Just a rant, but lately, I am upset with the state of many online forums. Too many have sold out to commercial companies who's first priority is to just bombard us with ads and track us versus offering a "satisfying" forum experience.

In good practice, I try to keep separate passwords for all my accounts. I use a password tool with random passwords so to log into sites requires opening my password program since I just don't have any faith with any of the in-browser password tools. A lot of times when sites don't render I clear my cache. So I came back to this forum after having cleared my cache, I wanted to catch up, but didn't want to take the time to go look up my password and the experience not being logged in was just terrible. The site is so slow. To fetch the first page of one thread, it took 160+ web hits. The majority are for ads and ad tracking. And, as long as you leave your browser open to that thread, the page keeps calling home to "collective-media.net" letting them know you still have the thread open. Some threads, took a MINUTE+ to load. IE just looked stalled for awhile. I used a tool called fiddler to see every link this forum was launching and it's just amazing when you see the things your browser is doing just to see this forum.

What was driving me nuts is that the thread page would load, but all I could see was the top, I couldn't see any part of the thread yet. They want me to stare over and over again at the welcome part to join and login. For EVERY single page. Fiddler shows that during this long delay and no readable thread content to look at, the browser is busy doing all it's ad stuff. Some delays are really really long, to the point I think they are going out of their way to slow things down. I searched all the hits for where the actual thread content was and LOL, it's in the VERY FIRST HIT. It was there all along, they were just going out of their way NOT to show it to us!!!! They want us to stare at the ads.... Frustrating... So basically 1st hit, what we are after, they just don't show us, then 100+ more hits for BS..... And constantly phoning home...

Now if you are logged in, it is a little bit better, but still can be frustrating. Especially the "fake" first posts that are really ads. They don't seem to phone home once you log in.

So, sure, the fix is to just login for a slightly better experience. Still, I find it frustrating...

I really miss the old days of forums before the days of the commercial business vultures. Is it just me?

I remember when i first got our D, since it was so new, most forums had very little activity. I have to say, I regret picking this one to participate in.

Any other good, faster, easier to use 3rd gen Durango forums that people are actually using?

 

I think all forums should give paint members the option to eliminate ads. I realize that it costs money to run these sites, and ads generate revenue. So, in my opinion, you should get what you pay for.....donate to the site for ad removal or be subjected to ads if you want it for free. That seems fair.

 

There are no-ads/greatly reduced ad sites.

Problem is folks find the bigger sites first because of the dollars generated by the ads there allow such sites to fund search engine optimization, etc at a greater level.

As such, they are the first sites folks find via search, the first they settle in on, etc.

That doesn't necessarily make the sites better just because they are funded better.

Does show that people are lazy and easily satisfied.

IndyDurango

 

There are awesome sites with no ads! But let's face it....most of these forums are here to make money for their owners....and there's nothing wrong with that. I personally know what it costs to run a forum and its not pretty.

 

I usually access from a smartphone. Minimal ads.

 

or you could do like most of us and run firefox with adblock plus and not have to worry about any ads? if you are running it on windows i would also recommend noscript which will stop all java based scripts from running unless you explicitly allow them, it speeds up browsing significantly on all websites

 

I don't have a problem donating/paying to sites and I have in the past, but I resist paying to those sites that try to annoy me into paying. Basically, I don't have any trust in sites like that.

Let's remember, we're basically paying to "not get annoyed", not get better content because in the end, this site is NOT generating any content, it's the members that contribute. Without members (free or paying), they have nothing. They're not going to answer questions, post pics, help other people out. And what percentage of content is from people that haven't paid at all, but yet, the sites go out of their way to make this site suck extra bad because I haven't logged in?



I agree, and even I am guilty of that. I picked this site because it seemed it was the one most people were talking on. I regret that now. But the alternative is to post on an site that less people use and just wait for ...... a reply? It's frustrating.

There are A LOT of awesome forums out there that are "worthy" of being donated too, but still make their sites super fast and easy to use and don't annoy with excessive ads or tracking. I really wish this site was one of those. IMO, the best sites worth donating too are the ones where you feel you don't need to donate! Seems ironic, but in general, those seem like the best sites.


