This New Format is Dreadful.

Mr. Evans - The problems on the forum side are minor compared to the absolute boondoggle on the picture side. After a week I still can't access about 90% of a rather extensive portfolio (about 1500 pictures). There are many more, perhaps hundreds of members (anyone who used hidden files under the old system) who are experiencing the same problem. There are problems with navigation, tracking comments, tracking replies to your comments, changing personal information, wrong screen names and on and on. We're not just talking about some small tweaks or getting used to a new system but unhappiness with the complete revamping of a system that was already working reasonably well, replaced by a system that is not working well at all.

 

I know the problems are more extensive outside the forums, which makes it more frustrating for many. What bothers me is the lack of patience of some members. The new software appears to be using the v2Bulletin platform, which is one of the most powerful available. I am the member of another site that has been using that platform for several years. Once properly installed, personalized and optimized, it is an excellent platform and virtually trouble free. However, it takes some time for a new manger to navigate the complexities of setting it up. The developer's site has 51 tutorials on various setup procedures. Eventually, the old PNET platform will no longer work properly with the latest systems and browsers. There is an old adage: I wept because I had no shoes until I saw a man with no feet. Here's an example of that in computer software terms. Over a year ago the Canadian government, after months of development and testing, rolled out a new program to manage the federal government's payroll for over 250,000 public servants. Called "Phoenix", the new system has been a disaster. Thousands of employees have not been paid in several months. Others have been overpaid. The current estimate of overpayments is over $17 million dollars (but no one is really sure of the amount). Even those who have been receiving their pay in what appears to be the right amount have also reported problems with errors in various deductions, expense reimbursements and retirement savings contributions. NONE of last summer's temporary park workers (mostly university students on vacation) have been paid for their two months of work and now are in arrears with tuition payments and rent. In the case of the Canadian government and of PNET, we can see Murphy's Law in action. "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Those frustrated and impatient to see the new PNET forum working properly should remember two corollaries to the main axiom: "Nothing is as easy as it looks," and "everything takes longer than you think."

If you can't give Glenn a reasonable chance

Beno, I don't say this to dis Glenn because I believe he's trying really hard under trying circumstances. But puh-lease! We've waited between 3 and 4 years for the launch of this redesign which we were told well over a year ago was imminent, probably closer to 2 years. It was unsuccessfully "launched" several months ago and quickly withdrawn. Now it's been rolled out to somewhat better effect but still it feels like there has been an insufficient amount of actual user testing and specific user feedback in the creating and testing process.

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The hardest part for me to comprehend is that users weren't brought in more directly for the planning and necessities. The new site feels like it was designed by people who didn't regularly use a lot of key features of the site and didn't really understand the ways in which a lot of us use it and what actually made it so unique.

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None of this is to take away from all the hard work and dedication Glenn and many others have put into it. And it doesn't come without recognizing that no launch is going to be perfect or even near-perfect. That's NOT the problem! The problem is that so many functions haven't been thought through and haven't been made clear by a FAQ or anything resembling such. This was rolled out with about an hour's specific notice that the site would be down for a day and then launched anew. From there, we were totally on our own, left to this ridiculous series of inquiries and back and forths being responded to as best he can by ONE administrator, an administrator who can't possibly be expected to have personal experience with regular use of all the many functions of this site. It was obviously an extraordinary task. But it feels to me like some basics were skipped that so far seems to undermine the entire conception of the site as a photography sharing site and that's a shame. We could have given so much more input had we had another serious beta testing period and realized in advance what was missing and what wasn't working, but I assume now there's no turning back and the road seems perilous in terms of what this site seems to be turning out now to be.

I think people need to be more patient. This is a very idiosyncratic site and squeezing all that functionality into a mainstream, yet flexible, framework will take time. Hopefully not too long.

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There's no point in being more patient since the owners/administrators of the site don't seem to realize that the old format worked reasonably well and that the new format is is almost completely dysfunctional and there's no fun in being on the site anymore, except perhaps to complain.

 

For cripes sake, you can't do the most basic things anymore. For instance, I wanted to scroll through all the pictures in some of my galleries to find a few specific pictures, but it's impossible to do because the thumbnails are just these little slivers of the pictures and I can't identify the pictures I'm looking for from the thumbnails. If I do click on a picture to see if it's one of the ones I'm looking for, I don't seem to be able to go back to the gallery view, I have to go back to "my portfolio," which makes the whole thing so time consuming it's almost not worth doing.

