Dear Admins
Comments
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If admins have access to PMs then that completely destroys the point of PRIVATE messages.I'm baffled that anyone feels they have any right to link to forums that are just being used to coordinate the disruption of this forum.
That is absolute bollocks. Can you not see why you're creating a bad image with this?
They're not there to disrupt this one, its just another biking forum. Given the choice between a megaforum which doesn't work and has endless streams of issues such as above, and a small, friendly, communitive forum which is much like the old MBUK forum which would you choose, honestly?
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All the complaining and posting won't change anything, in fact it possibly helps the cause of Future. they can still say we had XX (note only double figures) posts this week, so the traffic is still high.
Future ain't bothered by the 'content' of the forum imo
FUTURE are bothered about advertising revenue. I contribute very little to Future, but the various companies that pay to advertise in the mags on the Forum etc are the folk who need pleasing.
If folk really want to make a stand, stop posting completely and request your membership DELETED
The less forum traffic Future have, the less members they have, the less Advertisers will want to pay to advertise on this site.
Of course the alternatives will only survive with a committed hardcore of members that will fizzle out without new blood coming through
sorry if thats all terribly gloomy0 -
Morning,
No, we don't have access to your private mail, that would defeat the object.
Thanks.0 -
mmm_pie wrote:If admins have access to PMs then that completely destroys the point of PRIVATE messages.I'm baffled that anyone feels they have any right to link to forums that are just being used to coordinate the disruption of this forum.That is absolute bollocks.
It's not absolute bollocks, it's fact. Other forums have been boasting about 'invading' this one - why should we allow the open promotion of such a thing?0 -
M.Cole wrote:It's not absolute bollocks, it's fact. Other forums have been boasting about 'invading' this one - why should we allow the open promotion of such a thing?
Aha, I understand now.
All the forums that people have gone to from here are planning attacks.
Now it makes absolute sense to delete links to them.0 -
Big Red S wrote:fleabag wrote:Yea. I have no doubt I have achieved nothing other than annoying them. But hell, if they want to delete topics if they dont like them, they can delete 100 of them....
Frankly, I have better things to be doing than deleting 100s of your spam posts.
The bulk of the deleting doesn't fall on the dev team you seem so sure should be working harder, or on the person that designed the system that means it takes a while to change things, it falls on the otherwise regular users who said that they'd be happy to moderate the forum. It's been like this for ever, who did you think would be deleting your posts? Myself and Nick mostly.
I've nothing against you setting up a separate forum. Since that's where everyone is, I'm willing to use that to talk to the people I know.
But, please, if you want this forum fixed, contribute. If you don't care, stay away. You gained absoultely nothing from that spamming aside from pissing me (and any other mods who had to clean up) off and demonstrating that perhaps you are the kind of person the forum could do without.
Yes, I was expecting childish reactions from the bulk of the MBUK users, but not at this level and not from you.
To whom?I *might* get the point across
And what was the point?
Sorry Avi
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M.Cole wrote:mmm_pie wrote:If admins have access to PMs then that completely destroys the point of PRIVATE messages.I'm baffled that anyone feels they have any right to link to forums that are just being used to coordinate the disruption of this forum.That is absolute bollocks.
It's not absolute bollocks, it's fact. Other forums have been boasting about 'invading' this one - why should we allow the open promotion of such a thing?
If that is the case then fair enough..... but I have seen people decamp and got to the other places. Many are missing and people that sign up here are missing out with people they built up relationships with. I sent a PM with a web address for the an other site and it was altered. I dont know if its an automatic thing, I suspect it is. But it seems unfair that a PM was changed. Certainly while I have NO interest in attacking this site, a pointless and stupid act, people need to chill a bit on all sides- mods, admin and posters. As I recon as many people are leaving because they read some of the abuse and see overlarge and sometime offensive images- although the one I'm thinking of has been removed????0 -
Couldn't agree more - the less time we spend responding to flagged posts, the more time we spend improving this place.ratty2k wrote:M.Cole wrote:mmm_pie wrote:If admins have access to PMs then that completely destroys the point of PRIVATE messages.I'm baffled that anyone feels they have any right to link to forums that are just being used to coordinate the disruption of this forum.That is absolute bollocks.
It's not absolute bollocks, it's fact. Other forums have been boasting about 'invading' this one - why should we allow the open promotion of such a thing?
Thanks, it *is* the case.If that is the case then fair enough.....
There's nothing stopping people still continuing those relationships here, if people are put off by the colour of the page [which will be fixed soon] and the size of the forum [which will be fixed soon] then those relationships can't be very strong. i.e. enough to sit out until the changes are made for the better.Many are missing and people that sign up here are missing out with people they built up relationships with.
We don't have the ability to change PM'sBut it seems unfair that a PM was changed.people need to chill a bit on all sides- mods, admin and posters.
