Why is it so quiet here?

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

It seems that participants are indeed drifting away, which is a pity. I suppose a hard-nosed provider doesn’t really care, until the minimum viable number of participants is approached. A post a while back explained that some of the site’s ‘features’ were to facilitate adverisements (I think that’s more-or-less what was meant…). Keep the advertisers happy, and rake in the dosh. Today’s ‘net business priority?

[pauljamesParticipant @pauljanes79128]

This used to be my favourite site and one that I enjoyed to spend time on every day.

Now because of the sloooooooooooow speed, only log in occasionally.

I have also noticed that the word “favourite” is displayed as a spelling mistake. But “favorite” is accepted. Are they using an American spell checker and not a British one. ?

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

The phrase “spell checker” is itself American-language!

I don’t know how web-sites are written but if the dictionary for this is American, is the site itself on an American template that won’t allow British English?

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

The spell check function in the editor is likely provided by your browser rather than the forum software so worth checking browser settings.

John

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

The phrase “spell checker” is itself American-language!

I don’t know how web-sites are written but if the dictionary for this is American, is the site itself on an American template that won’t allow British English?

Is spell-checker being of USA origin a problem?  I say not – the first one was implemented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by an American.  Spell-checker makes perfect sense in British English, and is less clunky than an OED (orthographic error detector)!

Whilst the new forum is buggy, being stuck with an American-only template isn’t one of its many problems.  The forum software can work in pretty much any language, including those with non-Latin alphabets like Japanese Kana.

There is no built-in dictionary.  The old-forum had one, which defaulted to US English, was out-of-date, and not worth using.  Instead, web users have long since switched to their Browser’s spell-checker, which works equally well on all web-sites and is kept up to date.   It only has to be set up once. Quite often pre-configured by computer retailers, but not difficult for the user to install or set up himself.  Not uncommon for computers sold in English speaking countries to arrive with the dictionary set to US English, expecting the owner to tweak it to British, Canadian or Australian English if he wants.  Or any other language he needs.

Lots of theorising about what’s behind the forum’s problems.   Think mistakes, defects, bad-luck and limited resources rather than committees, arty-farty designers lacking common-sense, foreign influences, or conspiracy.

My educated guess is that Mortons underestimated the size of the problem, not realising how complicated the old forum was under the bonnet.  Took much longer to  transfer the data than expected because the structure had to be changed, then the plug-ins that provide the forums functionality proved hard to configure, and then they performed too slowly.   Hundreds of technical glitches distracted attention away from user features, most of which may have been assumed to be simple fix-later cosmetic issues, and they aren’t.   Exceeding the manpower budget and the delay forced an early launch, bit like one of those Spanish holidays where guests arrive to find the hotel is still a building site!

I have considerable sympathy with the developers because it’s much harder to fix a live application than the same software in development.

Dave

Dave

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Why couldn’t the new forum have been developed and bata tested along side the old site ? As we all know members including myself agreed to taking part in beta testing but our services were not called upon. ‘I have considerable sympathy’ sorry I don’t feel this way any professional be it a company or individual should be aware of the extent they are letting themselves into ! Coming from a working background in which if one didn’t get it right first time someone could be seriously injured or killed so getting it right first time was essential.

For the record days down the line connecting to the forum with my laptop is hit n miss with my tablet at lot better it takes approx 20-25 seconds to connect then navigation is painfully slow, I don’t like the look of the forum to much white space more so when you have scrolled down.

what the answer is I don’t know Kiwi bloke may have touched on it when he spoke about falling numbers maybe he’s correct, maybe we should all stop visiting the forum until things have improved, maybe we should start our own forum !

H

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

“I have considerable sympathy with the developers because it’s much harder to fix a live application than the same software in development.

Dave”

I too have sympathy with those working on the problems. If it is easier to fix off-line, then why not shut it down for a while?

It would ease the frustration of logging-in to the same old problems. Many members are already drifting away it wont take long before there are not enough visiting to warrant the cost of running the forum.

