Testing advertisements across the network

If we're going to be test subjects for new malware delivery vectors that the owner of the site has no control over then I think we should at least get numbers for revenue and profitability for these ad programs.

I guess this post isn't really about StackExchange, I'm just tired of being the product and the test subject of these monstrous ad networks.

Ads on SE sites are excessively animated, irrelevant, dubious and resource-intensive https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329547/ads-on-se-si...

The Stack Overflow I wish to build and participate in is no longer supported https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386324/the-stack-ov...

This is exactly what I did with StrategyWiki when Wikibooks deleted their video game guides. I already had a GFDL licensed wiki with topical content, so I copied down everything that was about to get expunged and merged it with our existing guides. (Unfortunately a collaborator of mine stole the site by breaking into my domain name account, transferred the domain, and moved servers while I was overseas. But that's another story...)

But all ideas have a lifecycle. I am wondering if some aspects of Stack Exchange are getting a bit ossified.

The answers themselves are a case in point. How to centre content in HTML being a classic example. Years ago you needed to do negative margin hacks, a few years later you could do transforms. Now you can just use the layout engine that now comes with CSS - CSS Grid - and just do align/justify items/self to center and that is it, no hacks needed.

But if you go on to SO to look up an answer you will see the answer from a decade ago with a thousand upvotes, seventy hacky answers and no mention whatsoever of the 2017+ CSS Grid method. The moderators would have locked down the answers a few years ago. So, in suspended animation, is an incorrect answer that has thousands of upvotes.

If you know nothing of HTML you could just copy/paste the answer and be happy with it, even give it an upvote. But then to unlearn the hack method for the new CSS Grid method would be not what you would want to do.

The more you know about an area of knowledge the more you realise that SO answers could make you get it badly wrong.

This is purely due to the age of the site. Plus the people who were writing answers originally no longer do so. They have oved on professionally and just don't need the mod points any more than they need gold stars from a school teacher.

Another aspect of the ossification is when you have too many admin people accrue in an organisation. The merch for the giveaways costs too, things that were once nice to have to get things started become expected. The money that was once found for promoting new topic websites now becomes table stakes.

I think they need to focus more on the core product - SO - and not the other sites. If questions had an 'is this answer set outmoded?' checkbox that people who know the subject could flag then they might be able to get some detritus removed from the content.

If they are thus able to keep SO relevant then all should be good for revenue.

As for on the other sites, can we expect this to make it more like Quora or am I being pessimistic?

The first stage was when they just introduced ads. This is the second stage. The third and potentially terminal stage will be when they will require login to read answers and have stupid pop ups like Medium does.

The worst thing is that they have the resources & influence to run their own “premium” ad network and vet their ads, but don’t appear to do so (otherwise there wouldn’t need to ask to report malicious/inappropriate ads).