I know there's already been a shitton of forum posts regarding ads, but I wanted to voice my own opinion, because as of late, it's really been bugging me.
I understand that monetisation is necessary. I get that. But pushing intrusive, annoying ads that disrupt user experience is not the way about it. Pushing ads that make the site outright unusable on mobile devices (slowing down site performance and shifting the contents up and down) is certainly not the way about it. It really seems overly desperate - like little consideration was put in for user experience. That brings me to my second point:
Original donors especially got really fucked over with this update. Not only did they lose the exclusivity of donation perks a few months back, but now they too have to put up with ads. Original donors are what kept this site thriving pre-Elo. Without their donations, SRC would not be here today. This site may be ran by a corporation now, but when it was ran by the community, they helped sustain this site. They helped maintain this community we all use today. It feels legitimately disrespectful they've just been treated the same as all of us.
Lastly, why was the implementation of ads across the board announced in an entirely unrelated announcement post? If anything, such a substantial and blatantly controversial change should have had some form of direct address beforehand. Then again, transparency is a rarity with these updates, it seems.
Anyway, that's all I have to say. Hopefully something changes soon.
[quote=weils] Not only did they lose the exclusivity of donation perks a few months back, but now they too have to put up with ads. [/quote] Also hovering over our icons now no longer shows how much we donated. Doesn't matter for most of us, but to the guys that donated 3-4 figures to support the site, all their recognition is gone (since we also dont have the donor leaderboards anymore).
I don't care much about not being as "exclusive", but it would be nice to have something like a second icon badge or something. Feels like we got nerfed down to regular users.
yeah literally the only difference between an og donor and a regular user is that when you hover over the badge on a og donor it says they are one. no other difference, 13 characters when you hover over a 14x18~ image.
idk, i'm an og donor and don't even display it. i didn't donate for the perks, but to support the site
still taking away perks seems like a misstep lol
It's said by the one mod who sometimes interacts with us that elo does read the forums, so they're aware of the complaints, so I'm not sure that blowing up the support hub is necessary. Having said that, it's pretty clear they're not taking them into consideration.
I already figured if a pay wall wasn't coming then ad city was the plan. My guess is at some point they might just do away with the forums, but it's probably ways out from now. I mean the forum has mostly been spam and non forum moderators directing new users to the minecraft leaderboard anyways. At what point do they just do away with it? Roll useful threads into the knowledge base, then direct people towards leaderboards. Got a problem? Support hub.
The irony or well problem is the following: This is a community run website basically. The content is delivered by the userbase. So it is replacable. Elo however seem to not recorgnize or does not care about it. Which is why I hope that it will be getting a competitor soon.
Exactly what's been argued before. SRC isn't some major website like youtube, where competing is basically impossible, even if the site is held up entirely by its user submitted content. SRC is basically a dressed up spreadsheet site, with some added functionality. The ads really hit the various communities that make up the site (that never post in the open forums) hard. If things get worse somebody will offer an ad free competitor and that'll be that.
Yep exactly. And I am very welcome to this. A lot of other communities are also welcoming the idea and even considered creating leaderboards on their own websites or even going back to google spreadsheets. What bothers me tho, is that elo does not respect communities anymore that have boards on seperate websites. Which is a big red flag in my eyes
[quote]What bothers me tho, is that elo does not respect communities anymore that have boards on seperate websites[/quote] they don't? I know in the past SRC worked with those communities to have the leaderboard on SRC essentially direct users to external sites. at some point I think those leaderboards started to exist on both sites in tandem, and that was pre elo
i think you underestimate the position of SRC it has a certain legitimacy. It will practically always be the first result when you google "gamename" speedrun if it is on the site. i dont think it is possible to just switch to another website for most communities. Because they will essentially be forced to maintain two leaderboards or risk losing the board on src.
Elo deserves currently a Exodus but i exodus wont be great for anyone.
Just like TG, and SDA, and SRL, right?
Don't get me wrong SRC is the biggest website catering to speedruns we've had so far, but the individual communities could pack up and leave if they chose to do so. Sure, SRC could continue hosting a leaderboard for said communities that left, but if the community itself doesn't view it as legitimate, then it doesn't matter. Accuracy of a leaderboard matters to the community, not those outside of it. If someone outside that community google's "game x world record" they'll likely get SRC as a first result, but that only matters to that individual, not the community. It might not be the most accurate to those outside of speedrunning, but if the shift from one site to another began it's an issue that would resolve itself with time.
[quote]they don't? I know in the past SRC worked with those communities to have the leaderboard on SRC essentially direct users to external sites. at some point I think those leaderboards started to exist on both sites in tandem, and that was pre elo [/quote] I know that they suddenly stopped redirecting all mega man games to mmleaderboards. That's why most of these boards here are now kind of a mess.
Damn, didn't know that, but I don't follow mm I guess. Perfect example though. I'm guessing the MM community will just go back to using their own site like before.
[quote]I'm guessing the MM community will just go back to using their own site like before.[/quote] They never stopped. Up to the switch a few months ago, the Mega Man X board explicitly stated that only runs listed on megamanleaderboards would be accepted on here.
Something tells me the MM community doesn't care about SRC's rules
That's my point lol. If SRC stops working for these communities they'll just leave.