Before this starts I want to say, this is my personal opinion as someone who has a more inside look at the system then most people. It's not something I was told to say (since some people have thought that in the past.) It's just my thoughts on the recent changes and the changes to come.
ELO does a good job with listening to what the community wants, and it was/is a big project taking on a new site like SR.C. I was a C Mod before ELO took over, and I can honestly say that there has been more community changes since ELO came into the scene then when it was just Pac doing things.
People don't seem to understand that stuff like this takes time, and while yes, the monetization stuff is something that is happening first, there will still be community suggested updates and community betterment updates coming out in the future. Back when it was just Pac working on the site people would be waiting months for QOL updates and they never knew which update would come next, but there was never any complaints about it until someone else took over.
And to people who say that the community has no say in what happens anymore I say this. Send me a DM, send any C or F Mod a DM about concerns you have if you feel they need to be heard directly. It's one of the main reasons we volunteer with the site, is because we care about the community.
That being said, I don't agree with the people saying ELO is in it "just for the money" because I've talked with members of ELO directly and can see that they want to learn more about the community they entered and be able to understand what people want to see change, it's just a big process that can take a bit of time to do.
Anyway that's my small rant about things, hope it doesn't come off as hostile to anyone as I in no way meant it to be, just hope that this will help some people understand that these things take time.
People are really ignoring all of the things elo added in the update because they don't like the ads. Yeah, the ads suck. But they added a bunch of other stuff in the recent update, too, a lot of which are features that I have seen requested since I have been actively reading site forums. I'm upset that the one bad thing is ruining an otherwise very good update.
Would say much water. Still doesn't explain why big company can't make proper communication with the community. Before was before, Pac did amazing job working and then passing on the web (selling), can't say better honestly. He found actually good group of caring people and they look like caring group. I was really happy with all changes that were made bedore last update, then they make such big change without any preparation. This really feels off, misleading, no respect. How did they end up with this decision? Can only wait for proper explanation.
There's also a CSS to remove the weird spacing https://hatebin.com/zqrmeupnhv
with adblock on, this looks exactly like normal
To me this looks like a pretty poor effort at creating a separate and different business (profit) model for speedrun.com and simply riding the business models of other sites that Elo owns like Dotabuff and Overbuff. If you go to either of these sites right now, you can see they operate completely similar in terms of ads and how they are displayed. Personally already realized it would only be a matter of time before speedrun.com would end up like this too when the PM announced at the beginning of the site transfer that they would release their ad program over the site in the near future. I really really dislike how a lot of corpo's think about these sorts of strategies nowadays. To me it feels like straight up pissing off an entire user base which consists of well over hundreds of thousands of users that have been around much longer than a corpo has and the user base that they only recently inherited is worth it when it brings in good profit. Don't get me wrong, I understand to a degree. This site has to become profitable when its owned by a corpo, and yes, everyone is going to be pleased with new moderator options but please, for the love of god, this way of making this site profitable is not it. This site is NOT a Dotabuff, not an Overbuff. This is speedrun.com. People here are not interested in game statistics. Listen to the communities and users here, and stick to your promises that you made on the 13th of October on Twitter Sabina. You were going to earn the trust of the community and so far you are not doing a good job.
The main issue here is transparency. If we had even the slightest glimpse of an idea of what ELO plans to do with the site in the future, people would probably not react so strongly when faced with these sort of big updates that come seemingly out of nowhere.
- The new widget bar layout for the main page was completely unexpected for everyone and completely changed the flow of information there (while also breaking a few things here and there at first, may I add), so people were rightfully shocked.
- The user profile layout change was similar in nature, except this time people actually wanted a rollback due to not wanting the news in the user profiles.
- The new ads also came from one moment to the next, with only as much as a one sentence acknowledgement in the latest news from this patch (so again, no preview). To make things worse, it's also in this process that they made the layout for 95% of the site (excluding the main page and user profile) very confusing and misaligned.
So what's the bottom line here? Should they stop pushing for big updates?
No, don't be silly. Of course we want updates.
However, by not getting more involved and getting in touch with the community themselves (rather than through C-mods and F-mods, which in contrast are awesome at this) they are continually shooting themselves on the foot. With a rocket launcher.
Yes, it's possible some users here might be a bit more riled up than they should be, but at this point ELO is kinda enabling it. They already have the tools to appease concerns through these forums and through the news, so they just need to appoint someone from PR and make a post every once in a while.
