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Betanews.com - What was once a great site, is no longer

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Josh:
I hope that I am not the only person on DC with the below feelings, but they had to be said.

Betanews, and likewise fileforum, have lost their way. The site which was once designed around providing updates to the latest in beta technology and software has turned into a commercial shill with a focus on dragging in more advertising dollars. Many of the "journalists" seem to be more like bloggers with stories which are designed to do nothing more than stir up a flame war. I've watched as their site has been overrun with advertisements. I have not seen any of those as I block all ads but turning off the ad blocker leads to stuff like "Software deal of the day", a recent addition to try and earn some money from their bigger advertisers, interstitial ads which interrupt me as I navigate page-to-page, an absurd amount of "top stories" or "most commented" sections which do nothing more than take up space. Their special features section has not changed in forever. One of the stories listed in it was from May. Is the release of nitro pdf's free reader still a "featured story" with so much other tech news going on?

The site is overrun with spam. You cannot rely on the "number of comments" section due to the fact that it may say 104 posts, but clicking the link reveals only 12 actual posts with the rest either hidden, identified spam, or actual spam in the comments/reviews. The site is overrun with the same people who "review" ad nauseam the same programs and do nothing but attack each other. I watch as one user incessantly rants about some obscure form of value, relying solely on price and providing no information on the actual program or its functionality. I watch as others review programs with no actual content but merely attacking other users. The articles posted at times read like paid advertisements.

Sorry if this seems like just a gripe session, but as a user who used betanews back in its good ole days, I am saddened to see the site take such a drastic turn. From spammers, to review/comment trolls, to ungodly numbers of advertisements, the site has turned into one which I am very close to ceasing visitation at minus software update notifications. Even that is being done more and more with secunia PSI and FileHippo update checker.

Come on betanews, get back to your roots. Give us a site worth reading.

y0himba:
 :up: Spot-on if you ask me.

Josh:
Also forgot to mention the poor excuse for a rating system. The system is broken beyond any chance of repair. Users can rate down with no requirement for justification. This often results in all comments being "below viewing threshold" whenever you view a topic because someone holds a grudge against another user or set of users.

Josh:
Here is an example of why I dislike the BN rating system. This is my first visit to a topic:

Betanews.com - What was once a great site, is no longer

All of the replies have been rated down thus requiring a click to view content

Original topic

Darwin:
 :Thmbsup: Well said, Josh. I feel that same way. I no longer trust/refer to Betanews or FileForum for the reasons that you have very eruditely outlined.

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