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Post by ribs on Jul 11, 2017 10:49:19 GMT -8
A couple of flaws with your well intentioned theories there: What?! That's like bookmarking my home insurance's "make a claim" link. I shouldn't ever have to do that. I should be able to just visit the site, click "make a claim" and go with the flow from there. A website should never be so hopelessly broken that I have to bookmark a reporting link for an advert because it's taken over so much I can't actually access the site I intended to access. This situation should never happen and it's an utter disaster that ProBoards have allowed it to happen. For Proboards: This message should really include something along the lines of "we do not permit ads of these types so please report any that you see via this ad report tool so it can be removed: ads.proboards.com/ad-report.html" Wait... So the link to report adverts should be given to people who are not seeing the adverts. But if I haven't got an ad blocker installed, I'll be seeing the adverts and so won't see that message to report the garbage advert I'm seeing. Unless I'm missing something that seems highly illogical. Bottom line is this: ProBoards, whilst a wonderful service, is choosing to allow this garbage to be served to it's users. No ifs, no buts, they are choosing to ignore the problem and do nothing about it because they simply do not care enough to do anything about it. They are selling their soul to a sleazy industry and making false claims about the quality of the adverts they are serving to users. They could, and should, be able to build a better solution to this problem so that 'reporting' adverts simply isn't necessary. But alias, they simply do not care as long as the money keeps on rolling in, forget what users think or feel or how awful it makes the experience. Nothing will change unless enough users say "No! You've crossed the line", in a very loud way.
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Post by Michael on Jul 11, 2017 11:06:18 GMT -8
I have white listed the forum(s) again, and will report back with what I experience You're wasting your time. It's been like this for years.
It won't ever be fixed. As far as ProBoards are concerned there isn't a problem. Advertisers are giving them money, and not enough users are blocking or leaving to make it worth their while to keep their promises and sort out their act. As long as the dollars roll in, the behavior will simply never change. It's that simple. Enough users are blocking for them to irritate with yet more annoying banners, such as the one that brought me here, but we're nowhere near the mark that would change the mindset. I don't know where that mark is, I'm not sure ProBoards knows where that mark is, but we'll probably never reach it as there simply isn't enough technically savvy people on the Internet who will take a stand and do something proactive about it. So the status quo will continue. ProBoards cannot be trusted to ensure garbage doesn't make it through, so I will continue to block, and you probably will resume blocking again as well. Edit: The "Report Ad" link is at the bottom of every page where an ad is displayed. No need to bookmark anything. I have to ask, how are we supposed to resolve these problems if they're never brought to our attention? You've made a lot of claims here, but the main one that bothers me is the suggestion that we don't care about catching bad advertisements. We absolutely do and put forward a LOT of effort to combat bad ads. Anyone who has been around support or worked with us to identify bad ads and block them knows this. I've had the entire support team do nothing but sit and scan ads for days on end when there was reports of issues, we've even completely disabled all mobile advertisements on several occasions for hours or even days at a time due to issues with bad ads. When users receive bad ads, there is every chance that it will cause them to not return to the service. This is the absolute opposite of our goals.
We have no interest in serving bad adverts because of this right here. We don't want you to be beaten down by ad quality so that you feel like you can't trust us. We just want to give you the best product we can.
