I think on one hand, the ads are very overbearing on this site, especially the slide outs and pop ups. I don't mind the in-page density, but when content gets covered by a slide out or pop up, that does break the experience. On the other hand, from the comments, I can tell most do not understand the give-and-takes required to successfully fund a free news website like this, dealing with AI, and what not. Unless everyone is ok with Ben cutting out trip reports, I don't see how his job would be sustainable in the long run. I'm sure he has to give some of his earnings to Boarding Area due to their partnership, and there are so many fees besides the obvious. Hosting, paying web devs, insurance to cover potential legal matters, all attached services, and so on. And that's just the site aspect alone.
My one suggestion would be the speed of the comments section. It takes ages for a comment to be posted, and it's not very intuitive replying to others. Make it so it adds a tag reply so everyone knows who they are replying to.
Thanks, atsbrad. Working with the team today on comment load time. There have been a handful of comment-related requests on this thread that I think we can update and release quickly.
Great update, congratulations!
Honestly, it's been refreshing to see things evolve a lot in the last few months! I've personally liked all those changes, between the much needed enhancements in the comments section, and the ability to read the site ads free (and the addition of being able to pay to remove ads is great, and not that different from other content providers). It's also nice to see that most of that has been driven by direct feedback from us, so thanks Jeremy, Ben and team!
If you're taking any more enhancements suggestion, I'd love the option to mute specific folks, particularly in the comments section. This isn't to bring any negativity, but I personally find some people so exhausting that it completely discourages me to participate in a lot of discussions (whether it's about political stuff, zero value chatter, stuff like that).
Either way, appreciate all the work you've been doing behind the scenes!