[Closed] Ads help us run this site....

I win a great deal of amazon prizes at the moment but that is not limited to this site

Bloody annoying.

Even if you are logged in and have a P the chuffing banner won’t sod off unless you “accept”

And I don’t accept, I chose to go through the 60 odd and opted out of all of the trackers, yet now I have to accept that I’m being tracked before I can log out... to log back in again...

And only then does it go away.

What a crazy POS.

Happens on all devices, all current IOS.

And I went and bought a P thinking all this sort of trash had been fixed...

Click accept, refresh your browser and is gone for about a month.

That's not the case Drac, it's reappeared everytime I've visited the forum from the homepage for the last three days on all the devices I've used it on (2 phones with Android, 1 windows 10 laptop with Chrome).

Not that it reappearing every month would be acceptable mind . I'm always baffled by how the site runs so perfectly on Drac's devices!

Why make it reoccur after a month?

There is no logic in that.

If you have bought a P to get rid of this stuff, then you shouldn’t have to go through the pain of about 20mins trying to log back in again.

Point of note..

If I click accept, does that mean all those trackers are “live” and tracking my click?

I’d like an answer, not a snotty answer either.

If it's reappearing every time you might have cookies disabled in your browser. So they can't track your browsing but also can't track whether you've opted out or not.

Cookies are allowed in my browsers, and it still happens.

My issue is that the Accept button isn't visible. It's somewhere off the right hand side of the iPad screen.

The banner is too big for my screen.

My issue is that the RHS banner ads are for single muslim single Asians and the lay matures especially with rather graphic image associated with it

To the point I can no longer view the site on my work network....

If others have this issue then it will stop paying for the site rather quickly .

Hi all,

We have noticed that our consent management platform (CMP) has been causing a few issues recently so we have temporarily turned it off until we have fixed it. The Advertising CMP will continue to show as normal. We understand having two CMPs is not idea and is very bad for user experience. We have plans to combine the two CMPs but requires us to work with our advertising provider to do that so will try and get the done as soon as we can.

Cheers Tom!

Good man.

Good Man !

Solutions based approach, me likeeeee. !!

Cleared casche and cookies .

Still getting adverts for Arab dating and suchlike.

So if I'm reading this right, even if you have the 'P', then all the trackers are still enabled by default?

For the ad consent popup, any tracking is only associated with any ads that are dislayed. If there are no ads shown to you (if you are a logged in premier user) then there is no tracking code from the ads in your browser so you can't be tracked. We've been very careful here to make sure that ads for premier users are just not there on the page at all and not just hidden.

As for the website consent (Cookie consent) we have a number of cookies that are not optional. For obvious reasons we need to plant a cookie on your device to tell us that you are a premier user for example. Without these functional cookies the site won't function so you don't get to opt out of these. Your effective opt out option here is to just not use the site.

We have a google analytics cookie that is mandatory for business reasons. We need to know how many people are using the site at any particular time so we can report to advertisers on how amazingly awesome our site is. We also need to know what pages are being looked at and which ones aren't so we can plan development and editorial policy. But we use Google analytics with the IP anon funtion activated so that no complete IP addresses are sent to Google.

However, we also use a Facebook pixel which allows us to correlate users on the site with users on Facebook. This allows us to create anonymous audience groups that allow us to traget posts on facebook to those audiences.

For example, we can create an audience group of people who have read a particular review on our website site eg a review of a Trek bike say. Then we can use that 'audience' on our Facebook page to target any posts we publish on our page about other Trek bikes. So, if you have read a Trek review here on the site you are more likely to see a post about other Trek reviews we've published in your Facebook timeline But only IF you have followed our page on Facebook.

This makes our posts on Facebook more relevent to you as what you see is based on your browsing history over here. This is really useful to us and we think to you too.

However, it does mean that Facebook also gets that data and so we have made it an optional cookie that you can choose to block while you use our site.