Thanks ratty0 -
It simply baffles me how some people can be so naive, phpBB as far as I have found has no feature to check PM's between sending, the ability to PM is switched on for everyone and cannot be switched off for individuals. It appears a lot of people are making up stories or simply being paranoid in order to fictionalise various "wrong doing's".
We simply cannot be responsible for outside links, let alone to external forums. There are far easier and more appropriate methods of sending a friend a link to another forum if you are that unhappy with the goings on here (including the fictional allegations of PM moderating).
And again as I said before people are failing to see beyond the forums, its 3% of the entire Bikeradar site, by what people are saying and the amount of complaints we are getting I would think it was the only thing on here.
Now it appears we are recycling the same arguments over and over and also playing a nice game of Chinese whispers.
Fleabag however earned himself a ban due to his spam of the same topic 78 times, luckily he was able to warn us so made it obvious it wasn't an accident. Yes it got our attention, but of course for all the wrong reasons, which then discredits everything he said before he began serving a ban.
I think the only resolution is to let us sort the forums out, design and functionality wise so we can make this place a much more exciting and peasant experience. The more complaints we have, the more we have to deal with them, the more spam we get to longer it takes to do the work. I've just spent 5 minutes writing this which I could have spent finishing the design work.0 -
Gavin_Weeks wrote:It simply baffles me how some people can be so naive, phpBB as far as I have found has no feature to check PM's between sending, the ability to PM is switched on for everyone and cannot be switched off for individuals. It appears a lot of people are making up stories or simply being paranoid in order to fictionalise various "wrong doing's".
Thanks! I didn't want to leap to a conclusion that PMs are being screened, which is why I asked. I couldn't see a way of doing it without installing a pretty makor phpBB hack either.We simply cannot be responsible for outside links, let alone to external forums. There are far easier and more appropriate methods of sending a friend a link to another forum if you are that unhappy with the goings on here (including the fictional allegations of PM moderating).
Careful with that. Links between people posting useful info are reasonable. Links to other interesting sites are reasonable. Don't back yourself into a 'no links' corner, to do so might give you some respite now but it'll backfire.And again as I said before people are failing to see beyond the forums, its 3% of the entire Bikeradar site, by what people are saying and the amount of complaints we are getting I would think it was the only thing on here.
I certainly don't want to burn any bridges here, but there are some requirements that I have of a site I frequent. I'm sure you're the same. Prime among those requirements is that my name isn't changed for me.
(cut)The interest of all the aspects of biking is a mature subject, how about a lot of you also take on a more mature attitude?
With respect, comments like that one there aren't going to help.0 -
PMs are being altered, so don't claim it is fictional. Whether mods/admins are actually doing it 'by hand' so to speak seems impossible given the coding of the forum. However they are being filtered - i presume through the same filter that posts go through. So, in effect PMs are altered and whether it is automatic or not is missing the point.0
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The user and all related content has been deleted.0
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Gavin_Weeks wrote:The interest of all the aspects of biking is a mature subject, how about a lot of you also take on a more mature attitude?
With respect, comments like that one there aren't going to help.
Have to agree. Here comes M.Cole, as always doing a fine job as a concilliatory admin, and Mr. Weeks jumps in with his nose high calling everyone inmature. That is NOT the attitude to have in a forum, and that is why I am having problems with Bikeradar.____________________
Santa Cruz Blur XC
Marin Eldridge Grade0 -
Gavin Weeks wrote:And again as I said before people are failing to see beyond the forums, its 3% of the entire Bikeradar site, by what people are saying and the amount of complaints we are getting I would think it was the only thing on here.
Interesting. By what measure is this? It is interesting that so much Admin time seems to be spent on 3% of the workload. Most companies would dump it, rather than go through the pain.
Or maybe the forums are worth more than 3% to the owners?0 -
I think you misunderstand what I was saying, I wasn't saying it takes 5 minutes to fix the forums, I'm saying it takes 5 minutes out of my time management for working on the forums, as does every post i've made in response to various posts. So all in all about an hour so far today. It all adds up.
I'm also not saying we don't want complaints, as you say any company needs them in order to improve and better their services. What I was saying is that we are getting the same complains over and over. Its not going to improve us in the slightest by having to respond to the same problems repeatedly.
None of us are trying to p*ss anyone off or fob them off with unjust promises, we are a large team all working on a lot of things. We will get updates sorted, its just a case of finishing them before we can deploy them to the live site.
Please just be patient, throw us a bone or two (preferably with a little meat on) and we will have ti all sorted for you ASAP.0 -
Jaded wrote:Gavin Weeks wrote:And again as I said before people are failing to see beyond the forums, its 3% of the entire Bikeradar site, by what people are saying and the amount of complaints we are getting I would think it was the only thing on here.
