is back to normal as of today…

[Alan Goldhammer]

Not for me. And the ads take so long to come up, while they are keeping the actual content from loading.

My experience is the same as Jim's.  I get better performance on my Android tablet than my PC.  I've tried logging off and on several times.

[paulazevedo]

Hello  Everyone,
I want to apologize to all our subscribers that are now seeing ads. We have a new provider that is currently not checking for subscriptions. I am going to turn off those ads entirely until we fix this issue. I also believe they may be causing the website slow down. Let me know if you continue to see ads, or if the website remains slow. Thank you for your patience.
Paul Azevedo,
Webmaster

[Rob C]

That's very widespread behaviour. I assume it works.

Jeremy

(I have nothing to do with the management of the site other than as forum moderator, by the way, and have had no involvement in decisions on advertising.)

Perhaps in some cases, but it also has a huge annoyance quotient that may overcome anything else.

Earlier, I saw an ad for a 3D printer at over 100 grand: just what I needed! There is also one to do with Heidelberg printing... as if I was about to get back into the calendar publishing industry by opening a printing factory! Had I ever had those squillions, the last thing I'd have done was sweat blood and tears getting stuff through print and/or being nice to clients.

;-)

P.S.

I have learned to avoid ads by looking at the screen but focussing beyond, and scrolling until the usual parts of LuLa appear. You can do that even with an OOF vision choice enabled. There's often a way to avoid things without resorting to sunglasses. (I was going to write Ray-Bans instead of sunglasses, but realised that would be hypocritical of me.)

[stevesanacore]

Perhaps in some cases, but it also has a huge annoyance quotient that may overcome anything else.

Earlier, I saw an ad for a 3D printer at over 100 grand: just what I needed! There is also one to do with Heidelberg printing... as if I was about to get back into the calendar publishing industry by opening a printing factory! Had I ever had those squillions, the last thing I'd have done was sweat blood and tears getting stuff through print and/or being nice to clients.

;-)

P.S.

I have learned to avoid ads by looking at the screen but focussing beyond, and scrolling until the usual parts of LuLa appear. You can do that even with an OOF vision choice enabled. There's often a way to avoid things without resorting to sunglasses. (I was going to write Ray-Bans instead of sunglasses, but realised that would be hypocritical of me.)

I just logged in and seeing drop down banner ads on the forum pages right away. I'm sorry it's so difficult to remove those ads but you can't expect people to keep paying and still get ads. I know cost to subscribe is tiny but it's very distracting to see the ads.

[josh.reichmann]

+1 to the list of subscribers seeing the new and annoying ad behavior. Prior versions, where they occurred, I didn't mind. This new version is intrusive.

Once upon a time, the idea of a subscription fee (if I recall right) was that even the older version of ads would go away permanently with enough participation. Perhaps I missed it, but was the outcome of that 'fundraising drive' ever published? I'm content with what we've had (and subscribed from the beginning to be supportive anyway), but don't want to see ad content go up.

Thanks!

There should never be and never will be ads for subscribers. Just a glitch in installing new ad script.
Apology.
For people wondering why the introduction of a new ad script would be anything but seamless - the answer is that even setting them up on a staging server is not sufficient to completely and perfectly trouble shoot on a giant 20 year old site with forum software in need of updating.
We have uber competent partners - but minor inconveniences such as these are seeming unavoidable. Good news is that for the time being, we are done.

Thanks again to all members, subscribers regulars and visiting folks. I wanna make the experience enjoyable, I too dislike ads (a lot) , but we gotta get the site running financially.

Josh