Here are two aspects of Train’s forums that bug me. What about you?
Trains has taken to pop up ads like fish take to water. They annoy the heck out of me. I am particularly bothered by the yellow band at the bottom of my screen that keeps telling me to subscribe to or renew my subscription to Trains. I just did it. Trains staff should have the technology to recognize me when I log-in, determine that I am a current, paid-up subscriber, and turn off the pop-up ads.
The other thing that bugs me are postings that just include a link to a media story about trains or another relevant subject. It is especially annoying to be given a reference to a publication that is only open to subscribers, i.e. The Dallas Morning News.
If a person wants to tell us about an important railroad event, he should summarize the article and, if appropriate, provide a link for those who want to explore the issue in greater depth. Two exceptions would be a link to video and photographs, although here too the person preparing the post should summarize the subject matter before providing a link to the video or photographs.
It would be nice if there was a way to get rid of the fool things…
As to the link business…it actually would help if the linker/poster would at least attempt to explain what the link was about…at least the links are not short url things like bit.ly…[:-^]
I, too, will agree on the restricted links thing. I’d have to imagine that in most cases it’s someone who does have a subscription and forgets that not everyone else does.
Even if it’s free to sign up for such links, usually you end up getting “not-quite-spam” from them.
Something I’ve seen on some forums is the exact opposite of just posting the link. Not only does the poster give the link, but they also copy and paste the entire article…
I will sometimes write a brief description and make part of said post a hyperlink, rather than posting the entire link. That’s handy if the linked URL is really long.
While a source to a reference can be helpful I completely agree that a person writing the post would do her or himself a big favor by summarizing the article and making the relevant point. Otherwise all we have is a homework assignment.
I don’t mind the pop-up ads so much, everyone seems to have them now, and they’ve got to pay the bills somehow.
Links to a story? If I’m REALLY interested I’ll go there, if not I won’t. If it’s too much of a hassle I won’t trouble myself, there’s plenty of other things catching my attention.
I liken them to preaching to the choir. We have already paid for our subscriptions, yet they keep posting annoyances on the forum and seemingly, every month mail us a reminder to renew. Methinks they could better spend their money on more productive endeavors.
As I mentioned in the other forum about the yellow banner on the bottom of the screen, I never even noticed it until it was brought up, and still don’t notice it till someone brings it up again. Does it show up larger with formats on other devices like I-pads or I-phones? Maybe if Kalmbach reads this they’ll realize that they’re not reaching me and make it bigger and brighter.
I want some more information from whomever is linking a story. Briefly, what it’s about, and what the linker (?) thinks about the story. Then, I can decide whether it’s something I’d care to check out.
Otherwise, most of those type of posts come off sounding like this:
“Hey guys- take a look at this !!”: www.mightbespam,com
Concur - and please accept my apologies if anything I’ve linked has been inaccessible to the Forum members generally. For the Wall Street Journal articles that I frequently link to, none are strictly subscriber-only - because I don’t have an on-line subscription to it (or much of anything else). They’re all accessed through a search at Google News - not directly at www.wsj.com - but I often forget to mention that, because once I’ve found it that way, the access then seems transparent to me. I will often post the link and then test it in another ‘window’ or ‘tab’ to make sure that it does lead to the full article, but there might be something in the software someplace that ‘remembers’ my previous access and misleads me into thinking that it is, when it really isn’t.
The “pop-up’s” are usually the same thing I get weekly e-mails about and it doesn’t seem to take much for them to randomly pop up over and over. Is there a way that the site can recognize a subscriber to eliminate the pop up ads?
[:)] Here is a new one to bug us. " Lets roll the dice" to see how much you can (save). Course every one gets 58% off the script price. Hee Hee looks like loaded dice to me.
I’m not necessarily opposed to that type of thing. I place much credence on the poster, even if I don’t necessarily recognize the link. We did have an issue on the forum here a year or so ago when someone got into the system to create bad links, but if I don’t see a warning about that, I normally go the links posted by the members I recognize, time permitting.
I would PAY to have someone (or a group) to invade the lives of these idiots that think intrusive and annoying adverts are a good way to sell their product or service.
Every time they went to the bank to cash a check, the group would jump in front of them and scream and yell and waive signs about products they don’t want, need or care about.
At the grocery checkout counter my group would have a megaphone to announce what they are buying and tell them of other items they could have gotten instead.
Every time they have a meeting, my group would be there to jump on the table and scream and shout about how much they need to talk about something unrelated to the meeting.
Every time they decide to have a quiet evening with their spouse, the group would be there to beat on a base drum and chant about hemorrhoids.
And, of course, when they are speaking to friends, the group would have plenty of scantily clad women being advertised as available for dates, or to advise them that their car might be better if it were red.
Unfortunately, I doubt if they would be smart enough to add 2 and 2 to figure out that such annoyances are what they are doing when they produce the SAME THING for web advertising. Anybody that is dumb enough to think that annoying a prospective customer is a good thing is too dumb to understand anything at all.
Well, maybe I can help. I can get $2500 in an hour, with pre-approval, and NO CREDIT CHECK ! Once I pay off my bill at my Canadian pharmacy and the 3 easy payments on my um…other purchase, I can bankroll your effort.[:-,] Besides, I think I can get $2500 a day- because that pop-up is in my in-box every day. [oX)]
Sadly, there must be someone somewhere dumb enough to respond to all the online carp.[xx(]
Some of the sites I visit have a ‘drop down’ ad that covers the whole screen and has to be dispensed with to get to the content you went to the site for. It appears to be customary now, to have to wait through 15 to 30 seconds of some ad to view most videos.
If only the advertiser knew that I make a consicious effort NOT to patronize those who use these methods. It’s todays world - we don’t have to like it but we do have to live it.
Wow, if a reputable site does that to me they will get a strongly worded email and likely no business from me.
Just curious, anyone use a blocker addon successfully like Ad Blocker Plus? I turn it off only after I regularly patronize a site. On trains.com I had it disabled Until the annoying center screen pop up showed up.