A plea to administration

Please post some sort of warning flag over our main portfolio pages saying that our galleries and photos are not yet ready for prime time in the new PN2.0.

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I'm sure you've seen the many posts by well-intending people who've spent time and energy trying to re-organize their folders and portfolios into an order they desire only to realize all their time and work was wasted when they'd go back to their portfolio and none of it would have taken, not to mention how arduous the task was to begin with. I'm sure you are well aware that many of the tools necessary to organize a portfolio are not yet available and not yet working.

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It is unconscionable that you would continue to allow this to go on without trying your best to help members avoid such maddening and time-consuming experiences.

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It may well be that membership is up and you're seeing increased numbers. That is no reason for abusing people who want to use certain aspects of the site but can't because a bunch of PN mechanisms are dysfunctional or non-functional. A simple global warning about this issue seems like it would be so easy a temporary solution at this point.

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I just received a private email from someone who had spent a bit of time searching for the online PN email function and couldn't find it (luckily he had saved my personal address from correspondence we had a while back), who also couldn't find many of his own pictures and couldn't organize the ones he did find, a member of PN who predates me (upwards of 10 years), who doesn't visit the site regularly enough anymore to be aware of what currently works and what doesn't, who told me he's quitting PN and asked me to let him know if I find a site where his photos can once again be as important as they used to be here. I'm not about to write him back and convince him otherwise.

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Glenn, you owe the entire membership some kind of letter or some prominently posted statement that each of us would readily see explaining just what you know works and what you know doesn't. That would go a long way in saving people the time and energy wasted on things that simply can't be done at this point.

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How can you allow this to continue, where you know people are spinning their wheels on a gallery system that can't yet accommodate them? Is it unreasonable to expect that people coming to a newly rolled-out redesign are going to be excited to get their portfolios in order and terribly aggravated when they spend time and energy on doing that only to find out things are not running properly enough for them to actually accomplish it?

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It's long overdue for you to go public with some warnings about the things that aren't yet ready, and figure out a way to communicate that immediately to everyone, not just those who luckily happen upon the right thread where it may be partially or more completely explained.

Thank you Fred - I feel I am communicating as much as I can with the many hats I am wearing now. I spend upwards of 4 hours a day in the forums and answer as many questions as I can within that time period. Galleries are being worked on as I have said numerous times - improved speed, navigation, etc. As to missing photos - that is a new one to me - is he missing the load more button? All photos are not presented all at the same time - we had to employ "load more" to break up portfolios of thousands of photos in 1 gallery. As of now galleries are sorted by most recent upload first - more sorting functionalities will be added soon its being tested now, both to those viewing galleries and within the member center. Leslie has done an excellent job of aggregating my responses where she felt it addressed common questions, and I am sending out updates that are tagged at the top of this forum - as they are coming from the dev team.

Glenn, can you not understand that many people will not find your responses in these threads because they are going directly to their portfolios where they are wasting their time and energy on software that is dysfunctional? It's beyond me that you don't get this. How hard would it be to fly a flag over our portfolios warning that they're not yet ready to be ordered and organized? If you don't want to go into detail there, at least have a warning flag over our portfolios directing us to some of these threads, which have become hard to navigate themselves when one is looking for specific answers to specific questions and has to wade through every problem in the book just to find the one they're looking for. I really don't get it. You rolled out a launch for which the gallery part of the equation was not and still is not functional. You seem unwilling or incapable of dealing with it. I understand your team is working on the technical side of it and appreciate that. But you're not communicating well. If you feel the four hours a day you spend is well spent, you're wrong. It's a patch. Why not spend an hour today communicating globally through a mass private message or a flag on all our portfolios letting everyone know the galleries are not ready yet and that organization of our galleries is not ready to be accessed. That would seem a good use of time.

Because as of now forums is the primary mechanism we have to communicate with the community. Taking dev guys away from to create a new mechanism is not where we want their time spent, would rather it spent improving functions as we've been doing. Site Help Forum is here for a reason - its how we communicate for better or worse. What you are proposing is in effect put a sticky note on all that we are spending our time on improving - meanwhile we have people working on improvements and rolling them out to QA and testing and releasing as quickly as they can. You seem to want to engage in an argument and I won't engage - we've been down this road before haven't we Fred - saying that "I am unwilling or incapable of dealing with it". Come on Fred. I sent you DM asking for the portfolio of missing images - we have no reports of missing images - only that of people not seeing "load more" at the bottom of their browser because of a browser add on they installed that takes up the lower portion of their browser experience.

I responded to your DM request with two specific instances. And, unfortunately, again you're dodging the issue. I am not here to engage in an argument. I'm here to make a plea and this will be my last attempt. Your dodge is stating that it would be impractical to put a sticky note on all that you're working on. YOU KNOW FULL WELL THAT'S NOT WHAT I ASKED FOR! I asked for one single flag on our portfolios saying they were not yet ready to be organized by users. Or, alternatively, one mass message to go out alerting people to that fact. If you don't want to do that, fine. Unreasonable, but fine. But please don't turn that request into something more complicated than it is in order to claim it would be too much of an undertaking.

Also, I really regret that you didn't understand the context of my remark that you are unwilling or unable to deal with "this." It was not said about the site in general or many of the problems which you are obviously addressing. It was said in the context of this thread, which is about creating some sort of banner or mass message about the dysfunction of our portfolios. That's what I perceive you've been unwilling or unable to deal with. A clear communication, directly in the area of concern which is our portfolios, or at least through a mass message, about our not being able to organize our portfolios. Again, it is simply an effort on my part to save friends and fellow members the headache of spending time and energy thinking they can organize a portfolio which they can't. It's a fairly specific request.