Sorry about the annoyance, guys. Wrangling the code of this tired-ass forum software is never as easy as it seems and I've got other things I'm working on right now. I'll try to get to it at some point so bear with me.

Mind you, this was on vinyl:

Is it ethical to put your name on game reviews you didn't write?

1. Those aren't reviews
2. We had some database issues where reviews that got imported to the new system from the old all had Ron in the byline, but previews weren't a part of that issue. At least I didn't think they were 

Never mind Forgot you were helping us out that year

Is it ethical to put your name on game reviews you didn't write?

1. Those aren't reviews
2. We had some database issues where reviews that got imported to the new system from the old all had Ron in the byline, but previews weren't a part of that issue. At least I didn't think they were 

I'm fighting back tears. This man was a HUGE influence on my life. 

I don't see anything out of the ordinary about his account. Maybe he collapsed the other menu group?

It seems every time I try to do something on the server I break something I ran a repair on the database, looks like things are doing fine now. (crosses fingers)

Wonder Con footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5EZ-u457Igo#!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10102245434088906&set=vb.175282252538080&type=2&theater

I think the new ad script our network provided loads a little slower than previous ones. Not much we can do about it, I'm afraid.

I miss the Chili Cheese Burrito from Taco Bell.  Loved those things...


Damn it.  Now I want a Chili Cheese Burrito

Three times this thread has come up from the depths, three times Ron has chimed in about Chili Cheese Burritos from Taco Bell. Each time like it was the first. 

Just FYI, it's taking between 10-30 seconds for each page to load even with the ads disabled.

Yeah, I ran another test. The problem wasn't strictly the ads...

We're having issues with our ad network at this time. looking into it.

So, I see it, but it happens so fast it doesn't really phase me. It's because the javascript loads after the page loads. Is it taking a long time for the page to load for you and then the jump occurs?

Well, it's loading in the order it should- content first and then ad. Is it happening in any non IE browsers?

Always 

nope. I'm wondering if you're getting a cached version of one of the hiccups or something. Try clearing your cache and try again.

We've been having some intermittent issues today. Thought we'd dealt with it but I guess not. Does it happen on every refresh too?

Thanks for the replies all. I must say I'm quite dismayed that everyone here says firmware updates are here to stay... I guess I could look for a wireless Blu-ray player, but still... With the risk of sounding like a simpleton, I can't say I'm impressed with this evolution, and would rather have a stable format (with some fewer options I guess) than a constantly upgrading one.

At least they could have all the firmware drivers on the Blu-ray disk itself. I know this isn't simple with 1000's of drivers, but I can't believe consumers have to do this. Anyways, thanks for the replies.

You realize a PS3 IS a wireless player, right?

What kind of network connection are you on?

Well, at the very least, don't scrap the forums, whatever you do.

That's not gonna happen. We WANT to overhaul them and make them better, it's just a big project and we've had to weigh priorities. It's not so much an 'if' but more of a 'when'.

I don't necessarily agree with that blanket statement. I know personally there are some sites I frequent for news more than others, games or otherwise. When I stumble upon one I like I usually bookmark it and come back. This is a common behavior, really, so I'm not an outlier in this.

Fair enough, I'm exaggerating. But I do think it is the case that readership of news sites tends to be more fluid. For instance, if a great news site popped up tomorrow, it might immediately change how often a reader goes to other news sites, but it is less likely to affect what forums they go to. I think forums are more "sticky" in that regard.

Traditionally they have been, but the concept of forums as we know them is a dying thing- there are more outlets for conversations to happen. Not that we're giving up on the idea of a forum by any means, we just need to evolve ours so there's more relevance and integration with what's going on elsewhere on the site.

This seems like a good analysis based on what we know so far: Boston bombing suspects are "grassroots militants"

I'm much less interested in having a bunch of news sites to visit, which sadly is why I never visit the front page of this site.  On my RSS feed I have a ton of them in there and honestly am about to pare them down because it's just too repetitive.  Notable sites that are excluded from this would be Penny Arcade Report and Giant Bomb.  Both of those provide much more than just spitting out press releases and I think if you really want to drive traffic to the site, you should work on coming up with something that makes you stand out from the crowd.  You can continue to do news and reviews, but I'd love to see you guys succeed and would be willing to kick in Kickstarter money if you offered something more than just the message board I'm used to hanging out at.

