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The Ars Technica 2026 Reader Survey: Let your voice be heard!

Tell us how you read Ars, and what you’d like to see more (or less!) of on the front page.

Ken Fisher – | 46
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Greetings, Arsians, and welcome to the great Ars Technica 2026 reader survey! It has been almost four years since we last ran a big site-wide survey like this, where we ask our readers—you!—what you like about the work we do and what we could perhaps improve on. This kind of check-in is absolutely vital to ensuring we’re steering the ship properly, and we take the results very seriously. (The last time we did this, we got several thousand responses, and that’s incredibly valuable data for us!)

You don’t have to have been a reader since 1998 to weigh in, either. Whether you’re a first-time reader, an old grizzled forum veteran, a front page comment maven, a newbie sysadmin, or a CEO, we want to hear what you have to say, no matter who you are. The only requirement is that you’re a human! (Aliens are welcome as well, though we didn’t really define any demographic categories for extraterrestrial beings. We’ll tackle this issue if it comes up, I suppose.) There are a few text fields. Yes, we will read what you write there!

To assay, perchance to sing

Fortunately, this isn’t a long survey—just a handful of targeted questions. We’re not collecting any personally identifying information, and responses will only be viewed in aggregate. None of the data will be analyzed by anyone except us, and none of it will be sold or otherwise distributed outside of Ars. (We’re using SurveyMonkey for our survey platform, the same as we have many times in the past.)

Thanks for taking time out of your day to help us—we greatly appreciate you, because Ars isn’t anything without you. If we get over ten thousand responses to the survey, Lee Hutchinson has agreed to personally come to each of your homes and sing you a song of thanks! (Lee visitations are subject to availability and require generous applications of Ultra-EverDry.)

Click here to get started!

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Ken Fisher Editor in Chief
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.
46 Comments
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Advertising questions definitely should have some way to describe my opinion of "I subscribe because ads are anathema and I'd not read Ars without the option to get rid of them". The only ones I'll vaguely tolerate is affiliate marketing, because that's how certain valuable YT channels I follow get paid. But to have not even a reference to paying for Pro seems like a miss.
Addressed above, but repeating again just for visibility (and i'll promote one of these comments so more folks have an opportunity to see it before responding):

We already know how many folks subscribe—what the question is aiming at is trying to understand, when we're working with advertisers on campaigns, what things are least-unacceptable to the audience so we can steer the programs toward those options. "I subscribe, no thanks" and "nothing is acceptable" aren't useful responses and give no actionable data. We already know folks don't like ads, telling us this does not help answer the core question :)

Next time this comes up in a future survey, I'll make sure the question is marked as optional rather than required—that's the best way of handling it. Adding an "i already subscribe" bailout option doesn't yield useful data.

(I can't edit the survey once it's live without invalidating existing responses, so the question has to stay mandatory this time around. There are nearly 1000 survey completions recorded already and I don't want to lose them!)
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