I know this is all really complicated but nothing insidious is going on on our front. All we need to know and want to know is how visitors to our website use it. We need to use cookies to track that. Where those cookies are linked to third parties - in this case Google and Facebook, we either make sure that the data is anonimised before it is passed to them or where we don't have that option that they are an optional cookie that you can choose not to have.

But advertising is seperate to that. Which is why there are two pop up consent boxes you need to get past before you come to the site.

The Site cookie consent is renewed annually, as that's simply good practice. The Ad one is currently set to monthly renew. The reason is that more ad vendors come and go in the advertising system all the time and so to deal with new changes you need to consent again each month.

No one here is looking at individual behaviours. We are only interested in trends in website useage. If you opt out of targeted advertising you will still get ads. They just won;t be based on your interests directly. However, the ads you will then see may still feel targeted but this is because they are being targetd to the demographic of the website ie. British mountain bikers.

The ads we sell directly to brands are not targeted at the individual level at all. These are just gifs or jpg ads and they have no ability to gather any info at all. We choose to dispay them on certain pages.

This is all really complicated. Dealing with it is something we are doing as best we can balancing our own requirements as a business against those of the user. We are trying to find the right balance and it's hard. We've seen a 50% drop in advertising revenue since GDPR came in and that's hurting us as a business to a new level we've never experienced before in our 17 years of existance.

I'm trying to rapidly move the company from that relies on advertising revenue for 60% of our entire turnover to one that relies on subscriptions and reader derived revenue so that we can simply survive the current publishing apocalypse that GDPR has caused. My goal for th erest of the year is simply now to end it with the same number of employees as we started. It's going to be a tough rest of the year.

Subs (and zero ad tracking) is available for just £1.99/month.

£20/year = £1.66/month (5.5p/day)

£1.66 doesn't even get you an innertube. or a coffee.

I feel obliged at this point to keep banging away at that message.

I feel obliged at this point to keep banging away at that message.

And very clearly you did it to,thank you

Yes Mark and greaty appreciated it is too.

Clarity and rationale is all I ask for.

Now it’s understood I’ll back off and close my gob.

In case anyone thinks the issue mentioned in post #1 is fixed . . .  it isn't

When using my iPad I still have a banner across the bottom third of the screen regarding adverts with no "accept" button visible.

I'll be happy to accept/agree, but you need to give me a button to click. This idea of "trying through sheer will power" is not working.

<p>Mark - just a tip, the current consent banners are crap. This is the only website that I have ever had issue with both pre and post GDPR for that sort of thing. Something in the coding is either hanging when I OK it or getting bocked from sending and just stays forever saying 'Sending....'. If you could change these to something standard or that just works it would probably help you.</p><p></p><p>Also, never had to do monthly consent elsewhere. Not sure it's really necessary.</p>

They are standard implementations.

We are working on improving them from how they are supplied to us. The ad cmp is IAB approved and comes via our programmatic ad provider, StreamAMP. Exact same one used on road.cc and hundreds of other media sites. All cmp's suck.

The ad company must have a bizzare engine... often the ads are directly related to what is in the discussion so cars in the Tesla thread but oddly in some threads I get a mix of Russian brides and gay cruises on the same page.

I would need to be a very confused person to be interested in both... also it is my “clean” device which gets connected to work networks so I have neither been cruising for brides or cruises...

Yup. That's as expected.

The 'theory' is that the vast ad network industry will now be faced with a huge amount of inventory to be delivered to users who choose not to be tracked or targeted by opting out. They will instead target the website that the user is visiting, in this case a mountain bike site. And so opted out users should see more generic mountain bike ads.

such is the theory..

But of course the reality is that insted they just flood the ad ecosystem with cheap shitty ads hoping for enough 'hits' to get a return for the client.

Personally? I'd choose targeted ads all the way based on my browsing history.

Hopefully the whole shitty programmatic ecosystem will adapt itself and the so called vendors will start targeting site demographics insted of carpet bombing the world with dating ads.