Where are we headed? What bugs/features are you currently looking into? Do you plan to roll out any other big updates we might want to take a look at before releasing it? It's anyone's guess at this point if you guys don't tell us.
PS: On that note, I really like that at least the moderation tools have a sneak peak, so at least that seems to go in the right direction, but we still need more in that regard. Baby steps I guess.
It's 2021. If an ad can change and disturb the page layout enough that the entire site moves down, you're doing something very wrong. I'm fine with the ads, but stuff like this is amateurish and rightfully gives the new management a black eye.
Start course correcting now. Start fixing stuff like this and communicating better. Start taking changes seriously, or there will eventually be a better run competitor that will make it it's goal to run SRC into the ground. SRC is a monolith because of low barrier to entry, not because it can't be replicated, and you're actively damaging that reputation.
I like the new management and the general direction - don't start digging your graves now.
"top 10 most toxic gaming communities"
are you guys gonna get better ads? thats my only problem
anyways, i love this update rather than that
The problem i have with ads is that ELO first changed the layout of the site (making it worse imo) and then they put ads in the most noticable place possible in the new layout. And not just some simple promoted material, or something that fits the site design, no it has to be annoying auto-play video that pops out to the edge of the screen when you scroll past it. It reminds me of fextralife putting their own stream on autoplay on all of their wikis to boost viewcount, which to me just screams greed and zero care for your community.
Updates are happening more, and I appreciate some of the future updates that seem to be in the works, but the current ones have made a lot of questionable changes that just feel awkward. I'm still a bit baffled by the user profile changes, even if I'm hopeful for future things.
I think they should get involved with the community a bit more, but the changes they’ve been making are ok. All the moderation tools coming soon are ones some of us have wanted for a while now. Ads aren’t great, but I know why they do it and I’m ok with that.
I wasn’t really around much when Pac was here, so I can’t make any comparisons but I think for now they are doing ok but could be better if they actually connected with the community more.
The "forced articles" were a news section that they wanted to incorporate as a way of sharing speedrunning news with the community, yes it got a lot of hate, but it also got a lot of support. People just always seem to focus on the hate since the people who hate seem to be more outgoing about it. And where did you hear of "watchmojo videos" coming onto the site? It's not something I've heard of.
I also donated to the site before becoming a mod, and it had nothing to do with the removal of ads when I did it, it was simply to supply money and support to a guy who made a website I used almost daily. the ads never really effected or bothered me since 99% of sites have ads, and it's just something to expect when using the internet.
That was something where they did not respond to everyone, unfortunately you were one of the people who they did not respond to. But there were other people who submit to that thread and they did get responses. But also, that was not something done by the mods, it was done by devs to get feedback on the site.
"So no, I don't think you actually care. Honesty is something you don't have" I actually am hurt by this message, because I've always tried to be as honest as I can be, and even when I specifically say that these are my own thoughts, people still think I'm just pushing out whatever I'm told to say. You say every big corp lies to us, but I'm not a part of ELO, I'm just a guy who volunteers to help out on the site. I'm just another user who happens to have a fancy badge next to my name.
And yes, obviously they added ads for money, why else would they have added them? But it's not all "for the money." They added the ads so they could get more revenue and hire people to help them with the site. Right now all the site mods are volunteer positions. They made a paid position for the site, full time. How else do you expect for them to be able to pay for that then by monetizing the site a little bit?
Again, I don't want to come off as hostile, I'm just defending my point that ELO is doing a good job, but too many people are focusing on the negatives to realize it.
I mean no disrespect @DarQ_Massacres and @Starlight, but clearly the fact that you feel the need to jump in here and explain in ELO's place DOES mean that they have failed significantly in this instance.
We as users and invested parties have the right to hold them accountable for misteps and sub par communication.
ELO also needs to understand that SRC is a monolith that could easily topple and be replaced with a few badly placed mistakes and miscommunications. There is no special love or loyalty for the site. Speedrunning has existed long before SRC and will exist after it, should they fail here.
They are the ones that are expendable to us, simply put.
EDIT: Oh and I actually really like the news articles by the way! Felt there should have been a community news section for a long time. That's one thing they've done very right IMO.
Yeah I'm not sure why you'd try to defend changes that negatively impact what is just a conglomerate of leaderboards and vastly different communities. SRC isn't exactly providing a service for us, it's the other way around, really. If the more dedicated communities get tired of dealing with negative changes they'll likely leave. elo.io was never going to buy SRC without a return on their investment, so slapping ads on it was inevitable, and I'm sure various forms of subscriptions and/or paywalls are in the pipe as well.