Top bar advertising

On the subject of user-generated content - some of the best content writers have most definitely departed, and many of them are visible on other (free) forums.

Meanwhile on MN, we see the growth of banal content which is either obvious trolling or plankesque and tediously snippy. Having endless people posting about the supposed generosity of the Universal Credit system in order to derail, say, or variations of 'ner ner you're wrong', is pretty boring.

And I do sense that boredom setting in quite widely.

I'm also largely unbothered by adverts on mobile site (Samsung, Android 7.0, Chrome).

The top bar is less than a tenth of the viewable space, and the only large ad is the one before the comment section (see screenshot). I don't think I even get mid-thread banners any more. I don't get larger ads when pages are newly loaded.

So this definitely isn't an everyone problem. I did find it unusable on my laptop with that John Lewis ad yesterday (Chrome, desktop site) and logged out so I appreciate that it's frustrating for those affected, but there do seem to be setups which are unaffected.

Yes brasty I realise that, I'm not suggesting others are making it up, however I can't be the only person with a tablet and small adverts. Maybe it's a settings thing?

Myrtle I would have no problem with that at all. You are not seeing what everyone on here is seeing and complaining about.

Brasty I don't know, the ads are there, just small. There's a Bruno Mars ad and a M and S ad in Windows on the right hand side. Unobstrusive though.

I'm one of those who installed adblockers specifically because MN has made the site otherwise unusable. And agree with pp that a)you have enough of my data so I don't think I'm a freeloader (though that does go nicely with the 'these people' comments from a few months back, and b) your track record with user data is such that I wouldn't be giving you my financial details.

Site users generate content, which is presumably why it was a free site to begin with. Plenty of us have told you that your adverts are enough of a problem that the site is barely usable. There are alternative forums available to users and you've already lost a lot of members who did generate content. You need to look at your advertising.

Myrtle How do you manage to avoid the banner advert at the top that takes up half the page for at least 5 seconds every time you reload?

Paying should help keep a lot of trolls away too if it starts costing £10 a time to be a dick
Paying would keep everyone away it would become a slow moving unheard of boring irrelevant little backwater of the Internet
make hardly any money and get no publicity
Mnhq knows this and it's the last thing they want

'And THAT is why my friends and I are all on Reddit'

And yet here you are.

I can't be the only person who has a tablet and manages fine, no wall of ads just a few small windows to the side that are very easy to ignore or click on, depending if it interests me. It's no great drama really.

Mumsnet would be dead in the water if people had to pay for it
It's only attractive to users because there are a lot of people on it
if you had to pay hardly anyone would be on it and it wouldn't be attractive
Network effects and all that.....

I'd be happy to pay by PayPal. However, I'd be worried about paying for a service and then getting chucked off for some weird reason. (See Reddit).

Paying should help keep a lot of trolls away too if it starts costing £10 a time to be a dick.

I was assuming that a paid for site would not share threads in places like DM. If it did, then no I would not pay.
I stopped using this site a while ago for anything more than light entertainment. I would never ask for any advice that meant sharing real details of my life. I have had some difficult situations to deal with that once I have posted on here, but now I would not as it would end up in DM - fall out from murder and suicide. If I could be sure that my bank details were secure, and that my post would not be shared in DM, I would love to post about stuff like that.
But at the moment to me MN is just a fluffy entertainment site when I am bored. So travelling, waiting at work for techs to sort systems out, that kind of thing, and there are too many alternatives that can fill that gap.
What used to be unique about MN was being able to get intelligent advice about family problems. I think it is fast losing that. And I am very sad about that.

Enough of the snidey side-eye, bish, if my friendship group is anything to go by, MN do actually need to take note. I am the only one left on MN of about 30. MN is gaining a rep as a breedling ground for bullies and trolls.

I know that business model is utimately flawed as you cannot keep a community vibe while making money to support ever greater demand. At some point the advertising has to be sanctioned. HOWEVER, the way this is being done is over the top and the highanded authoritarian ways of "MNHQ" really only irritate people...especially when juxtaposed with the matey, ooh lets pop-over and-have-a-gin malarkey.

