Intrusive adds

I understand you probably wish to encourage members to subscribe for premier membership and that an ability to get rid of adds is one of the ways to do so.

But wouldn't you say it is a bit too agressive approach, to make the hovering banner ads some of the basic site features almost unaccessable ? I can't say I've encoutered something similar anywhere else.

screenshot:

Another anomality with current non-paying member restrictions seems to be with tournament restrictions - I cannot join another one before all games of my current tournament are finished. But as far as I understand, withdrawing from tournaments after my games are finished anyway, doesn't mean a lot.

Instead of allways having to withdraw after finishing my tournament games .. or waiting until all of the participants have ended theirs, it seems to make more sense if the restriction only counted for my own active tournament games.

Ya, we should definetly form a lynch mob and go after EriK for having the nerve to get something for his hard work.  Its a horrible reflection on the world we live in that a person can't just take advantage of the hard work of others by having unlimited access to anything we want. 

The banners covering menus seems a bit much and could probably be addressed.  The tournament side of things though I don't know.  That seems like a pretty big pull to subscribe.   Its like you're using the shareware version of this sight.  Its not necessarily meant to be perfect for non paying members.  With that said I think these guys do a good enough job with this site that after a few days of surfing I decided to donate.  The unlimited access to tactics trainer in and on itself is worth it if you ask me.

If you have an issue with any of the runnings of the site Snedzy I would suggest contacting admin in a calm cool and collected manner and using reason and logic express your case.  With an open mind for any response they give you back.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the outcomes of doing such things.  And if it goes badly for you then atleast you can feel justified in storming out. 

But as a side, if you lack patience, reason, and logic... perhaps a chess community is not the place for you.

 Yeah.  It's probably not an error that hasn't been adressed yet.  The people who had enough business sense to get the site this far likely thought that a negligible amount of extra ad revenue was worth alienating everybody.  After all, these are the same people who vowed never to use pop-up ads.  They said it was because pop-ups are too intrusive, but I know(as you likely do, you keen fellow) it's more probably because they couldn't figure out how to get the pop-ups to block the menu bar.

 A band I used to play in was banned from a venue in Colorado for a sarcastic remark my guitarist made on stage a few years ago.  Later that tour, we spent a few days in Pittsburgh, PA, meeting with the owners of our record company.  We told them about the incident at a party they threw for us.  The owners are successful touring musicians themselves.  They relayed a similar story and laughed.  Justin, one of the owners, then shouted out a question to Pat, another of the partners.  He asked, "Hey, Pat!  What do you know about sarcasm?"  From another room, Pat replied, "It doesn't work!"  I'm reminded of that now.

I love the way you enter someone elses site, use it for free and then when something doesn't work perfectly accuse them of being jerks, instead of reporting it as a bug, which you are allowed to do.

Very diplomatic, it is bound to give you the result you are looking for. [Sarcasm alert (since I know there has been some problems detecting it in this forum) this is sarcasm]

here's the deal: this is NOT INTENTIONAL. we have tried and tried and tried to build the menu technology to NOT allow for banners to float above it. but the advertisers find ways to get around it. we use ad networks (like tribal fusion, value click) because we can't really sell our own ad space. and with it comes a whole lot of different ads, which we can't really pick and choose. we have tried to talk to the ad networks about it, but they don't give us an ability to fix this. we've tried javascript fixes, iframe fixes, css fixes... no luck.

in short: IM SORRY. :( there are a few things we can try:

#1 - move the ads to the very top of the page

#2 - setup a reporting system so that when you see an ad that is hovering over the menu, you report it and we try to block that ad.

I love the way you enter someones thread, post some completely irrevelant accusations, instead of adding some constructive input, which you are allowed to do.

 Never have I accused anyone of being a jerk. I admit I didn't notice the "Report Bugs" link below, but I doubt it was that bad of an idea to mention it at "Help and Support" forum, I'm not the only one bothered by this issue.

