Blog piece: Ads, Supporters, Endorsements and Bandwidth Throttling

[Gunz77]

the only ad blocker i use is installed on my antivirus, but it doesn't block the ads on nexus! It made me happy when i started reading these articles a few weeks back that i was actually helping the Nexus grow.

[DigitalPrinceX]

Fair enough. Added nexus sites as exception in adblock filter list.

[iceburg]

I usually read these funding/money/advert articles in disgust.

Dark0ne, I don't know how you do it. But you run this site in such a way, and blog in such an honest manor, that even those nasty topics don't seem to turn people off. Every time I read your blog I find myself agree with you. I am a die hard adblocker, but I turned my adblock off for this site (and this site only) after reading the google malware article). I'm looking forward to pitching in the $2 to go back to adfree. I think that's totally fair.

Thank you for maintaining such a hassle free, honest site.

Ice

[Drazkul]

Dont suppose someone could PM me how I'd unblock the nexus from my adblocker? I'm using adblock+ in firefox

[Dweedle]

In regards to endorsements why not make NMM automaticialy ask or remind users to endorse files whenever it loads up? This would work with Skyrim very well and NV/F03 pretty well too.

 

Regarding adblockers.. I use one.. but then again, I'm premium so I've contributed anyway, likely will still be premium when this month runs out too as I download frequently.

 

In NZ can barely reach 120kilobytes a sec on premium due to our crap internet infrastructure but I can safely say Dark0ne is being too generous with what he is giving free members, especially adblockers. But its Dark0ne's decision, far more generous than I'd be if I were in his/her shoes Lol.

[Grimblight]

"We’re now going to make it so that Supporter memberships also provide an ad-free experience on the sites."

 

As a old Premium member may I ask,

will that also be for current Supporter members or just the new one's that pay the £1 forSupporter membership ?

 

If for current member too, thats GREAT thank you !

but what if I feel bad for not being able to renew Premium and want to have ad's enabled,

may I have the option to enable them ?

 

Thanks as ALWAYS

 

 

 

[Kainschilde209]

Stewb makes a good point. If its a viable option, comments may be a better thing to incentivize than endorsements. Endorsed or not just means "yeah I like it" or "no I don't", meanwhile comments help both modders and users by showing WHY someone likes it or doesn't.

 

Of course, that helpfulness is subjective and probably difficult or impossible to rate electronically.

 

Otherwise, this all sounds like an excellent method to keep the site afloat.

[assterixxx]

I like most I've read so far. Despite being forced to refill my coffee cup, to get to the end.

 

The only thing I didn't like, was the £1 argument. My conscious hates that. You are making it very hard for me not to donate. Guess I'll have to skip my doughnut tomorrow(loved the SkyNet ref. btw).

 

Yes, I do use adblocker, but I made an exception for the nexus. *shines halo* All the talk about download speed, isn't that big a concern for me, with a 10/1 connection. But I do like that you keep trying to improve / rethink all the options.

 

On a slightly different note; The kudos system kinda bugs me. I give kudos to people that goes out of their way just to helps me or the author of my favorite mod(s). Believe it or not; This happens a lot! And I can't show my appreciation again, apart from a side note in a thread. But if that were to be changed, it would certainly be abused...

 

Keep up the great work!

[Elrumel]

i couldn't care less about ads and ranking system, but the endorsement and achievement system changes might impact the site in a veeery bad way and i reeeeeally don't think faster bandwidth is the solution for it. (or may not, who knows)

 

now i say this because, you see, i'm one of the ppl who doesn't care about speeds. I have 1mb/ps connection (for downloading) and it's considered to be one of the fastest regular home connection in my country (also expensive) which i'm sure this situation applies to many many others out there.

 

for years I've been a happy member of nexus. I've downloaded countless number of mods for many purposes. Some were just for the heck of it, some i can't live with out it. now i can tell;

If you want more endorsement ratio for mods, first of all, cut the waiting time for the mod we've downloaded... say 30 minutes instead of 1 hour. Other than that if you overhaul the system, even if it is a golden advantage for the new mods, it'll be veeery complicated and unfair for older mods (especially for morrowind/oblivion ones i think)

 

besides how many mods does ppl tends to run at the same time in their game and how many ppl needs 1,5mb/ps bandwidth limit is a very cheesy math. And vast majority of the popular mods is not bigger than 50mb. So Bandwidth speed variants doesn't really make any big difference. (maybe a minute or so?)

 

also i can tell that bandwidth/upload/download restrictions are not welcome in any form for mod makers. See for yourself, " Interesting NPCs ", a Skyrim mod, and how they struggle with upload/download. it is a very popular and very well done mod but they are bottlenecked because of these kinds of things. i'm not sure if this is fair.

 

so what do? suggestions?

1st) now, i'm no expert on these things but why don't you speed up only the mods that requires you to download certain amount of size ... say like 250-500mb. and this might be applied to the file of month and hot files section also. Also if a file/mod exceeds some certain endorsement requirement you might also provide extra bandwidth for it. Rest of the mods, all of them, are fine in my book. This would give ppl and mod makers alike, pleasant advantages. no?

 

2nd) I've been using services of a site called Grooveshark for a while now. that site has some optional surveys connected to their premium membership system. more surveys = more money = better membership = more content. simple. i don't see any reason why you wouldn't implement the same system to nexus for people who can't pay for various reasons and wants ad-free & faster speed experience. Win-win. Think about it.

[canadianwolf]

I've unblocked the nexus from my adblock, and i'll happily pay the 1.60$ when you roll out the adfree feature.