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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 10:19 am 
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These divs need to go, you scroll and they come over top of the next comic (like this), they're entirely cosmetic. much better without them

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:09 pm 
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Strike_Reyhi wrote:
These divs need to go, you scroll and they come over top of the next comic (like this), they're entirely cosmetic. much better without them
At first I was trying to figure what you were taking about, since I didn't see anything like that. Everything I see is just like your third image normally. At first I thought it was a browser difference, but after a bit of checking, I found out that it's a Defender difference. Anyone not a Defender will see them and anyone who is a Defender is not going to see them.

Hmm... How it acts when scrolling, I wonder if it's a left over spot for where banner ads used to be. It would be about the right size.

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:45 am 
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just checked, yep that's where the ads are. ads are fine, I get it, but at no point should they be scrolling down over the next comic!

at best it's an oversight, at worst it's the web designer trying to intentionally make not paying annoying. and frankly as much as I love sluggy if the reasoning is the second one that's not how you treat fans. this is ridiculous.

also, the max contribution per month should be listed right along with the amount per strip. defender used to be, what, 25 bucks a year? now it's a minimum of 75ish bucks a year assuming pete hits at least 12 strips a month (which seems to have happened without issue so far.) bit of a jump frankly. I'd probably pledge at .25 (about 36 bucks a year). but i guess maybe the idea is to encourage more short term subscriptions or something?

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 6:52 pm 
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Strike_Reyhi wrote:
just checked, yep that's where the ads are. ads are fine, I get it, but at no point should they be scrolling down over the next comic!


When I read the archive on my phone, it is TERRIBLE. If I ever flip my phone on its side, it basically overs a third of my screen. End result, I never ever ever read sluggy on a mobile device. It's basically unusable. So I stopped using it completely ages ago.

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 11:36 pm 
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Just took a look at mobile behavior again. We have seen some examples of rectangle ads being stuffed into banner ad spots. But at least on Droid in Chrome, the screenshot is how it's supposed to work.

The design is definitely not an intentional way to "make not paying annoying," but it is a way to keep an ad pinned to the screen long enough to count as a paid impression and extract maximum lunch money from an archive dive. The idea is "not more than one ad on the screen at a time, but always at least one ad on the screen."

However, the mobile ads are kind of out of control at this point. We're talking with Pete now about maybe killing all mobile ads on the site. (We killed them on the main page around Christmas time, and those have stayed dead.) Don't really have a better plan than that, unfortunately. :riff:

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:09 am 
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There has got to be better ways.

It's basically made reading the archive impossible for me. I just flat out don't use it. Some ads were larger than the others, so when scrolling, it wasn't even consistent. (iPhone 6-- a fair sized screen, unusable)

Mobile screens are too small, while the comics are too large to obstruct any view. They don't mix together on the same screen.

You could try javascript or something to force it to stay on the page for a few seconds after every 7 or so comics as an alternative (and leave the comics completely unobstructed when viewing). Or give people a choice in their profile settings. Between every comic would be waaay too annoying if I had to wait.

How much do you actually make from the mobile ads in the archive? (You don't have to answer that). I'm assuming not much, but could be wrong. If all it does it annoy people and cause them to avoid using it, it certainly doesn't warrant their usage, or your time worrying about how to best utilize them for the $$.

Come up with several different ideas and test them out on people to see what's the most annoying/usable. Have you tried anything else on people, other than the current idea? I bet plenty of sluggites would take a short survey or ads experiment to help out Pete.

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:43 pm 
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It's enough to be an important part of Sluggy's revenue picture, second place after Defenders and more than store sales (except around the holidays). Giving it up would (will) be a punch in Pete's pocketbook. (Not that he carries a pocketbook. Or...I mean, he might. That would be fine. I don't judge. Unless it's a fanny pack, ew.)

Forcing an ad to show for a while before seeing the comic seems a whole lot more obtrusive and obnoxious. Doing an ad every 7 comics would...result in 1/7 the ad revenue for an archive dive. On all the phones we've tested, the divs on mobile only cover about 20% of the screen. It's the best design solution we've got, given the size of comics and the way ads actually work.

But as I said, lately ads don't actually work. We keep seeing screen takeovers and other junk on mobile. Talking to the ad companies hasn't really stopped it. So at this point the solution is looking like "take the big hit and get rid of all mobile ads, sitewide." As a side benefit, that would also solve any problems with screen real estate and readability on mobile, because the divs go away. We're still talking it over with Pete, but I think the "mobile ad-ectomy" is probably what he'll decide to do.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 10:48 am 
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Well, if they DO begin to work again, consider:

- Make the ads disappear after those x amount of seconds instead of staying on screen so people can read the comic?
- 1/7th the profit is better than no profit due to complete aversion of the system. Fiddle with screen sizes & ads more, prohibiting or changing them on the smallest devices.

In terms of defenders, I'm in that large group where $75 a year is way too much (you can break it down as much as you want, but it basically amounts to this for the year. Going for a few months then cancelling, then remembering to renew, then cancel again is too annoying.). I was happy to do 25. I'll just have to buy something from the store or something.

anyway. Good luck with that.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 10:47 pm 
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Any updates on how the classic bookmarks are being distributed?

kansaichris wrote:
In his latest update, Pete sez:

Quote:
So here's what I have decided. All 6 classic Bookmarks have now been unlocked and distributed to all Defenders 20+ Level 2 and higher.



  1. Does this mean that the 6 classic bookmarks will be unlocked for all Defenders 20+ Level 2 (and higher) going forward, or only for those who pledged at Level 2 prior to some cutoff date (e.g. this coming Saturday, March 17th)?
  2. Does one need to continue pledging at Level 2 to keep those bookmarks?

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 Post Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 2:59 am 
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kansaichris wrote:
Any updates on how the classic bookmarks are being distributed?

kansaichris wrote:
In his latest update, Pete sez:

Quote:
So here's what I have decided. All 6 classic Bookmarks have now been unlocked and distributed to all Defenders 20+ Level 2 and higher.



  1. Does this mean that the 6 classic bookmarks will be unlocked for all Defenders 20+ Level 2 (and higher) going forward, or only for those who pledged at Level 2 prior to some cutoff date (e.g. this coming Saturday, March 17th)?
  2. Does one need to continue pledging at Level 2 to keep those bookmarks?


Good questions. The classic 6 bookmarks will be unlocked for all Defenders 20+ at level 2 or higher going forward, except for Zoë, who is going out to all level 1 or higher. There was a bug preventing these bookmarks from actually being passed out after the initial rollout with the news post, but this should now be fixed.

All bookmark unlocks (and pawnz, for that matter) stay unlocked even if you later downgrade or cancel.

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 Post Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 8:04 pm 
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Thanks for clarifying! I just upgraded to level 2 and can confirm that the following six "classic" bookmarks have now been unlocked:

  • Zoë
  • Torg
  • Gwynn
  • Riff
  • Kiki
  • Bun-bun

Nifty!

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 1:32 am 
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Where should we report partially obscured strips in the archive (like this one)? I could have sworn I saw a dedicated thread before, but I can't seem to find it anymore…

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:28 pm 
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kansaichris wrote:
Where should we report partially obscured strips in the archive (like this one)? I could have sworn I saw a dedicated thread before, but I can't seem to find it anymore…


Here's good! Passing it on to Pete. It's weird how the remastering of 6000+ strips has a literal half life with finding errors. Next one should be found in about 4 months if that holds up.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 9:23 pm 
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Great! I actually just found three more strips that have been cut off:


Hope this helps!

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:58 am 
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Found another one!


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