Regards

Gray,

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Tried to edit my previous post but got the dreaded error 403

PB I have considerable sympathy for all you Mod’s trying to sort this mess

H

[Kiwi Bloke]

On Kiwi Bloke Said:

… Keep the advertisers happy, and rake in the dosh. Today’s ‘net business priority?

I intend absolutely no criticism of Mortons by mentioning this …

It is worth taking a look at the Mortons business; as presented by clicking the link at the extreme lower-left corner of these pages.

Essentially a printing/publishing operation, with some clever ‘vertical integration’

Now try to work out just where this forum sits in the grand scheme of things.

… it’s complicated.

MichaelG.

 

[Harry Wilkes]

On Harry Wilkes Said:

Why couldn’t the new forum have been developed and bata tested along side the old site ? As we all know members including myself agreed to taking part in beta testing but our services were not called upon. …

H

That was the idea, but the plan came off the rails.  Problem wasn’t finding bugs,  it was getting them fixed in the time available.   Jason and I reported a few hundred user-facing issues, but at the time the developers were seriously distracted by unexpected hosting problems and their other responsibilities.

After data migration a closed group was supposed to spend a couple of weeks finding and eliminating any obvious problems before allowing a group of ordinary members in to ferret out any remaining subtleties.   Didn’t work out that way – rather than the developers only having to sort out a moderate number of straightforward problems, a large swarm of awkward problems arrived!

Then the forum became difficult to retest because it kept changing as fixes were applied, only to find something else was misfiring.  I think ordinary members would have found it hard to tell the difference between existing bugs, new bugs, and temporary glitches caused by the developers working on the hardware and software.    Then Mortons’ ran out of time and here we are…

It is getting better, but slowly.  Unfortunately, give a dog a bad name, and everyone comes looking for bother. As a result the new forum is being castigated for doing stuff the old forum also did, but no-one had looked that closely, and for things wrong at the user end.    No excuses though – it is buggy, and far too slow.   Interestingly I had a chance to test it with a tablet whilst my poorly mum slept this afternoon, and was pleasantly surprised.  Most of the glare disappears on a small tablet screen, and the layout makes more sense: shame I moderate the forum using two giant screens bought for CAD work and it’s like being flood-lit!

Dave

 

 

[Stuart Smith 5Participant @stuartsmith5]

Sorry Dave, I just don’t get it.

Surely they should have designed the new site while the old site was up and running. Then made a copy of the data from the old site and used that to let volunteers test it. The bugs could then have been ironed out and any feedback on design and usability taken into account.

Once everyone was happy, close the old site for a minimum time to update the data to the new site.

I would have thought this obvious, not remove the old site without having tested the new.

Just my thoughts as someone who used to visit multiple times per day.

ps I thought the design of the old site was the best of the various ones I visit.

Stuart

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Dave as I previously mentioned I have to use my table to get onto the forum and wouldn’t agree it was any better it just looks it because of the smaller screen

H

 

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

I must admit I find the colours very hard to read compared to old site.  So much wasted space and too large adverts.  I used to look at the old site a number of times a day, especially from mobile phone.  Now I look maybe once a day and lose the will to live.  Having been in IT since 1969 I think this is the worst managed migration I have ever seen.  We had to have full evaluations beforehand, fully structured implementation plan and EVEN MORE IMPORTANT have a failsafe plan to revert to previous release should the worst happen and be able to revert within an hour or so.

This was very important in retail where anything from 300 to 1000 retail outlets could have been deprived of services.

Colin

[JAParticipant @ja]

I have the impression that the forum speed is increasing. Or is this just my imagination?

If it is, thanks.

JA

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

It’s taking  me 20 seconds or more to open a thread to look at posts, so not exactly lightning speed. Will need to get better if it is to survive in the 21st century.

PS and about the same to post my reply after hitting the submit button and the same again to reopen it to do this edit.

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