Kill the Next Episode Pop-up!

Edit Subject

Sorry to hear that, but we respect your decision to find a site that is more customized to your TV-watching needs! We get a lot of requests and ideas from users; unfortunately not all of them can be accommodated, and our team is working hard to address as many user-submitted ideas as we can, with bigger-scale projects prioritized (ie: fine-tuning the tracker sorting feature).

How about you people just damn well LISTEN to your users for once & kill this useless & intrusive pop-up that you've specifically designed to circumvent our pop-up blockers. This crap has been going on for well over a year now. You've been told time & time again "WE DON'T WANT IT" yet you still refuse to listen to us. WHY? You can't seriously tell me & everyone else in this thread that it's so mind-taxingly hard to remove a useless, redundant & intrusive pop-up (and it's not a feature so don't ever call it one; features encourage users with improved functionality & usability, your invasive "you just watched" pop-up is the antithesis of that description) that none of your users want or need.

Am I the only one here that finds it utterly astonishing that you're willing to wave goodbye to even one user over your obstinate & arrogant refusal to kill this malignant blight on the site? With this attitude towards your users it's more than surprising that you still have any. People couldn't give 2 fat f**ks about Facebook & Twitter connectivity; they do however want & expect a streamlined & usable site that encourages ease of use rather than a focus on superfluous "hang-ons" like social connectivity & other useless "features" to the detriment of usability, the latter of which is exactly the position you continue to insist on taking here.

Maybe if you tried listening to your users for once then you wouldn't have complaint threads well over a year old that are still being accessed & updated by people who are still actively wanting & asking for a fix. Try considering that, Alex the next time you decide to brush off the concerns of one of your users with such a thinly disguised "whatever dick, we couldn't give a rats arse what you think" statement.

I hear you Matt, and I never stop fighting for the removal of this pop-up, in addition to other "non-features" that actually need more prioritized fixing at this time. I'm a user of SideReel myself, and I'm also the sole person who interacts with the users and reads and responds to every single user praise, complaint, question, and problem and carries them on to the higher level. That doesn't mean I myself can physically create direct and instant change at the Product Level, but I will damn well fight for it, and that's all I can do if a user threatens to go elsewhere. Taking it out on me (and the other users in this thread) may be the easiest way for you to get your point across, but unfortunately it is not the best solution – I'm the one on your team.
Just because you phrase the problem more dramatically doesn't mean it's a more dire problem than other current issues around the site. That said, I still agree with you about the annoyance of the "Welcome Back" pop-up.
Furthermore, the assertions that we don't listen to our users and that no one gives "2 fat f*cks about Facebook and Twitter Connectivity" are both completely inaccurate, but I'll be sure to take that to our next product council and see how it goes over. You also seem to take this thread –and your own opinions on what's useful and what's not– as a representation of our entire user community, which couldn't be farther from the truth. That doesn't mean your opinions don't matter, just that others' opinions matter as well.
Also, thanks for keeping this thread alive and spicy.

Hi Kristen! Unfortunately as of now there's no option to disable the Welcome Back pop-up, but we're considering making an opt-out option for registered users. Thanks for your feedback!

@Kristin and @Alex I agree fully with the opt-out option for registered users, this would completely solve the problem.

Thanks for your detailed response Kelly – I'm aware of the common sentiment regarding the pop-up, and that in general it's perceived as a roadblock in one's user experience. This is one of the very few user-submitted complaints that has not yet been acted upon, but that doesn't mean that our users aren't being listened to.

Thanks for your support and for checking back in Jonathan! We're still in the process of cleaning up broken links site-wide, but the fight against new incoming spam is always an ongoing battle! I hope you come back as well.

Hi Jonathan!
We never refused to make it optional, nor are we actively attempting to drive you away from using SideReel! As described in the official response above, we haven't removed this pop-up because it has significantly increased 'mark as watched' actions and link-reporting around the site, and I've invited users like you to submit suggestions for making it more tolerable so that we can alter it to make it less annoying and more useful. That said, I think you'll be extremely pleased with the update that's coming soon!
Could you elaborate on what other features have given you the impression that we're actively trying to drive users away? Naturally, this is not something we want, so we'd love to hear your feedback!

Hi Alex,

Thank you for the quick response. I believe "not making something optional after people have complained about it for at least a year and have asked repeatedly to make it optional" equates to "refusing to make it optional."

As far as you saying you've "invited users like you to submit suggestions for making it more tolerable so that we can alter it to make it less annoying and more useful," we've been saying for a year how to make it less annoying. Make it optional.

I get that it increases the mark as watched actions and link reporting but there are those of us who hate the pop-up and would quit complaining if we could just turn it off. And if there are people who are complaining about it then you can pretty much be guaranteed there are those that hate it but don't want to submit an official complaint.

The feature that seems like you don't want people to enjoy their visit to Sidereel is the update you guys have made to the pop-up box. Now we actually have to click the "x" to close the pop-up. At least when we could click anywhere we could move a little quicker through links to find one that works. So removing the one good quality of a feature a lot of people hate seems to suggest that you guys have no intention of listening to our suggestions. How else are we supposed to interpret that action?

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic. All I know is that if I'm hosting a site and enough people make it known that a certain feature is driving them away from my site, I would make some changes.

Look, I'm really not trying to be dramatic here. This particular feature is just incredibly annoying. Before the pop-up was added I used Sidereel all the time. Now though it's just easier to watch most of my media through alternate methods. I realize a few extra clicks shouldn't be a big deal but there are those of us who watch quite a bit of media so it turns into a very tedious process to have to close each and every pop-up.

Hi Jonathan,
Believe it or not, while we appreciate your constructive suggestion to make it "opt-out," this has actually not been the common sentiment for over a year. There has been far more outright backlash and a demand to remove the pop-up altogether than constructive suggestions to make it better, and since the pros have significantly outweighed the cons (no dip in traffic, increased mark-as-watched and link-report actions around the site), we've held off on changing it. However, since we do want our most loyal users to be happy - and those are the ones most annoyed by this pop-up, we want to make sure we can find a happy medium. I'm sorry it has taken so long, but we're a small company and we're working hard to make as many people happy as possible (while still keeping the site successful), one feature at a time!
Since my last official response 2 months ago, in which I asked for constructive solutions, our team has actively been working on redesigning it to reflect these changes while still hopefully maintaining the same high level of mark-as-watched activity around the site. We hope you'll stick around to see this changes put into effect in the next month or so!

Hey - drama or no drama, we really appreciate your feedback! We'd much rather you be very passionate about a feature than not care at all, we just hope you understand there's just only so much we can do to maintain a good balance between user experience and increased site usage, and we hope we can make you happier going forward!

Hi James! Thanks for your feedback! We actually have some changes rolling out within the next week or so, so stay tuned!