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Post by Star's Legacy on Jul 11, 2017 12:14:19 GMT -8
A couple of flaws with your well intentioned theories there: What?! That's like bookmarking my home insurance's "make a claim" link. I shouldn't ever have to do that. I should be able to just visit the site, click "make a claim" and go with the flow from there. A website should never be so hopelessly broken that I have to bookmark a reporting link for an advert because it's taken over so much I can't actually access the site I intended to access. This situation should never happen and it's an utter disaster that ProBoards have allowed it to happen. The only flaws I see here is with your claims that proboards does not care. Why give us a report tool to let them know that there is a problem needing to be addressed if they didn't care? For your reference to making an insurance claim; why not bookmark the make a claim link? Why make it more complicated by having to go to the main site and then find the claim link rather than opening it directly through a bookmark thus saving a step? On every proboards forum there is a report ad link at the bottom so that you do not need to bookmark the link it just makes it more convenient to access if you need to use it. If a redirect does happen then simply go to the bookmarked report tool or visit a proboards forum and click the link and report the bad ad so it can be dealt with. And for the record I have experienced a mobile redirect, but have never had a problem closing that tab and reopening the forum I was just on as if I never had the redirect in the first place. For insurance purposes you make a claim because something happened, on proboards forums you 'make a claim' by reporting a bad ad via the ad report tool after something happens so the issue can be dealt with. Never have I been on a site that offered such options and that actively portrayed that they cared about user experience in such a way.For Proboards: This message should really include something along the lines of "we do not permit ads of these types so please report any that you see via this ad report tool so it can be removed: ads.proboards.com/ad-report.html" Wait... So the link to report adverts should be given to people who are not seeing the adverts. But if I haven't got an ad blocker installed, I'll be seeing the adverts and so won't see that message to report the garbage advert I'm seeing. Unless I'm missing something that seems highly illogical. Bottom line is this: ProBoards, whilst a wonderful service, is choosing to allow this garbage to be served to it's users. No ifs, no buts, they are choosing to ignore the problem and do nothing about it because they simply do not care enough to do anything about it. They are selling their soul to a sleazy industry and making false claims about the quality of the adverts they are serving to users. They could, and should, be able to build a better solution to this problem so that 'reporting' adverts simply isn't necessary. But alias, they simply do not care as long as the money keeps on rolling in, forget what users think or feel or how awful it makes the experience. Nothing will change unless enough users say "No! You've crossed the line", in a very loud way. The link is available to everyone at the bottom of each proboards forum. My statement was directed at the message users get when they have adblock enabled because presumably they have had bad ad experience on the internet, most likely from other sites that really lay on the intrusive ads. My point was to include an additional message explaining proboards views that they do not want users to have a bad ad experience and thus can take charge and report any problems via the report tool. I have never seen another site that offer such a thing. Have you seen the complete, utter spam and full page pop up ads that so many other sites have? Try browsing Photobucket for more than 5 minutes without getting a full page pop up or audio ad. Yes with proboards sometimes a bad ad gets in through security and causes a problem, but the majority of the time there are simple ads on the page that just sit there playing nice.
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Post by ribs on Jul 11, 2017 13:43:19 GMT -8
First up Michael, I want to say thank you for engaging with me. I was not expecting someone from ProBoards to actually respond directly to me. Although we are coming from very different perspectives on this matter, I still appreciate you reaching out. Edit: The "Report Ad" link is at the bottom of every page where an ad is displayed. No need to bookmark anything. There is every need to bookmark that link if going to the site takes over your browser and you can never load the forum in the first place due to the garbage ads that are being served. If you can't load the website how are you supposed to click a link contained within it? I have to ask, how are we supposed to resolve these problems if they're never brought to our attention? We brought it to your attention. First by reporting the ads, and then by blocking them completely when the situation didn't improve. The fact that your users are bringing it to your attention is the entire reason we are having this conversation. Obviously you'd prefer if we didn't block, but that's the way it is because your users are not trusting your narrative on the adverts. You've made a lot of claims here, but the main one that bothers me is the suggestion that we don't care about catching bad advertisements. My claims are based upon the experiences of myself and other forums users. This is my perception and my experience, which is completely valid unless of course there is the feeling that I'm being untruthful. Actions speak louder than words, and I trust and assess based on what's actually happened, not what's said and promised. And I'll reiterate my point: If you say that you don't serve video ads or 'other annoyances' then you need to own it. If, for whatever reason, you cannot deliver this promise, then it should never be made in the first place. It's that simple. I don't understand why this is even a debate. If you truly cared, you would have made it happen, it's that simple. If you promise the moon and the stars then you must deliver the moon and the stars. How you deliver that, is frankly, not my concern, you promise, I expect, simple as that. The promise and the expectation in this specific case is not unreasonable. We absolutely do and put forward a LOT of effort to combat bad ads. Anyone who has been around support or worked with us to identify bad ads and block them knows this. I've had the entire support team do nothing but sit and scan ads for days on end when there was reports of issues, we've even completely disabled all mobile advertisements on several occasions for hours or even days at a time due to issues with bad ads. When users receive bad ads, there is every chance that it will cause them to not return to the service. This is the absolute opposite of our goals.Then you have failed, as evidenced by the fact we are having this conversation and your revenue stream is being impacted by the increasing number of ticked off users who are choosing the option of depriving you of revenue instead of trusting you. Here's a thought; save yourselves a lot of time and vet the adverts before they get served to your users, rather than after we've been infested with hundreds of tracking cookies, slow loading adverts that autoplay videos. Why is this so difficult? I'm guessing you're using a third party service to serve your ads, in that case, find another partner or roll your own solution. Adverts can be acceptable with fairly basic criteria if you need ad networks that serve acceptable ads, you can find them here. And of course don't forget that Chrome will be blocking this stuff anyway in 2018. But I have a feeling you do not need me to tell you this, you're choosing to not use these solutions which you undoubtedly know exist, which brings us back to the trust... We don't want you to be beaten down by ad quality so that you feel like you can't trust us. Too late. You've chosen profit over quality and this is the result; users are biting back and you don't like it. The links I provide above around acceptable ads are not new. This stuff has been around for a long long time, many years; an eternity on the Internet. You make the choice to instead serve garbage and ads yet claim that you don't. You then place a small plaster over a gaping wound with a reporting feature which is (i assume) tying up way too much time and not solving the core problem, and then you try to tell off users that are blocking the garbage ads with a judgmental man staring at my screen in the banner advertisement. You can't have it both ways. Deliver on the promises you chose to make, and then you can take the moral high ground.
