First, thank you for your judicious use of advertising on the MR website. I accept this advertising a necessary evil that allows your website to achieve its goals. That the advertising does not slow down page loading or overpower the prime content is appreciated. As well, the advertising represents many fine manufacturers whose services I am eager to support.
I do, however, wish to comment on the new green ‘subscribe now’ strip that displays across the bottom of the screen. This new feature is unwelcome, especially on small tablet devices where screen space is at a premium and tapping the tiny ‘X’ is not an accurate action. As a faithful MR subscriber and website user I allow your website to store cookies to recognise my return and welcome me by name with reminders of my subscription status. Could you not use the same cookies to recognise that I already subscribe to MR print and digital editions and the free newsletter so additional prompts to subscribe have absolutely no meaning whatsoever except to frustrate my visit to your website? Please consider modifying the display of this green ‘subscribe now’ reminder strip.
While we are asking for changes or what-not, The two posts at the top of the General Discussion forum, “Our Forum Policies” by Steven Otte and “Post Counts” by dkawala , are over six months old.
My subscription status displays in the “Welcome” block at the top of the right column - a block which is, coincidentally, green. Surely there must be some way to communicate that to the display driver.
If nothing else, display the strip ONCE. It doesn’t have to reappear every time I pull up a new thread.
Of course, if this is actually a subtle scheme to make the Kalpubco forums less user friendly, in an attempt to drive users away…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - mostly from Tetsudo Mokei Shumi)
My subscription has over a year to run. A few months before it was due to lapse last time I started getting monthly reminders via snail mail. This was fine, I would even accept an email or to tempting me to renew my subscription. What I don’t need is a banner telling me to subscribe on the same page that tells me that my subscription expires with the Oct 2014 Edition. It’s not necessary.
Are you talking about Adblock Plus? If so, I have that installed in Chrome, but am still seeing the green bar. What settings are you using to block it?
It’s annoying, and old. Try something new. If anyone’s subscription should actually run out, they would have months to catch up at their LHS or newsstand. It’s not that urgent of an issue that everyone who logs in or changes posts has to “X” it every time.
I’m in agreement with the above posts, I find the green “subscribe now” really annoying.
I do subscribe and do subscribe to the newsletter, but I have reached the point where I don’t spend as much time on the forum due to that mostly and some other changes that were made.
In fact my magazine subscription ends next month and I’m not going to renew until the green line goes away for subscribers. I know it’s a grain of sand in the beach of revenue stream, but that’s how much I hate it.
I generally view this on a 37 inch monitor,so I really hadn’t been bothered much by it,but I can certainly understand how critical viewable space is on a small screen. I only have to close it once on the forum,and it goes away.It doesn’t reappear,whether I go directly to a new page or thread(within the forum),or open that page in a new window. If I go the home page on the MR website,I also have to close it once,and it doesn’t come back. Are some of you having to deal with it reappearing on every page? I’m using IE 10.
On a positive note,the recent maintenance now allows me to right click on a thread and open it in a new window.This is a big improvement from the last few months,when right clicking just took me back to the top of the page.(???)
I too, find it annoyuing and I doubt this complaint will change that. They know you are a targeted customer, the forum is free to users, but costs MR money to administer and run, so they have every right to annoy you with it. They COULD charge a fee to use this forum! If you don’t like it, go to another forum.
While we are making IT requests,
CAN they PLEASE fix the Spell check application? many have complained to moderators who have reported it as they themselves have found it to give an “error message”. It used to be so easy and convenient to use while posting, though I found it didn’t always catch ALL errors.
With Chrome, AdBlock Plus gets rid of that annoying bar. My subscription is paid up for two years into the future, so I found that subscription reminder bar to be extremely overbearing…
Surely there is a way that they could eliminate that annoyance for people who have active subscriptions paid years in advance.
Elmer, I can see your point about the post counts, but I have to disagree with you on the Forum Policies…If not for any other reason than for the influx of newbies here.