We have dating sites as a category blocked BTW. But that only works when the ad vendors put their dating ads i that category. If they 'forget' then they get through and I have to grab the url and email it to our contact at StreamAMP who then manually blocks that url. It's tedious.

Now if everyone would just subscribe I can turn the bloody things off!

£1.66 doesn’t even get you an innertube

I run tubeless.

Now if everyone would just subscribe I can turn the bloody things off!

Meh. I'm still huffing from the article where you said the forum was profitable, run by about three people and all you really wanted to do was get flown nice places for free to ride bikes.

all you really wanted to do was get flown nice places for free to ride bikes

Well it’s better to say the truth. Who on here would not want that?

 the RHS banner ads are for single muslim single Asians and the lay matures

The Royal Horticultural Society have certainly changed their focus. I guess this is what you call "mission creep"

Well it’s better to say the truth. Who on here would not want that?

indeed, but being made to feel like a special snowflake instead of a cash cow by those who want our money might be a more useful marketing approach. But hey, WTF do I know?

I’d post a screen shot but, you know, posting pics on STW and all that…

Is easy if you don't use an iPad?

What’s the saying? Keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

I’ll try asking again.

Mark.

How many subsriptions will it take to turn off the spammy, low end advertising?

The fact that that threads about advertising reappear on a regular basis does show that a number of regular users are pissed off enough to post about it. What happens to all of the casual visitors who are not prepared to stick around, wade through consent pop ups, be hijacked by rouge full page ads for completely unrelated products? Do they disappear never to return.

The repeated answer is to is to complain loudly that the ads are necessary to keep the site and business afloat regardless of the damage being done to the STW brand by the crap advertising.

A lot more than the 6000+ we currently have.

I've said this before. About 10k would be nice. That would simply replace the lost ad revenue from programatic ads.

It's really simple. I turn the programmatic ads off and we last about a week before I lay off about 8 people. I don't want to give you the impression that I don't care but ultimately someone has to pay for what we do and if it's not directly paid for by users then there will have to be other revenue streams in play. Currently we run about 65% advertising to 35% reader generated revenues. I've been trying to reverse that ratio for more than a decade. Now, it's easy enough to do if I just shut down the advertising revenue stream until it reaches 35% of total but to do that right now will cost the jobs of over half of the people who work here. So, I'm going to keep on trying to make our subscriptions more attractive so we can pursuade more of you to sign up, because that is in my control. Making the world's advertising market work to everyone's satisfaction is not something I can control and turning them off is not something I'm prepared to do because it will cost the jobs of people I care about.

£1.99/month or £20/year or £39 including 6 print issues of the mag posted. All those options make the ads dissapear. Ultimately the ad problem will be solved by the exchange of value. If what we do is not worth £1.99 to you for a month then that is totally fine, the ads you see will provide some of the exchange of value needed to keep us in business.

I've said this before too, but the value of a visit by an individual who does not subscribe, who views an average of 4 pages/day for say 3 days a week is somewhere in the region of £1.20/year to us or about £0.003 per day. A subscriber is worth about 20x that, and that's how we can afford to shut off the ads for subscribers.

About 30% of the ads are removed if you just register and that's free.

But ultimately, I'm beyond spending my time making the site work to the satisfaction of people that don't contribute their own cash to what we do, but not out of any sense of lack of respect for those that choose not to pay but simply because I owe a lot more to those who do and so that's where I'm spending most of my time and where I'm directing most of the energy of the people who work here.

indeed, but being made to feel like a special snowflake instead of a cash cow by those who want our money might be a more useful marketing approach.

I have been been coming to the site since the old red site when I was at uni so 2001ish and I think the mag was quarterly (but could have been bi monthly). The internet was properly crap then and almost everything now is better but seems to cost a bomb.

none of us are special snowflakes and companies treating me as such reminds me of car salesmen.

the ads are mostly alright here and at least there is some honesty about them. It’s overall less intrusive than my Facebook or Twitter feeds.

