UPDATE 04.13.17: A reader has generously offered to cover the $10-per-month charge (by increasing an existing subscription) to remove ads from Disqus, so they’re gone now. I wish that wasn’t necessary, though.
Sorry. I hate to do this, but Disqus is about to start charging sites like this one $10 per month to not show ads. That might not sound like much, but the monthly costs associated with running this site are already high, and I am loathe to increase them more.
That said, the ads showing up now are absolutely hideous. If they don’t improve, I might be forced to pay the $10 per month anyway.
The other option, of course, would be to stop using Disqus, which would probably have to mean turning off comments entirely (the native WordPress commenting system is not great).
I’ll be watching the situation to see how it goes…
Oh well. Dr Rocketscience has overtaken me as Top Commenter anyway so the stats are clearly worthless. :)
I’m here for the long haul: Disqus with ads or without, or WordPress, or smoke signals, or no comments and I’ll send you email every once in a while.
Huh, when I look it has me behind by about 1700 posts, with LaSargenta looking to overtake me. /shrug
Get cracking, kid.
;-)
Honestly I’m so used to tuning out ads that the single spot above the comments doesn’t faze me at all. Although they are rather terrible.
Why is it always Ellen…
I first noticed this at Towleroad because there they’re embedded *within* the comment thread. I suspect that will be related to thread length.
I find it annoying, but I can tune it out mostly.
Will you have any control over the ads? Like if one is especially annoying can you ban it?
Site owners have some control over the placement of ads (above the comments, below, etc), and some control over the types of ads (I have turned off video ads because, damn, they are even more obnoxious than the rest), but no control over individual advertisers.
And yes, ads placed with comment threads seem to require a thread of a certain length (though I can’t quite tell yet *how* long, and Disqus isn’t saying).
Your long-term fans shouldn’t really care, and I’m sure that people popping in from Rotten Tomatoes are used to websites riddled with garbage ads- saving money on the site is totally worth these.
oh, i did wonder. i am willing to chip in an extra $10 a month to my subscription to keep you from having to do this. they are pretty awful.
Wow, those are awful. I get that the internet economy is tough, but Immabout to get all up in Disqus’s about making these not completely fucking hideous. I might also show them to the ad buyers, “Look at this, this is so making me not buy your crap.”
Thank you, anonymous subscriber. If only you could afford to do the same thing for the TV stations I watch.
What about Patreon? If something like this happens again I wouldn’t mind pitching in some extra money to keep the site healthy. That way you don’t have to post here, you can just update the patreon and we’ll all get email notifications. I don’t know if that’d make things easier or not.
Patreon is a bit more involved than just “give me money.”
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