We had on many occasions invited people to beta test so to say members were not involved at all is just not accurate. I will be posting a daily update on what the dev team is working on and I will do my best to answer any and all questions that come in. We are working to make the site faster and have noted bugs reported here - as you can imagine we have to prioritize so please understand we're doing our best, more soon in my daily update this afternoon.

Was the invitation to beta test the extent of user involvement? I spent six years as a systems analyst, nine as a database analyst, and one as a technical writer. In our system design life cycle, the development staff identified user requirements, worked with end-users to develop the interface and navigation, and created unit and system test scenarios based on the system requirements in collaboration with the business users, who ultimately ran the system through its paces.

Was the invitation to beta test the extent of user involvement? I spent six years as a systems analyst, nine as a database analyst, and one as a technical writer. In our system design life cycle, the development staff identified user requirements, worked with end-users to develop the interface and navigation, and created unit and system test scenarios based on the system requirements in collaboration with the business users, who ultimately ran the system through its paces.

 

Thanks Robert, you gave me my first hearty chuckle in this whole fiasco. I was asked to "beta test" the original rollout, made my comments (the same ones that Fred G., Jack, many many others, and myself are pushing now), and never received a response or any further emails. I likened it to telling them the Emperor was without clothes and they didn't appreciate the message. In short, the beta test obviously was just for publicity, the 1st rollout was a disaster and this one is below average; still months behind what we would expect to see as an improvement over 1.0... Mike

Don't let the door hit you in the a__ on the way out.

 

Is this is the official position?

I will be posting a daily update on what the dev team is working on and I will do my best to answer any and all questions that come in. We are working to make the site faster and have noted bugs reported here - as you can imagine we have to prioritize so please understand we're doing our best, more soon in my daily update this afternoon.

 

Hi Glenn. Sorry if I'm failing to spot the obvious, but have any updates been posted? (I tried searching for posts by you, and there was nothing obvious.) Those of us trying to work out what features to test would, I suspect, love to know what's been changed recently.

Hi Glenn. Sorry if I'm failing to spot the obvious, but have any updates been posted? (I tried searching for posts by you, and there was nothing obvious.) Those of us trying to work out what features to test would, I suspect, love to know what's been changed recently.

 

Incidentally, having ranted about the massively over-size images on the home page, they're now better. :-) Good work.

Congrats on a great renovation. It's great that you're using 21st century technology on an imaging site, allowing much better viewing of each other's work. Also, the addition of BB Code has certainly made it much easier to post images from other hosting sites.

 

Thanks for all the effort put into this first class update.

I like this. This is modern, easy to use, very straightforward and first of all now members can send bigger images.

The comments of these last two gentlemen underscores an earlier comment I made. If you post pictures infrequently, have a limited number of galleries (and none hidden under the old system), seldom comment or interact with other members except in forums, this renovation must seem great because the picture quality is an improvement but for frequent, more active members on the "picture side" (as opposed to the forum side), this roll out has been.....well, to put it kindly, less than successful.

That does, of course, rather assume you're happy typing html break tags when you want a line break (which is actually ok by me because I used to use the html editor, though the "refresh after post to see it work" thing is annoying) and assumes you don't mind typing over "write your reply". I'm sure the situation is worse for the heavy photo users, I'm just pointing out that not all is currently rosy for us forum lurkers either. Fingers crossed they'll get the remaining niggles ironed out. I still think the legibility and use of space took a step backwards, but I'll worry about that after the functionality is working.

The comments of these last two gentlemen underscores an earlier comment I made. If you post pictures infrequently, have a limited number of galleries (and none hidden under the old system), seldom comment or interact with other members except in forums, this renovation must seem great because the picture quality is an improvement but for frequent, more active members on the "picture side" (as opposed to the forum side), this roll out has been.....well, to put it kindly, less than successful.

 

I wrote my humble opinion. Nothing more, nothing less...

And nothing to do with your earlier comments.

 

BR

 

Esa

I wish there was a rating system in place because as it is there are few or no comments on many of the new uploads. Much less traffic on mine anyway. As much as I disliked the old ratings system, I found I got more comments and interest on those I did ask for a rating and critique. I also miss top photos of 24 hours. I think the new look is ok, but its very slow. slow. slow. Compared to lets say 1x. But of course 1x. costs an arm and a leg to keep up.

 

For some reason, a survey on whether or not you want ratings back on photo.net is in under the Progress Report 2/23 thread on the help forum.

Question: Who decided that Photo.Net needs to be "upgraded"? A committee? One person?

