Top bar advertising

What I don't understand about the use it, or fuck off, is that most companies want to know what users think of their service. Many companies pay a lot of money to find this out. Yes you always get the few unreasonable people. But when a lot of users are saying the same things, then companies:

• either listen and change things
• or figure that people will keep on using the service anyway so ignore it. This is what Ryanair does. It figures its flights are so cheap, that people will moan but use them anyway. This only works if people want the service enough, and there are no alternatives.

With MN what has happened is that people who do not have adblocker, have just decided to install this as their own solution. An easy solution.

The thing with the 'use it as it is or fuck off' business concept is that if the majority fuck off then the business ceases to be.

The alternative would have been for the users to have expressed their preferences and the business goes on. Which is what feedback is for.

As for it being ''free'' - it's mutually beneficial set up. 'MN' makes money, and it's customers have a forum. When it ceases to be an enjoyable experience for the customers that relationship is over.

if I'm getting something for nothing, I tend to be grateful and put up with a few glitches or things I dont like , if it bothered me too much I wouldn't use it....but I wouldn't freely use it and sneer about it at the same time

I couldn't use the site without an ad-blocker, because - as I've already explained - it was literally unusable! As in, page would not load and even having a tab open on my browser with MN trying to load in the background would crash everything else.

hiddley, feedback is great if it isn't given with utter contempt like some posters here

I'm all for improving this site and it must be a pain if it isn't compatible with some browsers

how patronising some of you are

if I'm getting something for nothing, I tend to be grateful and put up with a few glitches or things I dont like , if it bothered me too much I wouldn't use it....but I wouldn't freely use it and sneer about it at the same time

Contessa, I suspect Justine is banking on the same presumption!

hiddley I've observed that some people on MN are just very subservient. No matter what happens they'll tug their forelock to the MN gentry.

A subscription is a terrible idea. I love MN and have been here years, but I won't hand over credit card details, because they have a history of being hacked.

ssd - do you accept every service you use just as it is? Do you ever get annoyed about incompetencies? Do you just go around the place accepting things 'just as they are'? Do you never express dissatisfaction? First rule of customer service I learned many many moons ago was that negative feedback is better than losing a customer.
If you're happy with the way things are, good for you. Most of us on this thread don't really want to leave and are trying to provide feedback to make this place a better site for us.

relax, if you hold this site in such contempt, how do you manage to lower yourself to even use it?

I have a long-standing plan to try turning off my adblocker here when six months have passed without a massive thread of people complaining about how awful the ads are... That has been my plan for some years.

How about a Supporters scheme like the Guardian has? Easier to implement than a real subscription system, for one thing.

What MN really needs, though, is a decent tech strategy and competent staff to implement it. Pretty clear they don't have both, and my money's on neither :-(

It was ssd

It was driving me round the twist

Ive no patience and it would go wrong right in the middle of an interesting thread

thats good you found something that worked then

ssd

Personally im not slagging mumsnet off

I dont care about the adverts

But the adverts were making the site unusable for me

Not in an 'ooooh annoying advert...so unusable' way...in a literal i cannot read or post anything way

It was about the 3/4th time it had happened and adblocker was the only thing that worked

god no I get nothing at all from facebook, but I don't go on fb and complain about it and slag off Mark Zuckerberg, I just don't use it.

I expect you feel grateful to Facebook don't you SSD for letting you use the free site?

The site users are the product
No no get it right now!
the freeriding shoplifters are the product
You're not users on here, we are free riding shoplifters

The site users are the product, they're the ones providing the content that MN can then monetise. So the users are more than entitled to complain if they want as far as I'm concerned.

The intrusive banner ads are irritating as fuck.

I've been here since 2004. MN hasn't changed, times have changed. MNHQ still care about the site users but they have a job to do and an income to earn, just like the rest of us. There's always been grumps and people getting pissed off, that's always been the case. All I can say is if you feel its time to move on, then move on. If you arent feeling like you get the same support and advice from this site, move on and hopefully get it from somewhere else. I still enjoy it here and I pop in regularly, sometimes the site is close, sometimes the adverts are all over the place, but amongst all that I usually find something to read and hopefully engage in. If you don't feel this is happening anymore, move on.

I just think its a bit rich using a free site for as long as posters have been using it then complain you dont feel cared for. Mn aren't here to care for you, they are here to provide a site you can use freely if you want. If you post something and it appears in a paper the next day, dont be surprised as papers will employ people to lift stories, so dont be naive in thinking it shows the site isn't protecting you, thats your responsibility, not theirs.

thats my take on it all, use it or fuck off, yours and my choice.

Dear MNHQ - do you need to employ a better Dev Team or maybe buy some devices so you can test your code before you deploy it? If we are using Chrome which is the current version it isn't us. I could understand if it was an old device running on a elderly version of IE

With this level of complaints surely the issue has to be your set up or is this jut a ploy to get more revenue out of the advertisers.

I rarely use the desktop site now as the adverts are so bad. On my ipad the side banners swamp the forums.

What with this and the fact that you encourage the Daily Fail to use our posts to fill their rag, it may well be time to move on.

SandyMumsnet (MNHQ)
Thanks for all your feedback on this, we've passed all your concerns onto our tech team and they are doing all they can to help the situation. We totally get that you are horribly frustrated and it's really not what we like to hear.

We have an ongoing program looking at our accessibility which reviews and highlights where we can improve. We do hope you will bear with us.

But according to Justine's post on 2nd page, at 16.01.50: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3067667-Top-bar-advertising?pg=2 it's working as intended as 'the advertisers are insisting that the ads stay on screen for at least 5 seconds even when you scroll.'

Mnhq is like the honeybadger. Honeybadger making millions and don't give a shit!

I just cant be bothered any more. I typed a long post then thought fuck it. Mumsnet don't care about us so why should I help them.

Been on mumsnet for years.

Premium membership = Heathers

ssd Most commercial services would kill for free user feedback like this.