Interesting. By what measure is this? It is interesting that so much Admin time seems to be spent on 3% of the workload. Most companies would dump it, rather than go through the pain.
Or maybe the forums are worth more than 3% to the owners?
Of course they are. Magazine sales are declining with the ever increasing popularity of the net. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that magazine and enwspapers all have their own websites. It's all about ad money. Ad money comes from visitors. If you've got a forum on your site you can increase visitors. You can even claim your site has 100,000 people on it! 100,000 emails are valuable to advertisers.0 -
Capt. Jon wrote:Jaded wrote:Gavin Weeks wrote:And again as I said before people are failing to see beyond the forums, its 3% of the entire Bikeradar site, by what people are saying and the amount of complaints we are getting I would think it was the only thing on here.
Interesting. By what measure is this? It is interesting that so much Admin time seems to be spent on 3% of the workload. Most companies would dump it, rather than go through the pain.
Or maybe the forums are worth more than 3% to the owners?
Of course they are. Magazine sales are declining with the ever increasing popularity of the net. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that magazine and enwspapers all have their own websites. It's all about ad money. Ad money comes from visitors. If you've got a forum on your site you can increase visitors. You can even claim your site has 100,000 people on it! 100,000 emails are valuable to advertisers.
Its just a shame we don't rely on emails in order to make our money
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I know that PMs can not be viewed or altered directly through phpBB, but it can be done.Gavin Weeks wrote:It simply baffles me how some people can be so naive, phpBB as far as I have found has no feature to check PM's between sending, the ability to PM is switched on for everyone and cannot be switched off for individuals. It appears a lot of people are making up stories or simply being paranoid in order to fictionalise various "wrong doing's".
Or are you telling us that nobody has direct access to the database?
But the forums are a very large part of the site. Without the forums, the site would only be a fraction of what it could of been.And again as I said before people are failing to see beyond the forums, its 3% of the entire Bikeradar site, by what people are saying and the amount of complaints we are getting I would think it was the only thing on here.
A better idea would of been to finish the design work before you launched the site.I think the only resolution is to let us sort the forums out, design and functionality wise so we can make this place a much more exciting and peasant experience. The more complaints we have, the more we have to deal with them, the more spam we get to longer it takes to do the work. I've just spent 5 minutes writing this which I could have spent finishing the design work.
Regardless of what anybody says here, it's become quite obvious that admin have got a severe case of tunnel vision, and nothing, short of being replaced, is going to solve that.0 -
So pretend this is being done in the same way as the rollout of stitz was, when everything online and bike related at future was down for two or three months?mtb-rules wrote:The way I see it is, the powers at be have quickly realised that the enforcement (I feel roll-out sounds to organised) of BR has been one almighty disaster. But instead of limiting damage b...n if it's totally immoral, to prevent the loss of further users.
At the moment, all BR is managing to do, is create one hellish public image.
I'd much rather a works-but-isn't-perfect forum than none at all for a bit, personally, but If you wouldn't, you can always pretend there isn't one. Hell, you can even pretend you need to re-register if you'd rather not contact the admins.
They're not. It's a script. I'd have thought that was quite obvious, given the automatic censorship on most other forums, and how easy it is to implement.And is Admin aware that the P, in PM stands for Personal?
And just incase they're having a bit of problem understanding what Personal is, here's the difinition-per·son·al Pronunciation (pûrs-nl)
adj.
1. Of or relating to a particular person; private:
Now I'm pretty sure that doesn't include Admin reading them first to sensor them.
You're not making the responses that people want to hear, though.Gavin Weeks wrote:I'm also not saying we don't want complaints, as you say any company needs them in order to improve and better their services. What I was saying is that we are getting the same complains over and over. Its not going to improve us in the slightest by having to respond to the same problems repeatedly.
When somene says 'when will you make the background a different colour' they don't want to hear 'we're working on it', do they? They want to hear 'thursday'.
Until there looks like there's anything approaching a coherent plan, I'm not sure you can complain that people are, er, complaining too much,
So far as I can see, there's no central place where you're keeping us up to date with what's going on. There's a lot of threads in the BikeRadar office dedicated to complaints, and if you trawl through them you might get an idea of what's been promised, but it'd probably be innacurate.0 -
That's not what I was saying. It was blatantly obvious within the first few hours of BR going live, there were major issues, but instead of putting it on hold (even just the forums), while the issues were worked out, it was decided to push it through.Big Red S wrote:So pretend this is being done in the same way as the rollout of stitz was, when everything online and bike related at future was down for two or three months?
I'd much rather a works-but-isn't-perfect forum than none at all for a bit, personally, but If you wouldn't, you can always pretend there isn't one. Hell, you can even pretend you need to re-register if you'd rather not contact the admins.
