[rant] So what's with the return to the other layout, anyway?

The return to the last layout has been up for a full week now, and I just don't get it.

• It's got less content than the old one; the news headlines have been relegated to www.virtualdr.com (and I suspect most of the regulars here have discussions.virtualdr.com bookmarked instead).
• It's got no new content, not even some of those double-height ads we were told about (and the only one of those I've ever seen on a JupiterMedia site was completely blank on the bottom half anyway...).
• It was rather universally canned two months ago, and this latest effort has already drawn negative comments from at least four other members.

I remember once upon a time the members' opinions were taken seriously here, and there was a balance between having advertising and just being plain obnoxious -- popups, popunders, CPU-hogging flash ads and network-cripping Java applets have all been tried and booted off at one time or another. Even OT has been gradually introduced.

Now it's the 1/3 blank space layout. You tried it, we hated it, a compromise was found which most people were reasonably happy with. Just having another go two months later with no discussion at all smacks of arrogance and bad faith from JupiterMedia's side.

It seems like someone or someones upstairs are forgetting that any community site like this has three groups of stakeholders:

• Site owners - provide site to members, want money from advertisers.
• Advertisers - provide money to owners, want impressions from members.
• Members - provide impressions to advertisers, want a site that isn't a pain to use.

It's a nice little bit of symbiosis, but you don't get to ignore any of those and stay sustainable.

So what's the story, really? Why the backflip?

All Jupiter Media boards are dying....nothing that wasn't predicted years ago.

“Years ago” and yet they’re still here. What’s up with that?

And I just noticed on the index page

"Most users ever online was 543, 05-09-2005 at 09:22 AM."

Last time I looked at that about a month ago it was like 283 on December 25 2002 or 2003 or something.

What was so special about 9th May ?

Tuttle, the news headllines were only there to balance out the square ad in the corner up top. We tried the side layout again but this time provided the option that with a click, there would be virtually no ad at all neither on top nor on the side. The thread level can be ad-free with a click, and the link to click has been placed at the top of every post. We thought that was fairly convenient.

Hi, all we want is a forum that doesn't make the visiting experience a chore, why have a "click here to expand at all" . It takes longer to access this forum then any of the 5 others I generally visit. Much I like about this place and Tuttle is only trying to help... time to listen.

Doesn't it sometimes seem like no matter what you do, someone, somewhere will find fault with it? :(

:)

Hi, the somewhere is here and the someone is the experienced members who have seen this forum lose so many good people. If you feel this is fine then I can excuse you for your lack of experience. It is the ability and the duty of educated people to improve the nature of things, it's why you have a computer, we gave it to you. We did not believe we were perfect so we strive to improve, contentment is a lazy response to development that can only lead to failure.

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Originally Posted by Steve R Jones

“Years ago” and yet they’re still here. What’s up with that?

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Yeah they're still here...but in ever dwindling numbers.

The "expand" button is annoying as heck b/c it's only does it for one page and one time only (every time you go to a new page you'll need to click again; then when you go back to the previously viewed page, it won't stay and you have to click again.) Very annoying.

I have no problem w/ ads. But I just think that this layout is not economically sound in term of screen real estate. The bottom 2/3 on the right side are simply wasted. If VDr decides to use this layout, I think, at least they should FILL UP THE WHOLE RIGHT SIDE w/ long vertical ads or stack 3 or 4 of them short ones up. To see that so much space for the forum content gets robbed by EMPTY SPACE??? It's just doesn't make any sense.

My vote is for VDr to either FILL IT UP or NOT AT ALL or go back to the old horizontal banner ON TOP.

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

The thread level can be ad-free with a click, and the link to click has been placed at the top of every post. We thought that was fairly convenient.

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If this is the new layout you expect us to use, why hasn't the full-width link also been placed on the forum and thread index pages?

It would be far more convenient if the ad disappeared when it was scrolled past (ie the same user interface as the old layout), instead of requiring a click on each and every page. All you need is a basic chaser script which hides the ad instead of dragging it down. Scrolling beats clicking by a long way.

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Originally Posted by SpywareDr

Doesn't it sometimes seem like no matter what you do, someone, somewhere will find fault with it? :(

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Yeah, but we usually only have to go through this once a year or so, usually with a new JupiterMedia face behind it, and usually with one of the decision makers dropping in eventually to talk about it. Seeing the same thing tried twice in two months for no discernible reason is frustrating to say the least.

As is required with many other things in life, it's called balance.

VirtualDr must have both advertising and members to survive. Too few ads or members and there simply will not be enough money to pay the bills.

Hide the ads and the advertisers leave.
Too many ads and the members leave.

Hence, "Doesn't it sometimes seem like no matter what you do ..."

:)

Balance is what some people thought we'd reached after they tried exactly this layout (but without the full-width link) back in March and eventually agreed to use the big ad column on the index pages but leave the ad on top of the thread pages.

Maybe one or more of the advertisers were unhappy which prompted the change?

But if all the members leave then there will be no one to read the ads.

This argument can go on ad infinitum and did so a couple of months back but I can't be bothered linking to the numerous threads about it.

There were many threads about the dropping membership on this site and then the upgrade to vBulletin 3 took over and there were many issues, of which one was the advertising width etc.

It was fixed for a while, but now it's back but in the interim more people have moved on or visit less.

Sorry to hear that. So far it looks like a great helpful and polite site.

*bump*

JPnyc, can you please give us some idea if you're going to try the scroll-to-remove idea, or why you think it won't work?

I also think the index pages need to be updated -- it's hardly fair to mess with the thread pages but leave the index pages as-is.

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Originally Posted by Tuttle

If this is the new layout you expect us to use, why hasn't the full-width link also been placed on the forum and thread index pages?

It would be far more convenient if the ad disappeared when it was scrolled past (ie the same user interface as the old layout), instead of requiring a click on each and every page. All you need is a basic chaser script which hides the ad instead of dragging it down. Scrolling beats clicking by a long way.

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I presented the idea but it didn't get approval. But if I may, why is that preferable? I mean doesn't it take longer to scroll a couple of screens down than to click the mouse once? I thought putting the link atop every post made it quite convenient to reach, no matter where you were in the thread.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by:

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All you need is a basic chaser script which hides the ad instead of dragging it down.

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You mean have the scroll be the event which triggers the script instead of onclick?

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

I presented the idea but it didn't get approval. But if I may, why is that preferable? I mean doesn't it take longer to scroll a couple of screens down than to click the mouse once?

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But you're scrolling down to read stuff anyway. With it being killed on scroll, the ad is where you want it while it's on screen, but the white space disappears as soon as it's moved past. I think it's about as close as it gets to the ideal layout of expanding every post except the one next to the ad (which I appreciate would be difficult/impossible to code).

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You mean have the scroll be the event which triggers the script instead of onclick?

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If you had a chaser script to keep the ad on screen (don't you dare... ;)), it would make a periodic check to see how far down the page the browser window has been scrolled, then reposition the ad to position+x on the page. There's various complications to create a smooth glide, but that's the guts of it.

With an ad-removal script, the periodic check would see if the window has been scrolled to lower than the ad, and if so remove it.

But you'd also have to test for screen size, because that point will be different at each res. Ok, I think I get it. I can present that idea.