Bit of a curve ball question for you Mark, and one I appreciate will be difficult to answer for many reasons.

If a full digital and print subscriber was say happy to pay the £39 and not really bother about the printed mag - would it be a help or a hinderance to other revenue streams the mag itself generates? (Not to mention staff it keeps busy)

I am an old git so like reading printed magazines on the loo, but I will admit it is getting less and less of a draw as the way the site is presented allows me to read them on the ipad without having a magazine to dispose of a few weeks later.

I'd happily pay the £39  and not get a magazine if it helped keep the company going and made life a little better for you and your team.

In fact, as mtb and all things bikes is my main passion in life, I'd gladly pay a fair bit more and not worry about the printed mag.

Clearly my £50 a year will make no difference at all, but if enough of us felt the same (and commited to it, which is another problem), could it be made to work in your favour all in?

I don’t think it’s the price per say for many.

its the piss poor implementation of everything, the manner in which things have gone about, etc that have seen many walk/cancel.

Certainly is for me and several I know.

its been blatantly obvious to the layperson let alone the number of devs on here just how badly things were done and continue to be.

someone said a while back that it’s a surprisingly small number of extra “p”’s that’s required to switch off the ads.

4k of them isn’t a small number. Another 40% needs to see a serious increase in usability, features and more to pull that number in.

This place still is nowhere near now 5yrs after I joined than multiple sites/forum were then....

Make it actually worth paying the subscription Mark and you’ll find no one arguing about it.

But ultimately, I’m beyond spending my time making the site work to the satisfaction of people that don’t contribute their own cash to what we do,

thats fair enough, but that group also includes people who used to contribute their own cash but stopped doing so because of the way things have been managed on here over the last months.  Maybe the number of lost customers/subscribers is insignificant, but if not I would have thought understanding why you lost that revenue might be useful to your future approach

As above, I would support the site happily IF it worked wherever I was. As it is I can only browse at work because the Accept button has been disabled, before it would blank out the entire page and make the site unusable. One day the site was fine, the next it was unusable.

Yes, I reported it. I had nothing in the way of an answer so I never bothered using the site since my phone is incapable of interacting with it and I get little actual computer time at home.

How many other folk do you think that has happened to that never even bothered returning?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, your software is garbage, either by default or because of the way it's been implemented. Plenty of other forums using VBulletin, Xenforo and the like have had NONE of the issues you have, have more features (yes they can be turned off so you don't have to see them!) and seem to survive on donations and a lone admin, never mind an entire staff, ads and paid subscribers!

Oh, and FWIW, road.cc uses Drupal, not Wordpress so I doubt they are using the same plugins.

 Plenty of other forums using VBulletin, Xenforo and the like have had NONE of the issues you have, have more features (yes they can be turned off so you don’t have to see them!) and seem to survive on donations and a lone admin, never mind an entire staff, ads and paid subscribers!

You're mistaking a forum with a magazine publisher. This forum could be made profitable at a lot less than £20 per person per year. That cost only exists because it's supporting/subsidising a loss-making magazine. Mark has previously made clear that he's not interested in only running a forum.

And without the forum the website has no anchor. Let's be honest here, STW is just about the only UK mtb forum left and it's still managing to lose people. If the forum was run well more people would stick about and more people would support it.

I'm well aware the forum is an aside but the issues I describe apply to the website as well - I should have made that clear.

For £1.99 a month I'd happily sub but only if the software didn't make me want to throw whatever device I'm using out a window.

I’m done arguing. I’ve been more than honest about everything we do. I won’t be contributing to this topic anymore. If this website is worth £1.99 then you’ll pay it. If it’s not then don’t.

But ultimately, I’m beyond spending my time making the site work to the satisfaction of people that don’t contribute their own cash to what we do,

I stopped to think today when my sub ran out of I would roll it on again, I did in the hope that you might get round to fixing all the stuff the update broke. Now it seems like that ain't going to happen. Thanks.

