I am asking myself this question: who is using SO and SE and how are the new native ads affecting the experience.

The way I see it there are three uses of the site:

• seeking a solution to a specific problem you have
• phishing for interesting problems for fun and engaging your brain
• and contributing to the community by answering questions.

When you are searching for a specific problem you are not browsing the questions. You search (either internal search or external search) and or ask a new question. You don't really interact with the main and questions pages. So these native ads don't affect you, almost not at all. (until it's decide to put them between answers [sigh]).

But in the other two cases you actively browse for interesting questions. With the mindset and expectation of finding something interesting to either tease your brain, learn something new and or give back to the community by giving an answer.

This search of interesting questions already had two frictions:

• filtering questions not relevant to you - fair enough and expected, no algorithm can know what exactly in my particular languages and tags I am familiar with or I find relevant. No big deal.

• filtering bad questions. This is a big point of contention on this site for a while now. It's already generally a big deterrent to contributors the fact that we have to deal with a pretty big ratio of questions that waste everybody's time.

And now you introduce new friction:

• filtering ads. When I am looking for interesting Q&As or when I am looking to help another dev now, I also have to navigate the land mines of native ads. I do not what to go to a site where someone is trying to sell me something. I just want to find new interesting Q&As and to help other programmers.

This to me shows that the heads driving this ship do not understanding the ship they are sailing, do not understanding the community. Stack Overflow community is one of the most tech inclined audience on the web. I bet this community has one of the highest percent usage of ad blockers. We are more ads adverse than the average internet user. We have a more hostile attitude towards intrusive ads.

These native ads add friction for users that are looking to contribute to the site.

I understand that the site needs to become profitable. I want this site to be profitable and self sustained for years to come. But I think this is not the answer and actually hurts the site in ways it wouldn't hurt other sites. I do not know what the solution is to becoming profitable, sadly I don't even know if it's possible at this time in this world context. But native ads that look like questions ain't it.

I am asking myself this question: who is using SO and SE and how are the new native ads affecting the experience.

The way I see it there are three uses of the site:

• seeking a solution to a specific problem you have
• phishing for interesting problems for fun and engaging your brain
• and contributing to the community by answering questions.

When you are searching for a specific problem you are not browsing the questions. You search (either internal search or external search) and/or ask a new question. You don't really interact with the main page and the questions page. So these native ads don't affect you, almost not at all. (until it's decide to put them between answers [sigh]).

But in the other two cases you actively browse for interesting questions. With the mindset and expectation of finding something interesting to either tease your brain, learn something new and or give back to the community by giving an answer.

This search of interesting questions already had two frictions:

• filtering questions not relevant to you - fair enough and expected, no algorithm can know what exactly in my particular languages and tags I am familiar with or I find relevant. No big deal.

• filtering bad questions. This is a big point of contention on this site for a while now. It's already generally a big deterrent to contributors the fact that we have to deal with a pretty big ratio of questions that waste everybody's time.

And now you introduce new friction:

• filtering ads. When I am looking for interesting Q&As or when I am looking to help another dev now, I also have to navigate the land mines of native ads. I do not what to go to a site where someone is trying to sell me something. I just want to find new interesting Q&As and to help other programmers.

This to me shows that the heads driving this ship do not understand the ship they are sailing, nor the community. Stack Overflow community is one of the most tech inclined audiences on the web. I bet this community has one of the highest percent usage of ad blockers. We are more ads adverse than the average internet user. We have a more hostile attitude towards intrusive ads.

So these native ads only add friction for users that are looking to contribute to the site.

I understand that the site needs to become profitable. I want this site to be profitable and self sustained for years to come. But I think this is not the answer and actually hurts the site in ways it wouldn't hurt other sites. I do not know what the solution is to becoming profitable, sadly I don't even know if it's possible at this point in time and in this world context. But native ads that look like questions ain't it.

I am asking myself this question: who is using SO and SE and how are the new native ads affecting the experience.

The way I see it there are three uses of the site:

• seeking a solution to a specific problem you have
• phishing for interesting problems for fun and engaging your brain
• and contributing to the community by answering questions.

When you are searching for a specific problem you are not browsing the questions. You search (either internal search or external search) and or ask a new question. You don't really interact with the main and questions pages. So these native ads don't affect you, almost not at all. (until it's decide to put them between answers [sigh]).

But in the other two cases you actively browse for interesting questions. With the mindset and expectation of finding something interesting to either tease your brain, learn something new and or give back to the community by giving an answer.

This search of interesting questions already had two frictions:

• filtering questions not relevant to you - fair enough and expected, no algorithm can know what exactly in my particular languages and tags I am familiar with or I find relevant. No big deal.

• filtering bag questions. This is a big point of contention on this site for a while now. It's already generally a big deterrent to contributors the fact that we have to deal with a pretty big ratio of questions that waste everybody's time.

And now you introduce new friction:

• filtering ads. When I am looking for interesting Q&As or when I am looking to help another dev now I also have to navigate the land mines of native ads. I do not what to go to a site where someone is trying to sell me something. I just want to find new interesting Q&As and to help other programmers.

This to me shows that the heads driving this ship do not understanding the ship they are sailing, do not understanding the community. Stack Overflow community is one of the most tech inclined audience on the web. I bet this community has one of the highest percent usage of ad blockers. We are more ads adverse than the average internet user. We have a more hostile attitude towards intrusive ads.

These native ads add friction for users that are looking to contribute to the site.

I understand that the site needs to become profitable. I want this site to be profitable and self sustained for years to come. But I think this is not the answer and actually hurts the site in ways it wouldn't hurt other sites. I do not know what the solution is to becoming profitable, sadly I don't even know if it's possible at this time in this world context. But native ads that look like questions ain't it.

I am asking myself this question: who is using SO and SE and how are the new native ads affecting the experience.

The way I see it there are three uses of the site:

• seeking a solution to a specific problem you have
• phishing for interesting problems for fun and engaging your brain
• and contributing to the community by answering questions.

When you are searching for a specific problem you are not browsing the questions. You search (either internal search or external search) and or ask a new question. You don't really interact with the main and questions pages. So these native ads don't affect you, almost not at all. (until it's decide to put them between answers [sigh]).

But in the other two cases you actively browse for interesting questions. With the mindset and expectation of finding something interesting to either tease your brain, learn something new and or give back to the community by giving an answer.

This search of interesting questions already had two frictions:

• filtering questions not relevant to you - fair enough and expected, no algorithm can know what exactly in my particular languages and tags I am familiar with or I find relevant. No big deal.

• filtering bad questions. This is a big point of contention on this site for a while now. It's already generally a big deterrent to contributors the fact that we have to deal with a pretty big ratio of questions that waste everybody's time.

And now you introduce new friction:

• filtering ads. When I am looking for interesting Q&As or when I am looking to help another dev now, I also have to navigate the land mines of native ads. I do not what to go to a site where someone is trying to sell me something. I just want to find new interesting Q&As and to help other programmers.

This to me shows that the heads driving this ship do not understanding the ship they are sailing, do not understanding the community. Stack Overflow community is one of the most tech inclined audience on the web. I bet this community has one of the highest percent usage of ad blockers. We are more ads adverse than the average internet user. We have a more hostile attitude towards intrusive ads.

These native ads add friction for users that are looking to contribute to the site.

I understand that the site needs to become profitable. I want this site to be profitable and self sustained for years to come. But I think this is not the answer and actually hurts the site in ways it wouldn't hurt other sites. I do not know what the solution is to becoming profitable, sadly I don't even know if it's possible at this time in this world context. But native ads that look like questions ain't it.