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[Anderton]

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baob wrote:

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lefort_1 wrote:

I agree with everything you say Craig, with the exception of the final assertion: if they were geniuses from MIT, then the data structures shouldn't be complex at all, as the task they were solving wasn't complex. A list of lists, with leaf-objects being a concatenateable text file.... searchable by keywords or fields...this isn't rocket science and hasn't been since the 1950's.

What Craigs message highlights for me is another failure of the HC leadership. Not only did they recently fail to address the performance issues until they became a crisis (and thus precipitated the curent situation), but it seems they've cut corners in the past by not migrating user reviews into the platform that's just been superseded. 

Anyway ... I suppose fingerpointing is a bit useless ... what counts now is how they (HC leadership) deal with the current situation. 

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To be fair, the current team is 100% different than those who dealt with HC 2.0. Those who wanted HC 2.0 did so with nothing but the best intentions, but I think they were perhaps naive. When they were told it would be impossible to migrate the 1.0 user reviews to 2.0, I believe they just accepted that as reality.

Now the current team has to do, as you so aptly put it, "archaelogy" except they don't even know where the tombs are, let alone what's buried in them. They totally understand how amazed and delighted all of us would be if they were able to resurrect the 1.0 reviews; I have no idea how realistic/practical it is to expect them to be able to do it, especially given the problems that seem to be involved in migrating the 2.0 user reviews. Fingers crossed.

[Meowmi]

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Anderton wrote:

Now the current team has to do, as you so aptly put it, "archaelogy" except they don't even know where the tombs are, let alone what's buried in them. They totally understand how amazed and delighted all of us would be if they were able to resurrect the 1.0 reviews; I have no idea how realistic/practical it is to expect them to be able to do it, especially given the problems that seem to be involved in migrating the 2.0 user reviews. Fingers crossed.

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I've already mentioned trying to get them back and how important they are to the community. The problem is two-fold: 1) the data migration of user reviews has already been done and any additional migrating would be out of scope and 2) we have no idea what to look for to see if the HC 1.0 reviews made it over--and since Jive is gone now, I don't even know if the data is gettable.

[baob]

M., again I see failures in leadership at HC. If the leadership/decision-making function at HC had understood the value of the 1.0 reviews to most of the membership, then 1) the migration of 1.0 reviews would not have been out-of-scope in the first place and 2) jive would not have been turned off if it was the last hope for migrating 1.0 reviews.

[Meowmi]

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baob wrote:
M., again I see failures in leadership at HC. If the leadership/decision-making function at HC had understood the value of the 1.0 reviews to most of the membership, then 1) the migration of 1.0 reviews would not have been out-of-scope in the first place and 2) jive would not have been turned off if it was the last hope for migrating 1.0 reviews.

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I don't know (I don't remember hearing about it, definitely) that the issue of HC 1.0 reviews was raised before the migration--that it was included as part of the HC 2.0 user reviews and was something that needed to be brought over--so that was probably the point of failure. 

[baob]

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lefort_1 wrote:

The Big Disconnect is between:

a) what we want in a forum, and

b) what they want as sales-driving tool.

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 I'd be really interested to know (not that I suppose anyone is likely to tell me) what led to the site being this way. I'm not talking details of fonts and backgrounds, but rather the broad strokes: the single platform for forums and the rest of the content, and the apparent emphasis on getting eyeballs on ads.

On the one hand it might perhaps have been a simple assertion that HC needs to make more money, earn it's keep, at the other extreme, the approach might have been carefully researched, based on gathering data about the way people used the old site ...  a metrics driven approach.

I somehow doubt that the latter played much of a part. I'd love to know the figures, but based on simply looking at one thread (Post your pedal board) it looks to me like forum activity has dropped to 10% of what it was. If I'm right and that figure applies across the board, then this is truly a disaster for the people aiming to make more money from it.

I'd be really interested in knowing the figures. Again, I don't expect anyone will tell us.

[baob]

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Meowmi wrote:

We've been working on a lot of things that people weren't happy about and were telling us to change. That's why we set up this forum and why Ryan's been posting what changes we've been making and are still working on.

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Sorry, but you're still falling short on this one, in my estimation. The last update posted was 11 days ago. It talked mostly about fiddling with text, fonts and colours and said nothing about upcoming changes.

Meanwhile the forum part of site has gaping holes in functionalty, a user interface that makes things hard to find and hard to understand, and (by my crude estimation) posting levels have dropped by something like 90%.