 If this website is worth £1.99 then you’ll pay it. If it’s not then don’t.

It isn't,...and I don't anymore. Maybe give us website with a proper usable search function or even the ability to read post without a host of random BBcode making it illegible. You know like it used to be, before ya'll messed it up.

I have never commented on these threads before. I think it’s hard to without making sweeping generalisations, nevertheless...

This is one of the few websites I visit nearly every day, mostly lurking, occasionally posting stuff nobody is interested in (still reading)?

It’s worth subscribing to me, but mostly because of the other people who contribute. I like the magazine a lot, when I read it, but mostly I’m happy to pay to keep the community going. Yes it’s a business, but with the greatest of respect, I don’t imagine that Mark and others are ordering their Ferrari anytime soon off the dividends...

That said, I liked the old forum because it worked. I could comment, reply and quote without issue but the new one is so unpredictable that I don’t really post at all now. I’m not sure I’m missed. In fact, I know I’m not.

GDPR has seemingly killed the internet. Few of the cookie scrips are at all effective on any site. Flipboard has become unusable, for example.

I fear that this site will slowly die if the issues aren’t sorted, however that is done. I don’t want it to, I like it and the guys behind it a lot. I’ll keep supporting it with a subscription until it does, hoping that somebody is able to make it stable (especially on mobile).

thats fair enough, but that group also includes people who used to contribute their own cash but stopped doing so because of the way things have been managed on here over the last months

Yep. I cancelled my long standing sub when it was made pretty clear that the forum isn't high on the priority list as it's the only bit I really use. I'll happily resubscribe if that changes. As is the ads are annoying but even with a sub there are still ads and the same poor usability

that group also includes people who used to contribute their own cash but stopped doing so because of the way things have been managed on here over the last months

I only come on stw for the forum, so i bought a P for no adverts and to give support.

I stopped my auto-renewal during the "forum update improvements" which, as far as I can tell, aren't complete, yet.

Obviously, Mark, you have no interest in improving the forum for users like me. Chicken, or egg?

Edit ; beaten to it.

Nickjb I’ve knickerd your post as it’s exactly how I feel.

Yep. I cancelled my long standing sub when it was made pretty clear that the forum isn’t high on the priority list as it’s the only bit I really use. I’ll happily resubscribe if that changes. As is the ads are annoying but even with a sub there are still ads and the same poor usability

£20 a year is too cheap even for digital.

The “magazine” is great and the other services have a value as well.

Whack it up to £3 a month or £24 annually and it still represents very good value.

What I don't get is that we the forum members are the content creators that drive the traffic to the site.  If the traffic on the forum is the bit that creates the traffic that creates the profits then surely the forum contributors need to be looked after.

If the forum dies then no profits = people out of a job.  continue to ignore the concerns of the forum poister then it will die.

I for one never look at anything else from site unless the shonky software takes me to another part of it when I immediately go back to the foirum

Did the forum not exist first?

I remember when The Forum was Matt’s mailing list. It was all a long time ago.

I'm not arguing, nobody is. We are saying WHY we wouldn't pay. Either you want our money or you don't. Sticking your head in the sand nets you nothing.

This is starting to sound like the would you pay more tax thread where people are saying that yes they would but only if...  There are folks here who use the forum a lot but don't like the ads

Then just pay, the ads disappear. There only time I see ads are when it is time to sign in again. Try it, the experience is way better. This is the problem with lots of the internet now when people are so used to the time when it was all free that they don't want to pay for anything.  This is why newsfeeds are all full of crap clickbait because noone wants to pay for real news or journalism but they are happy to complain about clickbait.

Yes, functionality isn't great but it works. waiting for it to get better before paying isn't going to fund it to get better and ads don't pay enough any more. Be part of the solution

To echo the sentiments above, i also cancelled my auto renew when the site kept on refusing to let me sign in. As yet I'm not inclined to change my position as too much is wrong.