Well, we have difference experiences then, as I also personally know and I work for a company that hosts stuff like this and it actually is a lot cheaper than many people think. A LOT cheaper, IF you are hosting tons of sites. Sure, one guy, trying to host one site for one specific thing, that's a lot more expense. But a company that does this specifically for a living? Sorry, it gets really cheap. The problem is greed and once "some" money is coming in, they loose site of what the purpose of the site originally was and it's just a money grab. I know of many "private" run forums that have been offered amounts like $1500 to sell out to these commercial companies. I am "thankful" that quite a few resisted and to those, I then "donated".

But I want to make one point clear, I am not upset about the ads. The ads don't bother me. I am not ranting about the ads. My rant is about how lousy this site performs and the what I consider to be, really really ridiculous and excessive "tracking". Especially if I am not logged in. Aarrgh, and those "sponsored" posts. ONLY on this site do I need to look more carefully at the top posts before clicking on them.




I know of AdBlock but have not bothered with it since I generally haven't had a problem with ads in the past. This is the first site that for some reason has really annoyed me and gotten on my nerves. I don't browse this forum every day, I just stop in every now and then.





One thing I figured out. I have many monitors on my desk and run many vms. For personal browsing, I have a dedicated VM and I mostly use IE in that one. For work, on all my other VMs, I use IE,FireFox, Chrome,etc against all my work projects. What I've found is that this site in particular, when not logged in, just really really really really really sucks on IE. To the point that IE hangs, crashes often, maybe because I am impatient and regret having clicked the link for this site and just don't want to wait any longer for something meaningful to render. Once logged in, it's tolerable. But if I've cleared my cache, it can be a chore just to get to the login screen. So I experimented on another VM with firefox and it was a lot better. I love vms. I tried out AdBlock. So I think my solution will be to install FireFox on my personal VM and run AdBlock JUST FOR THIS SITE.


But speaking of ads, it is getting creepy though how they track you. I'm use to seeing the ads, etc for products I've searched at amazon but haven't purchased. But I guess I must have done a business search on the personal vm at one point, becauase I had an ad that was targetted directly for one of the products I was looking into for a client (but had already ruled out).

So now I've reconfigured to turn on even more privacy and block even more cookies.


Interesting, more forum censoring? I had originally typed "v i r t u a l" machines and it turned that first part in astericks so I had to shorten to vms. Is that a bad word?

 

long story behind v i r t u a l being censored and im not going to get into it here in the public forum

i would wonder if you are as computer savy as you claim (running vms and such is not for your average computer user, i know bc i am on a similar level to you w/ vms) but yet you still use IE!??!?!?!!!!! are you nuts? IE has given me more problems than any other single piece of software i have ever used, now granted IE isnt even an option for me anymore (and hasnt been since i switched to linux full time almost 2 years ago) but still what would make you use IE if you have a choice??

 

Using IE and being (or not being) computer savy is irrelevant. I don't like IE, but being a MICROSOFT .Net web developer, I need to know it and support it. And IE is what works best with Visual Studio. In any event, if one wants their site to work on as many browsers as possible, IMO, one should use other browsers. Whether you or I hate IE is irrelevant, it's no excuse for this site sucking on IE when so many other sites can work just fine. IE is still a very popular browser. I simply try to make it good practice to visit lots of sites using different browers.

Also, I just realized what I typed earlier was wrong. Personally, I use FireFox for most stuff and random web surfing, stuff that doesn't require constantly logging in. If I'm doing a google search looking for something and not knowing what I will be clicking on, it's usually firefox in that personal sandbox vm.. But I also have other browsers on that vm. But firefox is my default. I run that in as private a mode as possible. Sites that I know I will frequent more and that I 'think" I can trust, and I even want to stay logged into, I usually then copy those links and store those as favorites in IE on my notebook. I use IE there just for the sake of not always using one browser for everything (and also because sometimes I develop from my notebook). And I do the least amount of browsing from my notebook. When running into issues with this site, it was from my notebook on IE. I also have this site bookmarked in the vm with FireFox. A lot of times I am just browsing anonymously and if I see I want to respond, I paste the url over onto my notebook, then I am usually auto logged in there and I reply. Then I go back to my vm.

But from now on, I will just use this site from FireFox on that vm. I have deleted the bookmark to this site that was in IE. A shame though, I've never had to do that for any other site.

I don't want to turn this into a browser wars thread. I don't really have any favorite. Firefox has it's share of issues as well.