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Post by ribs on Jul 11, 2017 13:57:48 GMT -8
The only flaws I see here is with your claims that proboards does not care. Why give us a report tool to let them know that there is a problem needing to be addressed if they didn't care? Because we are here several years later, and the report feature clearly isn't fixing the core problem as users are still blocking ads and the problem is now big enough that ProBoards feels to need to do something a little more drastic about it. If ProBoards actually cared enough, like really cared as they claim to do so, they would have fixed the issue long ago. Instead we get virtue signaling and no solution. Hence we are having this conversation. For your reference to making an insurance claim; why not bookmark the make a claim link? Why make it more complicated by having to go to the main site and then find the claim link rather than opening it directly through a bookmark thus saving a step? On every proboards forum there is a report ad link at the bottom so that you do not need to bookmark the link it just makes it more convenient to access if you need to use it. You're missing the point. You said to bookmark the link because of the site not loading because of the site not loading because the ads hijack the user's browser entirely. Users should never have to do this. Ever. If this happens it's a unilateral failure of the host website that allows this to happen. It's not a convenience thing, like bookmarking should be, it's a survival tactic to ensure the website loads at all. This should never happen, not even once. Never have I been on a site that offered such options and that actively portrayed that they cared about user experience in such a way. Google's ad network, adsense (and a few others, I think) provide a little X in the corner where you can report ads and their criteria for websites is fairly strict. Given they are one of the biggest ad networks around, I can't believe you've never seen this. My point was to include an additional message explaining proboards views that they do not want users to have a bad ad experience and thus can take charge and report any problems via the report tool. I have never seen another site that offer such a thing. But there is no point including the link there. When the user will actually need it to report an ad, they won't see it as they are seeing the ad. Maybe a link to a policy page or something, sure, but not to the reporting page as it can't ever be used in good faith in that location, as when it's visible, the user can't possibly be seeing the ads, so there is nothing to report. Have you seen the complete, utter spam and full page pop up ads that so many other sites have? Try browsing Photobucket for more than 5 minutes without getting a full page pop up or audio ad. Yes with proboards sometimes a bad ad gets in through security and causes a problem, but the majority of the time there are simple ads on the page that just sit there playing nice. Completely irrelevant to this conversation. I'm not saying there are not worst websites out there, I never said, implied, or asserted that.
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Post by Michael on Jul 12, 2017 10:26:27 GMT -8
I feel like we're accurately and honestly delivering on our promises concerning ads. I am completely confident we do more to ensure ad-quality for our users than the overwhelming majority of services out there. The fact that we're willing to publicly have this discussion should be more than enough evidence that we've been open and transparent about this issue.
I really don't know where you've gotten the idea that we serve browser-hijacking/malware-laden ads to our users on the regular. I can say with total honesty that every "malware-ad" issue we've seen in the last year has come from an issue not at all related to an ad, but rather malicious third part codes admins have installed on their forums. The worst I've seen in recent memory was a few auto-redirect ads, which are completely unacceptable and were promptly removed from rotation.
I feel like this discussion keeps coming back to the assertion that we don't care about our users, and that we don't put in enough effort combating bad ads. So I went back and did the math.
Collectively in 2016 the Support Team spent roughly 400+ hours scanning, checking, removing, and banning advertisements that didn't meet our standards. I expect that number to be even greater by the end of 2017. Myself and others on the team have stayed late, worked on days off, and left dinners in the middle of eating to ensure we are constantly doing the best we can to provide a quality service, with advertisements that adhere to our policies. We've been making it happen every day, seven days a week. All of this is not even counting the undoubtedly hundreds of hours* that were spent building automatic-ad-scanners, reporting tools, and manual ad checks.