There's a heeuuuuge disconnect between how bad a condition this site is in the apparent effort being made to fix it. (I.e. you may be making a lot of effort, but we can't tell, it's not apparent to us).  

[Lou Speed's Alt]

Jive all over again.  The difference is that this time even if they were to go back to vbulletin there are a lot of people that aren't even going to bother coming back.

[lefort_1]

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baob wrote:

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lefort_1 wrote:

I agree with everything you say Craig, with the exception of the final assertion: if they were geniuses from MIT, then the data structures shouldn't be complex at all, as the task they were solving wasn't complex. A list of lists, with leaf-objects being a concatenateable text file.... searchable by keywords or fields...this isn't rocket science and hasn't been since the 1950's.

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I don't know about that. I'm a developer and I've done a fair bit of what I like to call software/data archeology in my time, and I wouldn't trivialize the task Craig describes. Yes it looks like a not particularly complex problem (the problem of how to store musc gear reviews) from the outside, but I've seen plenty of hideously complex programming solutions applied to simple problems. Without more insight (talking to the IT team or looking at the code/data) I don't think either of us can judge how easy or hard it might be to migrate that to the Lithium platform. I don't even know the size of the team addressing the problem.

What Craigs message highlights for me is another failure of the HC leadership. Not only did they recently fail to address the performance issues until they became a crisis (and thus precipitated the curent situation), but it seems they've cut corners in the past by not migrating user reviews into the platform that's just been superseded. 

Anyway ... I suppose fingerpointing is a bit useless ... what counts now is how they (HC leadership) deal with the current situation. 

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I'm just guessing, but:

If the User Reviews program and datastructures were hideously complex, I seriously doubt that GC-IT could have kept them going up to the immediate pre-Jive timeframe. There was at least 9 years of underlying OS/library updates they had to cope with, just so the darned thing could access strings and graphics calls. Someone there new how the User Reviews was constructed, how the datastructures are formed and linked, and how to, say, go into one that had blatant flame-content and fix it up/delete without breaking the linking structures. I'm also not buying that there was no dicumentation... What: No inline comments in the source? No header files? I just don't buy it.

Where I used to work, we had one guy who was solely responsible for a hierarchical database translator from one arcane IC-design database format to another....he died of Pancreatic cancer within 2 weeks of it's discovery and couldn't crosstrain anyone from his hospital bed...oh yeah, the guy was a first-generation Romanian immigrant and tended to name all his variables and structures after Romanian Catholic priests he had known. Three of our team decyphered the whole thing in less than two weeks and kept the next release of the product on schedule...with altered and documented names for everything internal to the product.

This is not rocket science. It does sound like both GC and the current Lithium team lack any senior database types... mostly the truth, since Lithium products tend to look/feel very similar and run from the same basic source code. (In fact, I'm really astonished they are having so many problems with their port to all the mini-devices...this has been accomplished before...I see where, on various Lithium-powered sites such as the UK/Brit-Telecom site where the users talk about problems with a port to some handheld, later resolved).

Anyway, if I were GC, I'd be asking 'why is this taking so long?'

But at the end of the day, I"m really not so sure that GC cares that much about the site. Yes, it had the potential for large sales, but I'm pretty sure the powers-that-be recognize that window is fast closing... at least, closing fast enough that reopening it won't be in time to help with their current fiscal crunch... so why put too much effort behind it.

Basically, I feel like GC has Rotenone'd the waters here, and is waiting for the current crop to die. THEN (and only then) can they reopen the HC site with the 'refined' Lithium-based product, and make it some kind of invite-by-buying-thru-GC kinda website. Why not...they do have a large customerbase, and a large percentage of them are not current user's here. The 'current customer question/solution'-type website is what Lithium typically designs and delivers. I see no reason to believe that GC wanted anything different.

Right now, with the lack of communication from GC (Site Updates has had no info in 11 days), and the pitiful content of the past updates ( "what's been done", not "what's to come" ) I sense no interest from GC to keep the current userbase here. We are unruly, aggitated, and don't generally say nice things about the landlord.

I'm sure they'd like to see us squatters get out.

...the Disconnect continues...

[GCDEF]

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lefort_1 wrote:

Right now, with the lack of communication from GC (Site Updates has had no info in 11 days), and the pitiful content of the past updates ( "what's been done", not "what's to come" ) I sense no interest from GC to keep the current userbase here. We are unruly, aggitated, and don't generally say nice things about the landlord.

