Top bar advertising

[TalkinBoutWhat]

MN, PLEASE fix this advertising bar at the top of the computer screen.

It is so large, that I can't actually click on any of the MN links that are at the top of the page. (eg, active, I'm on, etc).

Right now, on Site Stuff, I can't even click 'Site Stuff' to get other threads in this section. It's hidden by the ad, which is NOT scrolling up and away the way I've seen others do. It's just sitting there. The ONLY threads I can get onto are the active ones on the right hand side of the screen, and only the ones lower down the list as the top ones are hidden by the Ad. (Experian and Marks and Spencers, are the two so far....)

You did this before, we all complained, you apologised and said it shouldn't have been loaded on as you were testing something new. I really hope this was a mistake, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to navigate the site.

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 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.

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.

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.....

'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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

Any update on hiding the Mumsnet banner when scrolling?

I don't want people seeing what site I'm on.

It's interesting to see suggestions about a paid for / premium membership ... interesting, too, that this has been mentioned when so many are saying the site's becoming unusable as it is

Anyone else wondering about the nature of that link?

We're working on both being able to hide the logo and message about white list only appearing once a day. Hopefully those changes will both be today or tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

No comment on the suitability for those with disabilities?

95% of my Mumsnet browsing is done on a laptop and I installed an adblocker some time ago because the ads were slowing it down so much. I posted so many times on Site Stuff about it under my old account. It was so bad that even if I had only had an MN thread open in one tab that wasn't active it would still slow everything down.

I don't think I'd pay to have a subscription. 5 years ago I would undoubtedly have done so, but the site has changed a lot in the recent past and I don't use it as often as I did. Some sections are still great and I would miss them.

No comment on the suitability for those with disabilities?

On the basis that most pages kick out a lot of errors (rather than just warnings) on the w3 validators I wouldn't be optimistic. Most accessibility software relies on valid tagging to work. I've just tried some accessibility software I have and it struggled to navigate the page making it difficult to follow.

This isn't unique to mumsnet of course but I was surprised at the number of errors and ironically, how many of them mapped to advertising elements. Most commercial sites do handle this better these days after years of being rubbish.

General design quality for accessibility obviously isn't validated via w3.

I'm slightly confused by the statement from the accessibility policy (which I had to Google for):
The techs are going to strive to help us meet our responsibilities under the Disabilities Discrimination Act

Its future tense but no date on it. Is this a mistake?

Is making the whitelist message once a day also going to mean we get the drop down ad that covers the entire fecking screen once a day too?

Justine -

I do not have an adblocker on my laptop - can you tell me why I have get the white "keeping the lights on" message?

Other sites (eg Channel 4) only put up a message to those actually using an adblocker. If they can differentiate, surely you can?

any chance of getting Will the coding intern back to finish the job? On both laptop (with ad blocker) and tablet (without) I get your message with the endless circle of doom. That's the annoying bit.

..although MN aren't alone in not being able to detect adblockers. I've had several whitelisted sites bring up a 'turn off adblocker' popup. Naturally they don't get any more visits.

still the 16 second drop down thing on mine at the mo.

Yes, still awful. I'll come back later.