That's exactly the direction we are going in- Thanks to David we've been going away from the PR monkey bullshit that every site has (though we still have some) and posting more editorials and journalistic pieces (like this one for instance). We know this is what readers want and we plan to do more of it.

Define "next level", Mike. What's the goal?

That's what we're still working out, hence the spitballing. This thread is just one part of the conversation we're having about this.

I'm with Reemul...there may be tons of page views, but the forums aren't reflecting that. People coming to view stories aren't being drawn into the community. At the same time, I think there are probably many forum vets that don't look at the front page. The two are not integrated. I think it would be desirable to capitalize on some of the foot traffic to build the community.

Certainly, but right now the balance of where we need to focus our attention tips in the direction of the front site, by dent of numbers and how much control we have. We have plans worked up for a forum overhaul with integrated comments (and in fact have done some work on it already), but a couple of months ago we had to shelve that for a bit to focus on other priorities that just made more sense with our long term plans and trajectory. We still plan to get back to that but it is not an easy project. A crowdfunding might enable us to outsource that and get it done sooner.

I would take a long look at what TouchArcade is doing. It might not be perfect, but they do a nice job of driving traffic from news articles to the forums (or at least attempting to) by linking to discussion threads from articles. They also use their search engine in their app the same way. When you search for a game title, there is a link to the discussion about that title on the info page. If there isn't a discussion, you can start one from the info page.

I'll take a look at that and see how that meshes with what we have worked out.

News sites are disposable. There are tons of them. There's no allegiance to them.

I don't necessarily agree with that blanket statement. I know personally there are some sites I frequent for news more than others, games or otherwise. When I stumble upon one I like I usually bookmark it and come back. This is a common behavior, really, so I'm not an outlier in this.

So, you want more page views for your articles, correct? I've thought about it, and it sounds like maybe the forum should be more integrated into the main site, more seamlessly perhaps via a forum skin that would display the latest content via a forum sidebar. Used to be that screen real-estate was more precious when monitors were smaller, but with bigger monitors now being the norm, a sidebar isn't such a big deal, and it would be a compromise I'd be willing to live with if it meant for more page views for the site content.

Pageviews aren't exactly the problem- we broke 1 million a month a few weeks ago. Gaming Trend is at a crossroads right now where we've got the traffic and we've got good content happening, but we want to take it to the next level and get better content out there, integrate our forums better, amplify our social media presence more, cover more events, etc. Our problem at this point is time and money, and traditional online advertising isn't going to make that happen without transforming the site into a direction none of us wants.

Mike & Ron, I think maybe there aren't more replies, because it isn't at all clear what you want people weighing in on. What is it you want an opinion on? We all know banner ads are evil, so not much need for discussion there. Are you asking about crowd funding, what?

Crowdfunding is a big part of what we're asking about- I don't want to just ask for money to cover server costs for x amount of time, I want to make this a better gaming site and community. What do YOU guys think we should offer (besides incentives) in exchange for your help? Crowdfunding is just as much about becoming a part of the thing you're investing in.

Other than that I left it a little ambiguous. Anybody have any other models we could explore? 

My only thing with Kickstarter is that I'm not sure what amount you would be throwing out there. Enough to run the servers for a month? Or would you go for a year. The people on the forums are a dedicated bunch and I'm sure you'll get some money out of it but would people on the front page be willing to donate? I'm sure they are mostly people that bounced here from Metacritic or something, not sure if they are the donating types.

If this were just about running the servers we wouldn't be considering this. There are a lot of things we'd like to do with this site that are hindered considerably by lack of time and funding. Again, we're still spitballing here.

If we do any kind of crowd funding, it would be accompanied by a lot of promotion. The key is structuring it to entice non forum goers as well. Sure, we get a lot of drive-by traffic, but I'd be willing to bet some of those folks come back from time to time, or like us on Facebook or Twitter.

I thought after the PA kickstarter they said you can't run that kind of kickstarter anymore?  Has to be something that generates an end product.

