ContentLink ads?
 

Is LQ.org now running contentlink ads (where random words in forum topics are linked as ads)? I found these double underlined bright blue links on one of the topics accidentally so I don't know if it's a browser issue or a forum issue.

I find that a touch annoying. Is there a way to turn this off?

These things annoy me as well, but it seems they aren't there today (at least, I'm not seeing them right now).

I'm seeing them. Pages here are loading very slowly in both konqueror and firefox. This problem and the appearance of the new advertising feature is likely not a coincidence.

I understand this site needs revenue to run, but this doesn't seem to be well implemented. Is there an adjustment needed in the browser settings that will allow the advertising without the slow loading?

Edit/Strangely the problem seemed to disappear after logging in????

They in-text ads are from kontera.com and they suck, IMHO.

Well that half makes sense doesn't it? Running extra ads for non-members seems like a logical way to try and raise revenue without putting off the registered userbase.

Under no circumstance will you ever see them if you are logged in. They are a test we are running for guests only. We have no plans to ever enable them for members. FWIW, it very clearly explains this in the header on every single page.

--jeremy

Sometimes I like to browse the forums to see if there's something I'd like to respond to before logging in. Kontera is killing performance! Now that I know it goes away when logged in I suppose I'll just stay logged in all year :p

Staying logged in is the alternative for now. FWIW, I tested these in nearly ever browser and had absolutely no problems with performance. The ads do not even start to load until *after* the page has been fully rendered, so they should not have any noticeable impact. If this is not the case for you, let me know.

--jeremy

I have such a problem. My browser identification is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060603 Firefox/1.5.0.4. Before logging in to http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ the page loads and renders, then causes the browser to freeze twice briefly while loading content from (I believe this is the address) kona.kontera.com (this is reflected in the text of the browser's status bar). Specifically, my symptom is that typing into the login box spools up invisibly in a buffer while the browser is "frozen", and then suddenly appears. (Indicative to me, at least, that the browser is too busy at the time to immediately echo my input to the screen.)

I have no problems after logging in, as I see that there is no connection to the kontera.com domain after successful login. Of course, the Firefox NoScript addon prevents problems even when I'm not logged in. :)

You are correct that nothing to do with the ads ever load when you are logged in. As mentioned previously, these will never be enabled for logged in members and are currently just a demo for guests. I'm not able to reproduce your issue with FF 1.5.x on other platforms, but I'll look into it.

I'd like to explain the thinking with these ads. As mentioned, they are only enabled for guests. If you never join LQ, that means you are never participating at LQ. As a result, you can pay your dues a slightly different way, which is by seeing an extra ad. You can get rid of that ad at any time, for free, simply by joining the community with no strings attached. Seems fair to me, but I'd be interested in feedback.

-jeremy

I think it's a fair call. Sure, for the end user ads suck but something has to pay for the amount of bandwidth this site would be using and putting more ads up for unregistered users seems a good compromise.

I also run Mozilla and it locks up completely- you can't scroll, you can't even enter your userid and password- and while this is happening I see that it's communicating with kont5.kontera.com (not sure I remembered the url exactly, it's something along those lines).

I have no objection to staying logged in, but I did want to let you know that logging in, as well as browsing while not logged in, is a significant rectal pain due to Kontera.

I think that this is a good idea, since it is only for guests. LQ must take a huge amount of bandwidth, and someone has to pay for it. Its also not like registering is an onerous process :)

--Ian

I understand your reasoning behind wanting to try these and, since they are not enabled when I log in, I have no problem with them.

On the other hand, I feel that these might impact one's initial impression of the site in much the same way avatars would.

I might also be concerned regarding the ad content. I came across one with religious overtones/content. Don't know if that's an issue for you or not. It was linked from the word "searching".

http://everystudent.com/index.html?O...&OVMTC=content

:twocents:

And Slackware is linked to this:

http://www.pantek.com/linux.php?subsect=support

There may be no problem with that, but doesn't PV have a say as to what his product is linked to? Seems a bit odd to me.

The ads get more relevant with time, so once they have properly ascertained the category for the site we should only get tech ads. We'll be keeping a close eye on things like registration numbers and the sentiment about the site and will make the best decision for the LQ community.

--jeremy