And I did contact an admin, but they never replied.
I've set up two phpBB forums, and know my way around what you can and can't do through the scripting, and directly in the database. I would never consider editting, or deleting any PMs. In the 8years I've run phpBB forums, I have only seen PMs once, and that was while trying to sort out a database problem.]
They're not. It's a script. I'd have thought that was quite obvious, given the automatic censorship on most other forums, and how easy it is to implement.
That I very much agree with.
You're not making the responses that people want to hear, though.Gavin Weeks wrote:I'm also not saying we don't want complaints, as you say any company needs them in order to improve and better their services. What I was saying is that we are getting the same complains over and over. Its not going to improve us in the slightest by having to respond to the same problems repeatedly.
When somene says 'when will you make the background a different colour' they don't want to hear 'we're working on it', do they? They want to hear 'thursday'.
Until there looks like there's anything approaching a coherent plan, I'm not sure you can complain that people are, er, complaining too much,
So far as I can see, there's no central place where you're keeping us up to date with what's going on. There's a lot of threads in the BikeRadar office dedicated to complaints, and if you trawl through them you might get an idea of what's been promised, but it'd probably be innacurate.0 -
What did it look like I thought you were saying?mtb-rules wrote:
That's not what I was saying. It was blatantly obvious within the first few hours of BR going live, there were major issues, but instead of putting it on hold (even just the forums), while the issues were worked out, it was decided to push it through.Big Red S wrote:So pretend this is being done in the same way as the rollout of stitz was, when everything online and bike related at future was down for two or three months?
I'd much rather a works-but-isn't-perfect forum than none at all for a bit, personally, but If you wouldn't, you can always pretend there isn't one. Hell, you can even pretend you need to re-register if you'd rather not contact the admins.
And I did contact an admin, but they never replied.
I thought you were saying that the rollout of these forums has been executed rather badly, and you think they should have waited.
I suggested that the last rollout, for which there was two or three months of downtime, was met with much less consternation (even after the forums opened) and so it might be an idea that if people really don't like this current beta version, they could just wait for the stable release. That way the rollout would be as well executed as last time, but with a testing phase.
So you /knew/ it was a script, then?
I've set up two phpBB forums, and know my way around what you can and can't do through the scripting, and directly in the database. I would never consider editting, or deleting any PMs. In the 8years I've run phpBB forums, I have only seen PMs once, and that was while trying to sort out a database problem.They're not. It's a script. I'd have thought that was quite obvious, given the automatic censorship on most other forums, and how easy it is to implement.0 -
Unfortunately my job as a designer/developer and forum admin is not to tell you when it will happen, that privilege i save for those above me in the Future ladder. Then they have to decide when things go live.
Its not all about making you happy with responses but more with the subsequent actions , although I do wish I could just say "hey its going to be live today".
Yes there is a lot of immaturity coming from a lot of the members in regards to the problems and the fact we are having to deal with a lot right now. Most of it directed at admins and even the moderators, who have no involvement with the design and functionality of the forums.
Again I will say just accept that things are being done, just be patient for more than 2 minutes and stop being so hostile or picking holes in all of our responses when there is absolutely no need. There seems to be a strong sense of paranoia on what is going on with the forums.
What would have been the point of delaying the forums? Simply due to design and layout issues?0 -
Not really.Im getting used to it. :?0
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Gavin Weeks wrote:
Please just be patient, throw us a bone or two (preferably with a little meat on) and we will have ti all sorted for you ASAP.
no problem.
There were 3 forums with distinct design differences and social-subject areas. Now, you tried throwing everyone in together and apparently that hasn't worked. Of course the best way to rectify the problem would be to open the old forums. I see no reason as to why this is not acceptable, but apparently it isn't.
So, other suggestions?
-there are far too many subforums. Perhaps you could implement 2 seperate forums, one for road and one for mtb. I have no interest in riding on the road and would never use those forums. I doubt many mtb riders will use the road subforums and vice versa so why are they connected at all?
-colours. I would like autumn colours for the forum please.
To be honest I don't really care what you do with the site, you can't replace what you took away and you don't have to -as far as I'm aware none of us have a financial interest in the site and as such we can, and should, just walk away if we aren't happy. However, you say the forum represents 3% of the overall site which may be true on paper but I haven't looked at the rest of the site and I have no intention of doing so, same with the MBUK site -never looked at anything but the forum. I get all my mtb related info from the forum, perhaps that is somethign for you to think about.
Anyway, there you go, a bone with meat on.
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When someone says to throw them a bone is means give them a break - not reiterate the same issues which have been brought up over and over again
The Bikeradar forums are here to stay, there will be some design adjustments, but it will be within the Bikeradar brand (so no autumn design - at least not at this stage)
I will be closing this topic now because its just repeating itself.0
This discussion has been closed.