You guys mentioned Kickstarter, not me 

Personally, I don't whitelist any site for ads anymore, including GT, for security, performance and just plain general browsing enjoyment.  When the text auto-link stuff was done here I took GT off my list.  I only want to see and follow links that people put in purposefully, not some random direct link to an ad or sales page.  I know what Call of Duty is, I don't need a skeezy auto-link to purchase it from Dealzorz.

Those would be included in the "lets get away from ads" campaign.

I don't know what the answer is for traffic that only visits the front page, though.  Clearly it seems like there is a very large amount of the audience that never sees the forums or engages with the site beyond reading an article, so I'm sure you'd have to keep some ads there. 

Well, the idea is to get away banner ads altogether. I'm not looking at this as a way to further demarcate the front page and forums, this is something we'd be doing for Gaming Trend as a whole.

I am more than willing to admit I block ads.  They are intrusive, can be a security risk, can be offensive and overall just hinder my enjoyment of a site.  If I enjoy a site, I will find ways to support it, as I have in the past by donating a decent sum of money to Gaming Trend, or subscribing like I recently did to Roll20.net. 

I also know that I am not your target audience, I do not read the front page as I no longer read gaming "news" or reviews.  I come to Gaming Trend for the forums, and the friendship, although to be honest I find I visit less and less as time goes by.  In the end Ron and company, you need to do, what you need to do.

Honestly, I don't blame anyone for blocking ads. I probably hate them just as much or more than any of you guys do- they slow down the site, a lot of them use flash, we make a pittance off them...

In addition to ridding ourselves of banner ads, a crowdfunding might also enable us to finally make some much needed improvements to these forums   

Yesterday, Ron, David and I came across a very insightful article written by Ben Kuchera over at the PA Report, and Ron posted about it here.

Needless to say, it REALLY hit home for us. Gaming Trend has been growing up a bit more as of late- traffic is increasing exponentially, non-PR hack/ original content is being published at a much faster pace than before, we're covering more gaming related events than before, and better. Overall, as producer of the site I think I can safely say our quality of content is increasing, even if our quantity and timeliness remains uneven due to the volunteer nature of the site.

Ron and I have been preparing to approach some of the bigger ad networks in the hopes of bringing in more revenue for the site in the hopes that we can get through some of these growing pains and take GT to the next level that we feel we're ready for, but there is a lot of trepidation and uncertainty in this path, and Kuchera's article underscores the risk/gain ratio with alarming clarity. The current online advertising model IS broken, and we've always been resistant to the "traditional" methods and vigilant with the networks we've worked with to ensure that the ads we run are at least tolerable to you, our readership. We already know how little we've gotten from those relationships in the past and how much trouble they are to deal with (certainly more than it's worth), and chaining ourselves to a bigger more ruthless advertising network for a few more pennies than we get now has always left a bad taste in our mouths.

Likewise, we've staunchly resisted the 'maximize pageviews' model that spawns from online advertising, and when we redesigned the site I removed the multi page concept from the design completely. We pride ourselves in (the occasional misstep notwithstanding) not succumbing to the sensationalism and shady practices of larger gaming sites, and we don't want to change that. Our mission statement is 'by gamers, for gamers', and we take that very seriously.

Where we are right now is exploring other options, crowdfunding being the one with the most potential, but we're really just spitballing at this point. We'd love if if you guys weighed in on this.

I bought mine in 2010, not the time capsule version. It has been solid as a rock, I think I've had to reboot it only a handful of times since I've plugged it in.

I generally avoid the time machine stuff on my macs, and didn't opt to get the time capsule for that reason.

Boston isn't even IN Maryland, silly.  

What's your field? I actually spoke at SXSW about this very thing...

I'm hoping the Apple Airport Extreme is made of sterner stuff than your experience with the Express.

It absolutely is. Will never use another wireless router again.

Saw it.  I wish I'd saved the 7 bucks.

Really? I thought it was quite good. Did you stay for the after credits scene?

It's hard to respond to the question when everyone thinks it picked up from the beginning.  It does get less oppressively dark, at least.

This.  I'm guessing that if you thought the miniseries was awful, it's probably just not a show you're ever going to enjoy.  I would say move on.  I'm not going to attempt to convince you you're wrong (something I think I've done too much recently, methinks).  I'm just going to say I disagree with you a great deal.   

I think Mini-Kim looks like a shaved koala bear