Before MN start trying to make revenue from its users, it needs to develop a product that people are willing to pay for. The obvious solution to me, to remove 90% of the trolls and stop these bloody adverts would be subscription based access. However, as pp point out, it would be really hard to trust MN on the technical front, and given the poor way they deal with issues such as:
Being repeatedly hacked, Prolific trolls who wangled money out of people on here having been sanctioned to do so, their policy of pullling controversial threads and deleting posts while seemingly unable to stop trolls/pervs for saturating the site, inconsistent banhammering, the amount of content that ends up in the DM - ultimately I and others are left with a feeling of distrust. I imagine "MNHQ" as being in a constant tate of disarray, unprofessional and unable to deal with the volume of users. If you can't trust the management OR the users on a SUPPORT site, there is nothing left.

And THAT is why my friends and I are all on Reddit.

I wouldn’t pay for the site for the simple reason that I don’t trust that my bank details wouldn’t be hacked from here.

I'd appreciate an answer to Notanumberuser's point above tbh.

I use Firefox and have some adblock installed. I'm still seeing it "please whitelist blah blah blach" and the circle thing.

I have no idea what whitelist means anyhow?

I installed ad blocker because mumsnet was completely and utterly unusable at the time...not for a 'free ride'

This was the third or fourth time i was unable to use mumsnet....if you advance search my name you will see

Ad blocker is actually a very slight pain in my arse as it blocks stuff i dont want it to block. But i put up with it because it enables me to use the site

It enables me to use a site which is actually a working daily advert for all sorts of goods and services, it must be a force as even chicken nuggets etc have recommended by mumsnet on them now

And i am not going to take adblocker down, as on what seems a regular basis there are threads like these which are still complaining about the site not working

You've established the formatting of the ads is problematic for users so have implemented a software to help with this that costs £20k pa?? How much income do the ads generate? It's hardly about keeping the lights on is it?

I'd pay a little bit for a better ad free experience. I will want my name to be in gold though as recognition that I'm a superior Mumsnetter.

I had thought that a subscription might be the way forward, until poster above reminded me about security. Getting hacked and having to change passwords was annoying. Having financial info hacked would be more than that.

So sorry I would not pay for a subscription unless your security was much better, and you had paid staff around all the time to deal immediately with any possible hacking. Hacks tend to take place at unsocial hours.

I enjoy MN, but not enough to risk my financial details being stolen.

We do REDDIT now
MN is OVER.

How mature

We are more like loss leaders. Tempting little snippets for the DM and FB.

The only reason I use an ad-blocker for MN is because the site is virtually unusable without it. It causes my browser to hang and loading anything takes forever.

Also it's incredibly jarring to be in the middle of a sensitive thread about bereavement, or infidelity, or pregnancy loss, and suddenly come across a cheery advert extolling the virtues of the latest Boden sale...

I appreciate that MN is free to use for its members and the flip side to that is that Justine and Carrie have to find a way to monetise their offering. I do take issue with being termed a 'free rider' - when people like me have already explained that the site is only usable with an ad-blocker.

I'm also pondering how me being termed a 'free rider' tallies with us being told quite tartly on more than one occasion that having our content lifted and reproduced in the Daily Mail, is par for the course. Those Daily Mail articles which use posters content, reach an audience of millions and generate lots of lovely - free! - advertising for MN. Hardly 'free riding' is it?

Thing is, when they do it without testing it's a deliberate forced Nudge. Then people complain and get a grudging 'we're not a CHARITY you know!' blast from the top.
A decent user interface is good practice.

If they are essential to the survival of MN then they should appear once, when we log in

To be fair, Justine has said that is what they are aiming to do. Let's hope they achieve it ASAP.

That actually really annoys me about reporting an issue. Why haven’t MN got an iPad, an iPhone, an android phone or a laptop to test things?