Eg. I just got halfway through a review with ads getting in the way, went to sign in, couldn't find log in on the left hand menu, X button didn't work to collapse menu, so i hit back on my phone browser and the page closes. And i still don't know which 2.6" tyres to buy!

In the words of Roger Murtaugh "I'm too old for this shit...".

Then just pay, the ads disappear. There only time I see ads are when it is time to sign in again.

I have to sign in every time i visit the site, this often takes ages due to the adds not sure how having a P would solve this.

I'm almost at the point where I would pay. It's a *lot* better than the nadir, but:

- we still have the crazy tag soup going on when posting
- at least on my phone, the edit thing goes unbearably slowly at times (and is there something wrong with cut-n-paste? I'm not sure).

- editing your post after submit doesn't work properly

I think if those were fixed (especially the tag soup) I'd probably sign up now.

I pay, I get no ads, usability is fine, image, quoting, embolden functions all work, editing will get rid of all the occasionally mistakes with formatting, that frankly happen everywhere else at some point.

then there is adding a pic on a mobile the box goes off screen. Once I mange the resolve that it's impossible to add text. I have to add a comment in another post. 🤨

nickc you only have to look at the crap I post from work or that Northwind regularly posts to see that it is not an occasional problem. Fwiw, these occasional issues are confined to once or twice a year on any other forum as opposed to every hour of every day.

leffeboy - my issue isn't with the ads per se, my issue is with the shite software the site uses and not wishing to validate it. Your argument abut funding change doesn't stand up either, they had the chance with the new forum and instead of accepting it was a mess they stuck fingers in their ears and we ended up where we are today. Frankly I don't think this will change so long as valid, constructive criticism is shut down as "arguing", if you care about your business and employees you would listen to the people telling you why they won't give you their money instead of taking an arrogant I'll tell you what you want so take it and be grateful' approach to the whole thing.

Man people are tight! 😆 The answer to the issues has been given, sub and they can turn off the ads (by consequence you'd imagine that would allow then to stop fighting with the ad system and concentrate on fixing the issues, issues that then will become simple.) There isn't really a debate about chicken or the egg here, it's pretty obvious they need a helping hand.

ps, Mark, you should probably do what half the world is doing these days and set up a Patreon, and get into video content(not sure if the video bit is crucial to that). Would mean, those that want to pay more, can.

They also wilfully miss the point.....others more cynical than me would say.

Anyway, I love the adverts. Never been so balls deep in Ukrainians and Filipinos.

I keep on trying to find a way to express this

I and I guess most people visiting this site are forum posters.  I have zero interest in the magazine and all the rest of it.  I have never read an article or the magazine

Mark wants to be an internet publisher and is using the profits generated by the forum where the users create the content thus the profits to prop up a lossmaking business.  This means the experience on the forum is far less good than other forums from a user friendly point of view.  So my forum experience is made worse by this decision by Mark to monetarise the forum as much as possible.  to me that is not a good thing.  Now I have a choice - stay or go.  I have stayed so far but many have left.  go too far down this road and lose too many posters then the whole pack of cards collapses.

I feel very strongly that they have their priorities wrong.  The forum should be the part they concentrate on most because its the foundation on which everything else relies upon

I ( along with the rest of the posters) am already creating profits for STW by being a content provider.  To be asked to pay to create content to gain ad revenue to support a website I have no interest in Irks me.

I would pay a reasonable amount to be a forum only member.  that of course would be pennies because a forum is cheap to run.  I don't have that option.  I can either pay a subscription to something I have no interest in to get rid of the intrusive ads, I can carry on as is or I can block all the ads.  One of these options provides significant income to STW, one minimal and one none.  I wonder how many folk pick the third option

I always wonder why I can’t just have the free item when I see ‘buy one get one free’ deals too

£20 a year is reasonable just for the forum TJ. Do some mental gymnastics in your head(something you are seemingly good! 😆 as evidence by the above posts) and consider the mag part as a free bit to you that you may or may not view as you choose.