I'm sure they'd like to see us squatters get out.

...the Disconnect continues...

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This goes back to what I said weeks ago.  They're not going to completely redesign and rewrite their software.  They didn't sing up for that.  They'll make some minor tweaks that can be done relatively painlessly, and that will be it.  I really doubt there's much more coming.  This is it.  HC as it once was has been killed off and isn't coming back.

[Meowmi]

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baob wrote:

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Meowmi wrote:

We've been working on a lot of things that people weren't happy about and were telling us to change. That's why we set up this forum and why Ryan's been posting what changes we've been making and are still working on.

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Sorry, but you're still falling short on this one, in my estimation. The last update posted was 11 days ago. It talked mostly about fiddling with text, fonts and colours and said nothing about upcoming changes.

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I was mostly replying to someone who said that we were doing "NOTHING" to fix the site, so there's a lot of margin between what he was claiming and what you'd like to see, which, if I'm reading you correctly, is for the site to be something much different than it is.

We've been working on the site and the changes, for now, are probably not always ones you'll be able to see or even care about. We usually post once something's launched and we've basically run through the list of easy-to-do fixes (such as font colors and such) and are now into planning for and launching the updates that are a little more far-reaching (like trying to get the site wider).

[baob]

While it's true I'd like to see a lot of functionality come back, that wasn't what I was trying to get at in that post. You said "Ryan's been posting what changes we've been making and are still working on.".  I can see you've updated us (11 days ago) about what you've completed, but I don't see much talk in that update about things in progress. 

From my perspective, it looks like very little is happening.  At least if I knew you planned to address a couple of the things I'd like to see in (say) a months  time there might be some point in hanging on.

Then again, since making the site wider seems to be considered a far-reaching change, I somehow doubt that the changes I'd like to see (like a halfway reasonable subscription feature, for instance) will ever see the light of day.

[baob]

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baob wrote:

Then again, since making the site wider seems to be considered a far-reaching change, I somehow doubt that the changes I'd like to see (like a halfway reasonable subscription feature, for instance) will ever see the light of day.

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Can I add a request for a message editor that doesn't require me to drop into HTML in order to add a hyperlink to a post I've just added ?

[Lou Speed's Alt]

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Meowmi wrote:

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...we've basically run through the list of easy-to-do fixes (such as font colors and such) and are now into planning for and launching the updates that are a little more far-reaching (like trying to get the site wider).

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Two weeks to change font colors = "easy-to-do-fix". 

[ambient]

A month on and we're at 'figuring out how to make the site wider'.

Ffs

How many people are even working on this? One intern in his lunch breaks?

[baob]

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Meowmi wrote:

[..] if I'm reading you correctly, [you want] the site to be something much different than it is.

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 Finding this interesting on looking back at it. I thought I was just asking for the site to be fixed, not for it to be something very different than what it is (or what it always used to be).

What is it that I've asked for that would transform the site so much ?  And are we talking about a transformation relative to the site we had in 2012 (a community forum), or a transformation relative to the site as it is now (based on a customer support site) ?

[TheFigurehead]

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what you'd like to see, which, if I'm reading you correctly, is for the site to be something much different than it is.

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YES. I want it to be what it was. It seems most of the former and present members feel the same. This is "much different than it was". It looks bad, it's hard to navigate, and you folks at Lithium seem to be absolutely stunned that people don't like it. 

There is a reason Lithium and Jive are also-rans in the forum world... it's a shockingly substandard product, from the point of view of the user. The only reason you have any business at all is that folks who are too cheap and lazy to run a vbulletin forum are willing to foolishly trade a quality forum experience for the comfort of letting someone else wipe their ass for them. 

[lefort_1]

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TheFigurehead wrote:

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what you'd like to see, which, if I'm reading you correctly, is for the site to be something much different than it is.

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YES. I want it to be what it was. It seems most of the former and present members feel the same. This is "much different than it was". It looks bad, it's hard to navigate, and you folks at Lithium seem to be absolutely stunned that people don't like it. 

There is a reason Lithium and Jive are also-rans in the forum world... it's a shockingly substandard product, from the point of view of the user. The only reason you have any business at all is that folks who are too cheap and lazy to run a vbulletin forum are willing to foolishly trade a quality forum experience for the comfort of letting someone else wipe their ass for them. 