 

Correct me if I am wrong: The users were not consulted, nor were the moderators.

@Mary Doo - this has been covered in other threads numerous times - but yes - the new format was made available to existing users and the old site "v1" was from the 1990s (yes...the 1990s), was on AOL server and programmed in TCL - the equivalent to an antique where there is 1 mechanic in the world that could have improved it and maintained it. Not an ideal situation, it wasn't a question of IF but WHEN.

 

Updating to new platform allows for all kinds of possibilities to connect with new audiences but - building on antique technology foundation is not something any owner of photo.net would want to do. It appears you are predominantly a forum user based on your usage on your profile page - this forum software is solid and it is not proprietary - it will go through regular upgrades as new versions are brought online by Xenforo, something v1 did not have going for it - it was rare that anything new was done with the v1 forums and it was always a custom build.

Edited February 24, 2017 by G-P

But I am not a forum user predominately, Glenn; I spend the majority of my time on the gallery side and I will tell you that navigation and functionality on that side - especially in regards to frequent users and commenters - is a mess. The problem with hidden folders has only been partially addressed. There is still no way of making pictures in hidden folders public or viewing comments on those pictures. I'm very curious if you are planning to or are even able to rectify this situation since I kept 90% of my portfolio in hidden folders. As has been abundantly documented elsewhere the everyday functionality of this site has taken a major hit.

@Mary Doo - this has been covered in other threads numerous times - but yes - the new format was made available to existing users and the old site "v1" was from the 1990s (yes...the 1990s), was on AOL server and programmed in TCL - the equivalent to an antique where there is 1 mechanic in the world that could have improved it and maintained it. Not an ideal situation, it wasn't a question of IF but WHEN.

 

Updating to new platform allows for all kinds of possibilities to connect with new audiences but - building on antique technology foundation is not something any owner of photo.net would want to do. It appears you are predominantly a forum user based on your usage on your profile page - this forum software is solid and it is not proprietary - it will go through regular upgrades as new versions are brought online by Xenforo, something v1 did not have going for it - it was rare that anything new was done with the v1 forums and it was always a custom build.

Understand. Good explanation to the audience, but didn't hear about it before. My question was who determined to make the upgrade. A committee? One person?

 

I do think this is inevitable, but the event seems haphazard.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Mary Doo

Short answer is: Committee. Employees, owners, tech crew, and primary stakeholders. Yes - it was made available to users as well and contrary to popular belief there was a lot of feedback taken in and used to make adjustments prior to launch. If you are looking at this change/update through the lens of a "primarily forum user" - I'd have to disagree with your assessment. I grant you, you are not used to the navigation but it is a solid forum platform and will continue to have upgrades and releases - which we all love....(I think). Having said that - yes - we have had challenges on the photo side that I believe we have made excellent progress on many of the primary issues from day one of 2.0. Is this the end of our improvements....wait for it....NO its not!!!! We are now building on a solid foundation, one where there is sufficient talent in the marketplace to do so (not so in TCL on AOL). Maybe we had to take a step back to take a step forward - but its better than standing still in my opinion. Again, not a question of IF but WHEN.

But I am not a forum user predominately, Glenn; I spend the majority of my time on the gallery side and I will tell you that navigation and functionality on that side - especially in regards to frequent users and commenters - is a mess. The problem with hidden folders has only been partially addressed. There is still no way of making pictures in hidden folders public or viewing comments on those pictures. I'm very curious if you are planning to or are even able to rectify this situation since I kept 90% of my portfolio in hidden folders. As has been abundantly documented elsewhere the everyday functionality of this site has taken a major hit.

 

Making hidden folders something that can be made public is on our list of things to do and its very close - its being tested now. Mind you, its not typical that users keep 90% of their folders hidden but I promise you, we're getting to it! Keep in mind we have a contingent of people that wanted no change...yet in the next breath wanted change - so we're doing our best to keep everyone happy, even those that didn't want change...but wanted change.

Put me in the category of those who were just fine with the way things were. Whether it was 138 hidden folders or just one, the fact remains that they cannot be made available to the public as they could before and as I often did. Edited February 24, 2017 by Jack McRitchie

Put me in the category of those who were just fine with the way things were

 

Don't know how else to say it Jack - v1 was in todays day and age, old technology that could not be maintained and supported any longer with todays workforce - we kept it going as long as we reasonably could. Its really that simple.

But you would think that after 25 years or so that the replacement would be far superior and I don't think you would find many who would agree that that's the case.