And that's fair enough, but it comes back to the question of why you would pay for a bug infested heap when you know it doesn't have to be that way. I don't think it's reasonable at all tbh and clearly others don't either. FWIW I have and do pay my way on forums but I feel like I'm actually getting something for my money including owners and devs who actually listen to and engage with folk.

Look at Descent-World and SDH/Ride.io - when the forums died the whole lot went with them. If you're clever you learn from your mistakes but if you're really smart you learn from others before you make the same mistake.

Because they need a helping hand. That much is pretty obvious.

<div class="bbp-reply-author">nickc
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<div class="">Subscriber</div>
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I pay, I get no ads, usability is fine, image, quoting, embolden functions all work, editing will get rid of all the occasionally mistakes with formatting, that frankly happen everywhere else at some point.

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But ultimately, I’m beyond spending my time making the site work to the satisfaction of people that don’t contribute their own cash to what we do, but not out of any sense of lack of respect for those that choose not to pay but simply because I owe a lot more to those who do and so that’s where I’m spending most of my time and where I’m directing most of the energy of the people who work here.

I read this from Mark and thought what he's saying is that he's stopped trying to make the forum work.

Have I misunderstood?

£1.99 a month isn't a lot of money, as long as some of it is being spent on mending what i use most.

£1.99 a month isn’t a lot of money, as long as some of it is being spent on mending what i use most.

+1.

Like TJ, I also very infrequently read the magazine, sorry, it's just how it is. Maybe that makes me a bad person.

I read this from Mark and thought what he’s saying is that he’s stopped trying to make the forum work.

Have I misunderstood?

Well, I think you've edited very selectively in your head. The bit you quoted is quite clear that making the forum work for non-subscribers is a lower priority than everything else, like for example the user experience of people paying their £1.99.

Because they need a helping hand. That much is pretty obvious.

Is it a business or a hobby?

Because you can run it as one or the other but to expect to run it as one and survive as the other is never going to work. If it's a hobby then fine, I'm willing to donate. If it's a business then frankly I expect a return on my investment which, going by other subscribers, is never going to happen if ever.

LOL at Scotroutes illustrating the point perfectly. At some point =/= constantly.

bit of both I'd say. If you've seen the salaries mentioned in the past, that much is also obvious.

Anyhow, we get it, tighty mctightwad. 😆 You crack on with the mental gymnastics.

I would pay a reasonable amount to be a forum only member

This again is exactly like the pay more tax stuff. I would pay more tax if it didn't go to arts, infrastructure you don't like etc.  This forum is part of something larger and the flavor and nature of this place will be partly due to that whole picture.  For example the modding is possibly heavier than other places but it makes it more pleasant.  20quid/year is not nothing but there is also cost in maintaining membership lists and payments so it will never reduce to just the cost of hosting.

This again is exactly like the pay more tax stuff. I would pay more tax if it didn’t go to arts, infrastructure you don’t like etc.

Yip, tory mctoryville I'd say! 😆

Interesting comparison, but given STW is a commercial enterprise I'd liken it more to paying for sports as part of your Sky package even though you've no interest in it (hence it being an option and not mandatory).

lose too many posters then the whole pack of cards collapses.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand how this forum (and many like it) actually work; as opposed to the way you think it does in your head

This is turning into one of those threads where people with no access to a P&L makes wild guesses about how a business, they have only a passing knowledge of, finances itself..

I would pay a reasonable amount to be a forum only member.

How does a couple of quid a month sound? Mark has told you how to turn off the adds. And as demonstrated by this post, usability is just fine. It's like going into a car showroom, and telling them you don't want their cars, as you have no interest in them but are prepared to pay a smaller amount for say a fridge or a carpet....

How does a couple of quid a month sound? Mark has told you how to turn off the adds. And as demonstrated by this post, usability is just fine.