I understand this probably won't change your opinion but I hope you and others see that the suggestion that we don't care enough to do more, is patently false.
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Post by Lynx on Jul 12, 2017 10:32:10 GMT -8
Michael, Just wanted to let you know that, if you folks there at PB are looking into possibly having a yearly cost to get PB+, I'm all for it. And, personally, I think that the $35.00 a year that was suggested would be perfectly reasonable. It's something that I would certainly utilize.
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Post by _Windows on Jul 13, 2017 4:11:55 GMT -8
Michael Proboards is one of the only sites I whitelist on my adblocker. I don't use the adblocker to block ads for the sake of blocking ads, but as an additional layer of security (particularly against malvertising). That said, Proboards seems to do a great job at filtering the ads that come through so I feel safe allowing the ads to run in my browser. Even with PB whitelisted, if an ad does come through and try to redirect my browser without permission, the destination URL would most likely be blocked so I still have some protection against such ads.
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Post by ribs on Jul 13, 2017 10:07:52 GMT -8
I feel like we're accurately and honestly delivering on our promises concerning ads. really?So, to paraphrase, your website, which is 100% within your control, says: Okay, and you say: I invite the reader of this post to pause for a moment. A good 20 seconds, and just consider the three quotes above. If the website "does not use audio ads", then how are audio ads present and need to be removed? If it doesn't use them, how are they there? How can both statements be true? Why does 400 hours have to go into removing the adverts if the promise is being delivered? Surely that should be 0 hours, as there would be nothing to remove? How can both statements be true? So, you had so many non-conforming ads, on your own website, that had to spend hundreds of hours removing them? How is that delivering on anything, as users are being served them? A website. Owned in it's entirety by ProBoards. Has had to spend hundreds of hours removing content that they allow onto it. So basically, ProBoards is allowing an arsonist into their house, and then spending an lot of time putting out fires. This problem is 100% your own doing. And, as you dodged this entire paragraph in your response, I'll state it again: Save yourselves a lot of time and vet the adverts before they get served to your users, rather than after we've been infested with hundreds of tracking cookies, slow loading adverts that autoplay videos. Why is this so difficult? And I'll state this again (I'm too lazy to reinsert the links): I'm guessing you're using a third party service to serve your ads, in that case, find another partner or roll your own solution. Adverts can be acceptable with fairly basic criteria if you need ad networks that serve acceptable ads, you can find them here. And of course don't forget that Chrome will be blocking this stuff anyway in 2018. Bam! Just saved you 400 hours, a whole bunch of goodwill with your users and allowed you to keep your promises. Running a service like ProBoards is hard. Keeping uptime like you do, and a smooth running service with all the users, network attacks you undoubtedly face, and god only knows whatever else is no small feat. It takes a lot of hard work and intelligence to get to this stage. So I am again forced to reach one conclusion: The garbage ads that you claim you don't serve, and claim to spend hundreds of hours removing (both statements can't be true by the way), is entirely because you don't want to properly, actually, once and for all, solve the problem. The 400 hours spent firefighting is a worthwhile cost, as I'm guessing the ad network is paying you well enough to make it worth your while, instead of using something else that doesn't serve garbage ads. You make your choice, I'll make mine, I guess. But I'll certainly never trust ProBoards to not serve garbage ads, tracking cookies, or worse still, drive-by malware to my computer, as apparently the system of firefighting the problem after letting in the arsonist is in place; allowing adverts is a privacy and security risk if this is how little control ProBoard chooses to take over it's own service.
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Post by Michael on Jul 13, 2017 14:41:11 GMT -8
I think we clearly have a misunderstanding of how serving millions of advertisements and pageviews every day works.
Thank you for your opinion and this discussion, but clearly we are not seeing eye to eye.
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Post by _Windows on Jul 14, 2017 3:32:11 GMT -8
ribs, ProBoards does not have direct control over how their ad service delivers ads. Sometimes, they get ads that they do not want. This is the same as every other website on the internet. Given how it works, I'd say they are doing a rather good job at moderating the ads. If you are that concerned, one of the best things you can do is disable Flash Player (many of the worst types of ads use this, not to mention its a security nightmare at times).
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Post by ribs on Jul 14, 2017 5:58:35 GMT -8
ribs, ProBoards does not have direct control over how their ad service delivers ads. Sometimes, they get ads that they do not want. I'm fully aware, that's the point I've been making. They choose to allow the arsonists into their house and promise no fires. I guess I'm the only one seeing that contradiction.
