Yes, it comes to something when some modern sites take longer to load on a 40Mb connection than sites did in the 56k dial up days. The internet is becoming unusable without an ad blocker.

Some ad blockers (such as Adlock Plus) allow unobtrusive ads through by default. You can change the settings to stop all ads, but by default some are allowed through. You'd think websites would take note and change their ads.

But revenue? This is the problem with the forum (I suspect a great deal of forum users employ an ad blocker for the over zealous adverts and previous malware issues) and why a few years back, a redesign was carried out to try and make people go to the main site.

I think very few people, myself included, visit the main site - hence the race to the bottom on articles.

Moderating the forum must be very time consuming, so what I imagine might happen is that some of the more time consuming forums may be closed, which if true could kill the forum.

I do hope it stays. Forums are near impossible to set up today, so anyone that has one that's popular should do everything they can to keep them going, but Hearst is not a charity. If it can't make money from all of us, then it can't just let us converse for free.

Facebook is useless for trying to be like a forum. A few community groups use it instead of forum software, as it's free to set up and anyone can do it in a few clicks, but conversations are a mess.

New posts bump posts up, which is obviously the same as a forum, but there's no real filtering or sorting - so people get upset that they lost another discussion and people then moan about having to read a thread they have no interest in, and blaming the authors of posts etc.

However, I can't see why Facebook can't improve groups to a point where this issue is no longer a problem. If it does, that could then spell the end of forums - but would many Facebook groups have the same numbers? All you'd get is loads of people setting up their own 'rival' ones when they get kicked off one, or fall out with others.

I haven't used Facebook forums, but Facebook could remove a page at any time, so there's little point relying on them for anything.


Exactly this, also. On my site, I have a few links to Amazon that are related to films, whereas too many sites are full of "Click here for reasons why Jennifer Aniston dislikes Trump. What she says will shock and surprise you" and so on.

The delayed page bouncing is irritating. While there isn't much of a delay, a second? it is still irritating when you attempt to tap and it bounces down.

It would be quite remarkable if they one of the most active on-line communities in the country! I only just joined after years and years of lurking.

Here's an idea if they want to save some money. Sack every moronic bubble head with a 2/2 in Media Studies from Nottingham Trent who is responsible for the obnoxious clickbait headlines/articles in recent months.

'The ENTIRE world was crying when they read this tribute to Gilmore Girls by Kim Kardashian's butler and YOU will CRY to' . Then throw in an annoying GIF. Salary earned.

I don't know what happened. At one point the main page seemed to be getting a bit smarter and with actual content, heading towards a more mainstream version of Den of Geek. But recently? Its been riddled with braindead nonsense like '12 reasons to hate Phoebe from Friends' (1998 called- it wants its think piece back) and an apparent willful desire to dumb down as much as possible.

With every other article being 'Everything You Need To Know About (INSERT TOPIC HERE)' which 9 times out of 10 don't actually tell you anything you need to know about the topic because the whole page is a collection of unsubstantiated rumours, guesses and unrelated crap and the rest featuring huge annoying GIFS and the same damn advert taking over every time you click on a page, I'm not particularly surprised they could need to downsize.

I rarely go onto the main site these days because it's full of crap.

That is the problem
coupled with they removed the comments section the front page used to be utterly amazing. It just one big animated GIF.

If they do decided to close the forums down they might as well just close the entire site down. I've lost count how many times my Anti Virus has alerted me to a problem with the site. Somewhere like DS is needed badly twitter is okay to say a few words
but pointless for anything else. as for Facebook there's no way it gets the same reaction a forum does

This is exactly the problem with the dumbed down crap. I bet there's some really talented writer / journalist sat typing this fodder for 'challenged' 12 year olds and orange people, who wants to cry when thinking about the actual articles and genuine stories they used to write for DS.

I'm also not sure what the obsession is with Friends right now, it finished 12 years ago and is in no way relevant to the moronic teen audience which Hearst seem to be chasing.