And as demonstrrated by these posts, that's clearly not always the case:

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nickc
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I pay, I get no ads, usability is fine, image, quoting, embolden functions all work, editing will get rid of all the occasionally mistakes with formatting, that frankly happen everywhere else at some point.

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<div class=”bbp-reply-author”>squirrelking
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And who owns EDF Group?

France, mostly. And?

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<p>EDF is taking the risk in constructing it, owning it and operating it. CGN will be expecting a return on their investment. That 20Bn construction cost has to be clawed back somehow. Maybe if successive governments hadn’t sidestepped the issue for decades and (until recently) refused to take any stake they wouldn’t have been in such a strong negotiating position but that’s not their fault. They came in with a mad offer and someone was mad/desperate enough to accept it. Bearing in mind that present markets mean you can be selling your electricity for well below the daily wholsesale price because it was sold years in advance you can see a method to the madness. I don’t think they have a hope in hell of repeating that for Sizewell C if/when it goes ahead especially since Horizon and NuGen are negotiating much cheaper deals in exchange for a government stake.</p><p></p><p>Decommissioning liabilities are paid through the life of the station, it doesn’t just come from nowhere. Part of that strike price will be going back for that. My optimism in build times is down to the fact that (hopefully) all the technical issues that have held up the other projects have been overcome and this one can just get a straight run without having to go back to the drawing board. My personal opinion is that they have a lot at stake at Hinkley, with the previous track record they need to get this right if they ever want to sell another EPR.</p>

Once again, as with the signing in issue, if it doesn't affect them then people don't want to know.

bit of both I’d say. If you’ve seen the salaries mentioned in the past, that much is also obvious.

Anyhow, we get it, tighty mctightwad.
You crack on with the mental gymnastics.

Then if it's a hobby why is Mark so worried about the livelihoods of his employees? You can't have it both ways, either it's one or the other.

And yeah, you crack on with the usual 'I'm alright Jack' pish and those of us with grievances will just stand by and offer no constructive criticism. Or, you know, just don't contribute if you have nothing positive to add.

I do have something positive to add, subscribe, get rid of the ads, I can't think of anything more positive to the site. If they don't have to spend time maintaining the ads they can focus on other parts.

As said, it's not a chicken or the egg situation, people need to pony up for that to happen first.

As for i'm alright jack, not really, I'm just not am entitled fud like yourself. I get the bbcode issues too, it's not exactly difficult to fix your posts. Would I like it fixed, yes. But it's not a deal breaker.

Regarding something positive to add, how is, "i'm not paying, if you don't fix this, I'm just going to greet and moan then eventually piss off" constructive?

If I'm going to subscribe, I'd like to know the money is going to go some way to fixing the things that most affect me. If I subscribe, and we still have tagsoup in a year's time, I'm going to feel a bit miffed.

I browse here as much as most do I suppose. I also browse many other sites I don't pay for nor am I ever asked to. If I started paying £1.99 a month here, then another place the same, then another etc etc before I know it I'm up to a fair amount each month. If this is the only place you visit on the web or only one of a few then it might seem a bargain.

I don't read the magazine, I don't like it, not my thing. I also don't read the reviews or articles on this site as I get that content elsewhere in a better format. If the publishing side is not viable on it's own and the forum is propping up a lifestlye business for someone then good luck to them but I'm not going to finance it. Just the same as people posting on gofundme or whatever so they can go on a holdiay or get a boobjob or somethng. If you can't generate enough money out of the user base that is here to provide a decent forum and turn a profit then something is wrong.

Compare this site to pinkbike with no subscrition and ad blocker on and off. The presentation of adverts are worlds apart. Ok they have a much larger user base, but the principles are the same. If this site's owners can't be arsed with the forum side of their business then that's up to them. I often can't be arsed doing parts of my job and would rather put all my time and effort into the parts I like. However I wouldn't last long if that was my attitude and I'd be out of a job soon enough...