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Post by RichardInTN on Jul 17, 2017 18:00:53 GMT -8
Michael , Just wanted to let you know that, if you folks there at PB are looking into possibly having a yearly cost to get PB+, I'm all for it. And, personally, I think that the $35.00 a year that was suggested would be perfectly reasonable. It's something that I would certainly utilize. Just caught this... and I agree... if the cost for PB+ is reasonable (not sure I'd go as high as $35/year though... maybe $15/year/member?). Users understand you have to make money or you wouldn't exist. On the other side of the coin, "ad-free", that's (if I understand it correctly) paid for by the admin, being based on page-views doesn't work well for most people. I'd bet my Jeep that 60% of my forum's "page views" are eaten up by other forum's members (most not on PB, but still, they aren't "contributing members"... just stalkers) keeping tabs on our forum. It should be a flat annual fee. Something that an admin can count on and budget for.
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Post by Lynx on Jul 19, 2017 13:10:04 GMT -8
Michael , Just wanted to let you know that, if you folks there at PB are looking into possibly having a yearly cost to get PB+, I'm all for it. And, personally, I think that the $35.00 a year that was suggested would be perfectly reasonable. It's something that I would certainly utilize. Just caught this... and I agree... if the cost for PB+ is reasonable (not sure I'd go as high as $35/year though... maybe $15/year/member?). Users understand you have to make money or you wouldn't exist. On the other side of the coin, "ad-free", that's (if I understand it correctly) paid for by the admin, being based on page-views doesn't work well for most people. I'd bet my Jeep that 60% of my forum's "page views" are eaten up by other forum's members (most not on PB, but still, they aren't "contributing members"... just stalkers) keeping tabs on our forum. It should be a flat annual fee. Something that an admin can count on and budget for. Anyone can purchase ad-free for a forum - the link is in with the rest of the footer links. So, an admin doesn't have to be the only one who can buy ad-free for their forum. Given that, there are settings in your admin panel regarding ad-free - one of which is to keep the ads showing for guests (so it doesn't eat up your pageviews). As for your suggestion of $15 / year subscription price for PB+, I think you're missing a very important aspect. PB+ is for a single user, yes. HOWEVER, that user can visit ANY PB forum ad-free while their PB+ is active. So, to put it into perspective, if the cost was $35 / year, that would get you personal ad-free for every PB forum you visit for a whole year. From that perspective, I believe $35 / year is very reasonable. Just my thoughts though.
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Post by RichardInTN on Jul 19, 2017 18:05:07 GMT -8
Just caught this... and I agree... if the cost for PB+ is reasonable (not sure I'd go as high as $35/year though... maybe $15/year/member?). Users understand you have to make money or you wouldn't exist. On the other side of the coin, "ad-free", that's (if I understand it correctly) paid for by the admin, being based on page-views doesn't work well for most people. I'd bet my Jeep that 60% of my forum's "page views" are eaten up by other forum's members (most not on PB, but still, they aren't "contributing members"... just stalkers) keeping tabs on our forum. It should be a flat annual fee. Something that an admin can count on and budget for. Anyone can purchase ad-free for a forum - the link is in with the rest of the footer links. So, an admin doesn't have to be the only one who can buy ad-free for their forum. Given that, there are settings in your admin panel regarding ad-free - one of which is to keep the ads showing for guests (so it doesn't eat up your pageviews). As for your suggestion of $15 / year subscription price for PB+, I think you're missing a very important aspect. PB+ is for a single user, yes. HOWEVER, that user can visit ANY PB forum ad-free while their PB+ is active. So, to put it into perspective, if the cost was $35 / year, that would get you personal ad-free for every PB forum you visit for a whole year. From that perspective, I believe $35 / year is very reasonable. Just my thoughts though. I'm a power user (on several PB forums), so for me, $35 wouldn't be a stretch (too badly anyway)... but I've got some members who are JUST on my one forum (at least as far as PB forums are concerned, a couple of them are on an "ActiveBoard" forum or two)... for them it wouldn't be worth it.. I was using the $15 as a good average. that way the low volume users would be more interested in it and it would balance out better, and the power users wouldn't mind as much either. It's all about balance at the end of the day. If you can collect 5 $35 fees or 20 $15 fees... which one gives you a bigger total income? By my math $300 (the 20*$15) is greater than $175 (the 5*$35) And yes, anyone CAN purchase it for the whole forum (figured that out after I'd already posted the previous post, and dug into it)... but in reality how often does it occur that all members chip in? I'm actually a little curious about that... but am not going to "officially ask" because I believe that it's likely protected data that is not available to the general public... and I can understand that (if it is).
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