After writing the piece above it's just gotten me thinking. Hearst are clearly chasing the teen audience with their Buzz Feed nonsense and as a commercial company that is their right. But do the teen audience actually have a lot of spending power? Outside of bugging their parents for the latest iPhone or 1 Direction record I can't imagine they have much spare money to be attractive to advertisers.
Even as a low paid worker I have disposable income and on a site that was aimed at technology and entertainment I'm surely a better bet to spend than a 13 year old Belieber who hasn't even got the money to buy a packet of Space Raiders.

This forum has a main site???

DS was doomed when they replaced the editor with one from heat magazine. That's what started this mess and it's only got worse.

I feel sorry for those that will be losing the jobs (The Guardian article in print said half of staff will be cut) but - as in almost every case of downsizing - it's those at the top that need to go.

Agree with all that you say. Maybe they've done some research into their demographic in which case I will just sound pure silly but I have my suspicions that most of this sites traffic comes from the over 20's and maybe even older. Which makes this pandering to the more cretinous end of the teenage market even more inexplicable. It's embarrassing at this point...like someones Dad turning up at a school disco, its creepy, annoying and irrelevant. It's like the staff just discovered emojis and GIFs and have been given free reign to spew them onto our screens as they see fit. But as you pointed out...much of the content doesn't match the audience. So it's small wonder they're losing money.

How about the adults working for this site start writing like adults. Start crediting the readers with a bit of intelligence instead of producing the journalistic equivalent of a snap-chat filter? Stop mistaking the ability to put the occasional word in ALLCAPS as insightful writing. Show a bit more ambition than to sound like those click bait spam ads that most right thinking people wish would disappear. Jesus, just have some self respect.

The front page is pure garbage. But it would be a shame for the forums to get the chop when most of the 'writers' employed by DS couldnt hold a candle to some of the funny, smart and incisive stuff that gets written by forum members.

They are using an ancient build that is no longer supported. Apparently the database itself is also completely screwed, meaning it would be extremely difficult to transition to a newer system without loosing data.


I agree. Whilst I admit that the original introduction of the Big Brother forum was a great success in getting more active users, the later site redesign was a shambles and the quality of the articles has gone right down the pan to the point where the main site is not even worth bothering with.

Plus the dumbed down main site has turned the forum for the worst, Broadcasting seems to be the moan about the Licence Fee these days. When before broadcasting forum had better stuff then that.

I agree with what's been said so far on this thread.

I'd add that the ads in the forums have been a right royal pain for a while now. They seem to take an age to load (even though I have fast broadband and kit) and, just when you think the page has finished loading and you click, the page jumps down as it loads in the top ad panel, and you end up clicking the wrong item. Annoying!

Use AD Block ---don't see any Ads and the site works much faster.
Regards

And then you wonder why the forums gone down the pan.
How are they expected to make money to fix & maintain the forum when the money
they make through ad revenue is running at a loss due to Adblock

I imagine they make millions on the adds in the forum, they jump all over the place and I accently click on one regularly.

DS had a few adverts and it didn't matter, they might even have been of interest.

Then someone got greedy and introduced far to many ads, many people started using adblockers.

Some of these adverts contained malware, another reason to use adblockers.
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Same thing happened with commercial TV, far too many adverts which killed the experience and people sought to use "adblockers" (PVRs with skip ahead) to make it bearable.

This all helped shift audiences to other TV sources such as Netflix.

Adverts that are "in your face" are always a turn-off, unfortunately many organisations believe it is what people like

What others have said immediately below your post ------
Regards

They probably make peanuts per click.

I never use the main site, i've only ever used the forum.

If they made the main site more interesting, then maybe i'd use it, but it's sensationalism at it's best.

It makes you wonder why so many sites want to go down the Buzzfeed/clickbait route when it ends up biting them on the ass.

As a TV/media graduate, DS used to be really good 10-5 years ago. The rating round ups, general media news and opinion pieces were always good reads. It was a mature website.

Now it's like it's written by 12-year-olds. The gifs, the emojis, the "OMG!!" style headlines. Since when did OK magazine take over?

Hopefully the new 'trend' is for media companies to revert back to more serious websites and put an end to the clickbait.

Averages for UK sites are about 10-20p a click. So a few thousand of them a day would be a million in 4-5 years