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Well, to be completely fair, some of the Lithium customerbase have more money than you, I or GC could ever dream of...and they've got more programmers than MIT...I"m talking about places like British Telecom and AT&T (fer chrissakes, Bjorne Stroustrup wrote the C++ language/complier while at Bell LAbs) .... but htat may also be a clue as to how to get a good website from Lithium... the customer has to OWN the customization process...maybe? just possibly? YAH THINK OWNERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY IS A GOOD THING???    .... sorry... that was aimed squarely at GC.

The current customerbase has a strong, preconceived notion of what a good forumsite looks like, based on 10+ years of experience w/HC and a hundred other forums. It IS possible to make a very functional forumsite that looks different, but it must have certain functionality, performance and esthetics to make it tolerable. The basic outline is pretty well described in this subforum. And we're seeing a very small slice of it being implemented. So very sad. I'm starting to wonder if the failure is coming from Lithium, or GC? Do we have a translation problem here ? (many of the Lithium devel sites are overseas).

I'm kinda losing interest in this.

No Updates in 2 weeks.

No rollout plan.

Pretty sure I've been talking to a black hole.

[Trick Fall]

The thing about the other forums I've looked at that Lithium runs is that nobody probably gives a rats ass about them. I mean does the AT&T forum or the Home Depot forum really have passionate users? People are probably happy enough if they are able to find an answer to a question on those stes, but I highly doubt they are a community of passionate users.

If I were Lithium I'd treat this site as R&D even if it meant dedicating more resources then GC is willing to pay for. If they listened to the user base here they might actually learn some valuable lessons that they could exploit with their more prosperous customers.

[Meowmi]

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baob wrote:

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Meowmi wrote:

[..] if I'm reading you correctly, [you want] the site to be something much different than it is.

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 Finding this interesting on looking back at it. I thought I was just asking for the site to be fixed, not for it to be something very different than what it is (or what it always used to be).

What is it that I've asked for that would transform the site so much ?  And are we talking about a transformation relative to the site we had in 2012 (a community forum), or a transformation relative to the site as it is now (based on a customer support site) ?

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I meant that you wanted a site to be more like HC 1.0, which admittedly, HC 3.0 is not. Sorry for any confusion.

We're doing what we can with the platform we have, but like I said, we've gone through the easily-made changes and now are into the ones that take a bit longer. In addition, we're working on the launch of User Reviews, so we're not able to devote all our time to doing updates. I understand your frustration, but we're not a huge team and we're spreading ourselves a bit thin these days.

[lefort_1]

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Meowmi wrote:

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baob wrote:

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Meowmi wrote:

[..] if I'm reading you correctly, [you want] the site to be something much different than it is.

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 Finding this interesting on looking back at it. I thought I was just asking for the site to be fixed, not for it to be something very different than what it is (or what it always used to be).

What is it that I've asked for that would transform the site so much ?  And are we talking about a transformation relative to the site we had in 2012 (a community forum), or a transformation relative to the site as it is now (based on a customer support site) ?

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I meant that you wanted a site to be more like HC 1.0, which admittedly, HC 3.0 is not. Sorry for any confusion.

We're doing what we can with the platform we have, but like I said, we've gone through the easily-made changes and now are into the ones that take a bit longer. In addition, we're working on the launch of User Reviews, so we're not able to devote all our time to doing updates. I understand your frustration, but we're not a huge team and we're spreading ourselves a bit thin these days.

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With all due respect, take the list of 'what's being done by everyone (EVERY software project has a master list or you have NO control whatsoever), stuck a to-be-delivered date on it, and post the dang thing in Updates. This takes all of 3 minutes, and it would go a long ways towards helping everyone understand where this ship is headed.

With a team of 4 developers, me as QA and 1 split-time Marketeer, we kept 2 products alive, one in new- development and 3 major betasites (each with different deliverables) uptodate and happy (1 week update cycle for each site) ... plus we had a major release to all customers every 90 days. We were doing on-the-fly interactive Spice-like calcs feeding interactive PCB routing tools, a spline-math cabling-routing system (you see that Boeing 777? ...those cables that keep it flying? You're Welcome!!) AND maintaining a radiated and conducted Thermal Simulation product for EE's. In addition I developed a set of repeatable tests that reemed out an OEM autorouter that, btw, was non-deterministic and had to be dealt with via a hueristic-suite that ran/re-ran on 10 or more machines simultaneously to determine whether this weeks OEM build was as-good/better/worse than the last.

I fail to see how building a forum is as complex.

Fuggit....I think GC should hand over the re-make to the users.