It is completely not true to say that if I havent payed the membership fee, then I should never give any feedback. My only intent was to improve the site, and not just for my own sake.

 Please try to keep sarcasm out of where it doesn't belong.

 But wouldn't you say it is a bit too agressive approach, to make the hovering banner ads some of the basic site features almost unaccessable ?
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So by the above statement, you wheren't suggesting intent? 

I can't say I've encoutered something similar anywhere else.
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By this aren't you saying chess.com is doing something worse than any other site (and thereby suggesting they are bad people = jerks)

I doubt it was that bad of an idea to mention it at "Help and Support" forum
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With the quotes I wrote above, do you really feel that you where asking for "help or support"? What you where doing was complaining about a bug in free software. Suggesting that it was an underhanded marketing stunt, to force you to pay for membership.

It is completely not true to say that if I havent payed the membership fee, then I should never give any feedback.
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You are absolutely right, I never said that you wheren't allowed to make suggestions or give feedback. However I was angered by the tone of your original post. Do you really think you where fair in your original accusation?

Couldn't you have written:
When I try to use the menu bar, the adds get in the way. Is anybody else experiencing this? Erik, can't you do something about it, as I am sure you would want us to use all the great features you have made available for us. 

 Funny.

buy snaky smors !!!

there the best! 

Try to think it through. If something is worse than something else, then it is bad.If something is bad, then you can call it jerk ?

I find this logic hard to comment.

"Suggesting that it was an underhanded marketing stunt, to force you to pay for membership."

Never said anything remotely similar.

If the sole reasoning for your posts here is the fact that I didn't type something like "thank you for the great site" in my post, then this argument leads to nowhere. I hope you can see it yourself aswell.

 Intent or not, responsibilty for the site layout is on the site admins alone and they alone can do something to fix it. If you wish to read some accusation out of this, then there is nothing I can do about it.

"I understand you probably wish to encourage members to subscribe for premier membership and that an ability to get rid of adds is one of the ways to do so.

But wouldn't you say it is a bit too agressive approach, to make the hovering banner ads some of the basic site features almost unaccessable ? I can't say I've encoutered something similar anywhere else."

 I'd say that's at least similar to saying that it's a marketing stunt.

It's clearly just a bug that needs to be addressed, but you were obviously not in the best of moods (or that's how it came across) when you posted the above, so maybe just eat humble pie and admit the first post seemed a bit too confrontational.

I also take affront at the suggestion that you can't use sarcasm when you want.

Perhaps a sarcasm emoticon would help:

1.

2.

 Take your pick.

i think the best thing to do at this point is to send a bug report when you see that kind of banner. we need a picutre of the banner as well as the URL of where is points to (we need to know what ad network it is from).

sorry! :( 

 The point was that it isn't fair to accuse the people of chess.com of purposefully ruining the gaming experience for the non-paying members. Especially since there has been a million statements by Erik of the contrary. My point was that a little courtesy and respect goes a long way (I realise that I have not been an example of this, and for that I apologize). No matter what responsibility Chess.com may have, it is not acceptable to make groundless accusations.

I have a personal experience with this, as I have helped my dad set up a completely free (no banners or anything) search engine for genealogical sources, which he runs in his spare time. Not a week goes by where he doesn't recieve obnoxious e-mails, because they somehow feel entitled to state their oppinion about a service he provides free of charge.

I'll hate to think about how much abuse Erik and the team have to suffer for running this site (and they have been upfront about the fact that chess.com is not yet a goldmine)

On the topic of intrusive ads, I just experienced a small pop-up ad from casino-something.co.uk, it basically had "Yes" or "No" so of course I used the X knowing that both those answers would open another window for their page, but somehow, that too got me onto their website!

Cheeky advertisers ! So yes, there's one for your erik :) Best of luck with the scripting, would it definitely not work placing the ads in an iframe? Usability issues etc. aside, I'm sure that would work? Have you tried using z-index?