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Recently (as in, since ads have been enabled), I have intermittently been having trouble with the site.

I'm using the keyboard navigation (and moderation) for a significant portion of my activities on site. Sometimes it seems the servers for Adzerk do funky things that "slow me down" (read: make using the site frustrating).

The keyboard navigation is only enabled when all resources have been loaded. Whenever a truly external dependency (like Adzerk, MathJax, ...) is not available or takes long to respond for whatever reason, the site is basically unusable for me.

Even only wait times of a few seconds are already frustrating, especially when the site looks functional:

ados.js loading

but isn't actually usable with a keyboard (which is faster and easier than getting the hands moved towards the mouse and clicking) until minutes later:

ados.js loaded after two minutes

Please either get Adzerk (the largest offender) to serve their resources properly1, or organize resource loading in a way that allows using core features of the site while the resources are still loading (AJAX anyone?).

1 This is about https://engine.adzerk.net/ados.js which can sporadically take up to 20 seconds or more to not be served on each page load instead of just erroring out with a round trip, which would keep functionality of the site...

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Maybe you can block https://engine.adzerk.net/ados.js with the tool of your choice. Run without it for a while and see what breaks, if anything. If it causes problems, unblock the script, otherwise keep it blocked and solve the problem for your page loads. \$\endgroup\$
    – Chindraba
    Commented Feb 22, 2017 at 1:43
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    \$\begingroup\$ ados.js shouldn't be loading from that URL which is part of the issue, it should be loading from our CDN. Getting in touch with the right team to get that changed. \$\endgroup\$
    – James Avery
    Commented May 8, 2017 at 14:54

1 Answer 1

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Per James' comment, we've changed the URL for the ados.js script to point to the CDN. This will get deployed shortly. I'm also going to look into seeing how we can keep that script from being a blocker for the rest of the site's functionality.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm still seeing issues. When loading a page I first get a load for static.adzerk.net/ados.js clocking in at 244ms (which is acceptable for a roundtrip across the pond, I guess) and then there's a request to https://engine.adzerk.net/ados?t=[timestamp]&request={%22Placements%22:[....], %22IsAsync%22:true} blocking the site and aborting load after 2 minutes, which kinda makes the IsAsync look strange there. .. \$\endgroup\$
    – Vogel612
    Commented May 14, 2017 at 17:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ Screenshot of my devtools: i.sstatic.net/ocpDF.png \$\endgroup\$
    – Vogel612
    Commented May 14, 2017 at 17:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ Are you using some sort of ad blocker? \$\endgroup\$
    – James Avery
    Commented May 15, 2017 at 16:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm still seeing issues with ados blocking the site. For now I've just denied engine.adzerk and static.adzerk. @JamesAvery of course I am using an ad blocker. I've explicitly allowed ads to be displayed here, though. I'm also using ScriptSafe to control which domains I allow requests to, where I've allowed access to all but scorecardresearch and the google beacon (and now adzerk) \$\endgroup\$
    – Vogel612
    Commented Jun 15, 2017 at 12:43

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