> Sorry about that, should have only popped up if you left the page

That's still unnecessary aggressive and irritating. Like most "Are you sure you want to leave this web site?" dialogs that pop up when I close a tab.

Not the best way to give users a good last impression of your site.

FWIW I opened it in a background tab.

Still completely unacceptable.

(EDIT: as in, your site is giving a value proposition and I don't accept it if it includes a massive popup)

Sorry your hacker news experience was ruined today, perhaps you can ask for a partial refund for your troubles.

I'm not going to copy and paste my answer to girvo, but that. I didn't have to take the trouble to give feedback.

Hey, I agree that it's a PITA - I didn't get it when I loaded the page - and I hate pages that do that,

Writing "Still completely unacceptable." makes you come across as though you were ripped off in some way..

Are we really at a point where we get deeply offended at some sort of UI change when we visit a page? Inspector it, remove it, read the article, and move the fuck on.

First, tell us where you're getting "deeply offended" from any of this. Is it that it became a subject of criticism at all?

Oh hey, lets twist someones words and mock them while they were trying to give legitimate feedback. Well done sir.

Why even bother if the argument you're making isn't even remotely associated with reality?

That was the funniest HN comment I've seen in months. Nice job.

Well that's entitled. It's his site, he can do what he wants. Even if that does mean that I'll put it through Instapaper to avoid that stuff and not sign up to his mailing list.

It's not. I'm just giving a data point, as is jc4p, as is codegeek. So are the up-voters.

What part of what I said gave you the impression of entitlement? I didn't say "I deserve to read this without ads". I said "I stopped reading because you put a massive pop-up that filled the entire screen and prevented me from reading it, I don't find that acceptable, and so closed the tab".

Would it be better to have no feedback about why people are bouncing?

The issue for me is derailment.

Your complaint - which is unrelated to the content of this article - is now the top comment.

I agree with you, but there are probably a lot of things we agree about, which are also not related to the content of this article.

And regarding whether your complaint is doing the author a favor? You know, it's probably not. You're just going to discourage him from writing, because then he doesn't have to deal with HN's abuse.

Technically it is related to the content and usability of the page as a whole. It falls under the umbrella of feedback on the user's experience with the site.

I think it's myopic to dictate what is and isn't up for discussion, to say "well that's not the point, just ignore it." If the ad is so distracting and off-putting that the user doesn't even get to the content, that is pretty important.

And if that post rises to the top, the message is that a substantial amount of people are having a similar experience.

Before your edit, you had one sentence saying you had an issue, then one other sentence saying it's completely unacceptable.

It's not about your feedbacks content (I agree with you!) it's how you worded it.

On the other hand, you got me to sign up :) But that's because I've seen your previous posts and they've been really influential for our whole startup! Keep 'em coming.

Thanks for mentioning the name of the service so I can block it on Ghostery.

Hope you didn't copy-paste it from his comment because he mistyped the domain :)