I found the material lacking in quality, but it had its moments. My biggest impression was just being overwhelmed with the way the blog was integrated. Hats off.
I am sad to see that you focused on these things rather than 1500 other articles on the blog.
C'est la vie :)
From my personal perspective, if you punch me in the nose with a sign-up form the first time I visit, not only am I going to dismiss it without any consideration at all, I am going to be suspicious of the subsequent material you present. Changing the timing of this popup could help you a bunch, I think.
If I have not seen your site, I will not subscribe to your newsletter. If I have read through n items on your website, chances are good I might be interested in your newsletter offer, though.
Having said that, I have made a note of the feedback on the popup and will take action to fix that.
Thanks.
It may not have been a physical gatekeeper, but things that overlay the main content while I'm reading them (even if it was meant to show quickly, before I started reading and was delayed because of download or javascript execution times) communicates that the author/maintainer of the website considers their content to be less important than whatever the overlay's content is. I don't have time for this, the internet is quite vast. There are a bunch of other hacker news entries to review.
The only advantage you have now is that I don't even remember the name of the site that I so quickly closed due to annoyance, and my browser is now flagged as having visited it previously, so if I happen across it again, I presumably won't get a popup/overlay telling me I'm a new visitor.
I'm not sure why a new visitor needs to be told that they are a new visitor.
As per your own theory smart people cannot solve their own problems, so instead of taking the "C'est la vie" stance, try "I see, let me see what I can do about it" attitude.
I will definitely think about your comment and discuss it with my mentors. There are people who I take advise when it comes to these aspects ( blogging, writing ).
Thanks for the advice in any case.
Cheers.
I agree if you would have said, it is not required for the people who are visiting it for the first time as you don't know the quality of content provided. But definitely it dint say or meant "go away".
That said, the tweet thing on the left side was annoying enough that it warranted firing up the javascript debugger to make it go away.
Cheers.
Without getting into specifics, how many people would look at, say, a government following $YOUR_PREFERRED_ECONOMIC_SYSTEM and call it a long series of "mistakes"? But of course you know that $YPES is not a long series of mistakes, it's the way any right-thinking person knows it should be done. In fact they are making a mistake for preferring some other system over yours!.... or are they?
It's very easy to inaccurately diagnose problems and prescribe solutions, but it doesn't mean much without validation.
That is precisely the reason to have mentors and personal advisors.
My $.02
An example that I've observed, which doesn't quite fall in line with where the author went with it, but is interesting nonetheless, is when I get stuck solving a programming problem. When I'm showing others how to solve a problem of similar complexity, I seem to have more of my mind free to step through the pieces of the puzzle and can see solutions more clearly. It's like when I'm not using energy working on the problem and don't have any direct connection to it emotionally or otherwise, I can solve it more easily.
Another example of something in the same ballpark is a couple years ago I had errors on my credit report so I went to clear them up. I had to jump through a series of hoops to make that happen, and the whole process seemed like a big headache. It also was difficult to get the motivation to do it initially, even though I knew I needed to and understood the basic steps required. Fast-forward to a few months ago, and I had a friend that needed to dispute items on her credit report. I didn't dread jumping in to solve the problem, and even offered to help her fix it right then. Even though it was the same problem, the same complexity, and a similar time commitment, I had zero emotional attachment to the problem, and so I quickly dissected it into a step a, step b, step c process and got it done.
Begging the question: the premise assumes the conclusion, e.g., "that's illegal because it's against the law".
False dilemma: you present two possible options as the only options, when in fact there are other alternatives, e.g., "either you're with me or against me"