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Health and Safety but you’re wrong it’s more a nursery than a school.
Insert smiley here when it's available
🙂
[comes in from bike ride]
[looks at forum]
[sighs]
[goes back out for bike ride]
STW forum. Helping people off the internet since 2018.
<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 16px;">TBH I feel sorry for you & Cougar having to take the frontline flack for this car crash of an up date.</span>
Fair comment.
+1.
"entitled" to weekends off ?
I guess it all went well in the test environment. Something must have happened when switching to Live environment....
I heard there was changes here so popped back on to see what all the fuss is about.
Well, the redirects haven't happened while I have been reading this thread and others so that's a good thing. But the rest of it as described above is shocking! It's taken 3 nope 4 tries to get this to post so that needs sorting and the formatting on Chrome (mobile and desktop) is different every time. Good luck sorting it out, otherwise this place is going to wither away.
As SaxonRider said earlier it has an eery feeling of what happened to the MTB Wales forum (can't remember my usename on there but looking back though the link he put up brought back some memories!), one failed change and everyone scattered. I used to use the MBR forum after MTB Wales died and that one is now stumbling as it has so little traffic when the core group left a few years ago.
Please sort it all out ASAP as it's a great place and the likes of Facebook groups just aren't the same,
I'd better just keep adding this same point here at regular intervals.
This is an intermediary step to something bigger. The whole site is about to change quite dramatically but before we can do that we've needed to bring the forum software up to date. What many probably never realised is that previously Singletrack consisted of two websites running side by side. There was the front pages with stories and then the forum. They were both skinned to look like the same site but essentially they were separate. Now they are joined from a data, user and content point of view, which means we have a great deal more options for what we can do.
We now have a single database for the site which includes the forum. This was a necessary step. We were totally shackled by the old software and it's being ripped out so we can move ahead.
There are style and functionality issues that we are very much aware of and were expecting. There are some that we weren't expecting and these are being fixed. But we are only fixing what needs to be fixed before we move to the next stage of redevelopment.
I know many of you think that we are doing this all wrong, but we disagree. If you were sat here and had the same complex mess of payment systems, user tables, subscriber functions and digital mag services to unscramble then you'd probably see our point. But you don't so that one you are either going to have to take our word for or not. Either way, we are going to stick to our plan and relaunch the site.
So yes, there are bugs and they will be fixed. in the meantime I'm sorry for the glitches but sometimes you have to rip everything down before you can build something better.
Something must have happened
Agile happened. Well, is happening.
How do we have to enjoy this, before the new site mark?
<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">This is an intermediary step to something bigger.</span>
I think what people are saying is that it might be an intermediary step to something much, much smaller.
I'm not having a go at you Mark and I don't think the majority of us are. We just like this place enough to happily fight for it to stay. When you find something worth keeping you don't want to lose it for a silly reason, we're on your side!
You’re right a majority aren’t and we know how much people love this place for it’s social aspect and helpfulness that some people find. For Mark et al it’s almost 2 decades of hard work and passion gone into that they want to survive. In order for it survive they’ve had to look at changes, they’ve started those changes and yes there’s some annoying bugs. Overall though people are still posting here, we survived a hack over an Xmas period so I reckon we all can get through this while they tune it.
So it’s mushrooms all the way down?
You’re a fungi.
I’m in support of Mark and the Mods.
Dear God, some posters on here are seriously in some anxiety disorder and in need of emotion-coping mechanisms.
TBH whilst the forum is “important” it’s just a forum, if you stick around long enough the content is still the same, the topics still the same, and subsequently when changes occur the moans are still the same.
Quite why some can’t just kick back and let the process/progress happen, and quit whining like stroppy 5yr olds who’ve had a slap for pulling mummy’s dress, is astonishing. You’re really showing what whiny humans you are, it makes me wonder what you are like in a normal social gathering...
Wait, be patient, it’ll be sorted and released when Mark et all have decided it’s “ok to go” and it seems your lives will return to figuring out what else to moan about. Mark could’ve pulled he plug for a while, told us “it’s down for a few weeks” and yes you could’ve imagined the hat throwing and verbal stoning he’d have received but no... they’ve decided to leave it open and running (and yes UAT) but it’s still open and functional.
The glitches are minimal, minor irritations on a diminutive scale.
Go make supper, hug your families, drink beer, play strip poker and have a shower.
I'm happy. I've found how to post pics. The shit green text has gone on iPad. The forum looks good ( no frills) on mac desktop.
golden days.
I think many of us understand the complex nature of software/control systems upgrades/changes.
I'm in squeaky bum territory at the moment as at the end of February we have a massive change to our bulk transfer system that is my project totally. It has the potential to half our energy consumption & reduce overtime that people don't want to do.
But I have been up front on the impact this project has to all concerned and because of this everyone has been on board with the changes (even helping out with a few possible issues once implemented)
If it had been said beforehand that STW needed to update/change the system then I think most would have understood if presented with the facts.
But to be presented with a "We are doing stuff" page out of the blue followed by a platform that just makes it an utter ball ache to do anything your users have done before smacks of not caring about our revenue stream.
As a "lifetime member" this worries me that I have bought into something that has a very short lifespan.
I well remember when Bike Magic collapsed from due to forum software changes.
Well said Mr O. Most of us are ~nudge~ taking the piss, but it is a bit of a car-crash ATM and considering the amount of goodwill there is floating around from members, paying or otherwise, it seems an own goal to not utilitise that with some proper up-front comms. Not easy comms mind you, and very risky, so they’ve understandably kept them to a minimum. The resulting fallout is because of that though. They’ve made their decision 🙂
You’re a fungi.
Fungi sponge.
Takes Quorn to know one.
Seems fine to me. I’ll be sticking around. I’m sure it’ll be good when it’s finished, and it’s already working pretty much fine for me (old iPhone latest iOS), It’s a great environment, mainly because of the quality of posters, even the moaning Minnies. (Come on chaps, it’s transiently glitchy for a week or two. Big whoops. Keep the constructive feedback up, quit the whinging).
Come on chaps, it’s transiently glitchy for a week or two
The last "transient glitches" were introduced at Xmas 2016 and some of them are still with us. 🙂
Perhaps it would have been better to have an update thread that was locked & pinned so it would be easier to find out what was actually happening, rather than trawling through 17 pages of mostly moans & criticism to find the minimal useful stuff.
I am old enough to remember when all this was trees, changes come and go but we all post the same old shit so who really cares!
>Quite why some can’t just kick back and let the process/progress happen, and quit whining like stroppy 5yr olds who’ve had a slap for pulling mummy’s dress, is astonishing. You’re really showing what whiny humans you are, it makes me wonder what you are like in a normal social gathering…
“The weekend after a failed rollout?”
He has a point. I work in the public sector and not in IT, but if something I had to get done by a certain time isn’t done, guess what I’m doing until it is? Then I go for a ride on a Wednesday instead.
Far from it to be for this raving lefty to be urging a race to the bottom, but c’mon, this is nigh on unusable.
I too remember mtb-wales. I liked that place. Those wanting us to stop moaning have a point. But beware the fact that many of us may stop by just not bothering to come back.
—-
Just about sent from my iPhone
"But beware the fact that many of us may stop by just not bothering to come back."
Now if only I could post that gif of the bloke thinking....you'll just have to imagine it Zokes
He doesn’t have a point at all. I work in the public sector and not in IT, if I don’t finish something before my days off it waits until I come back to work. I can’t go for a ride another day as it’s not my day off.
Questioning why the IT staff should have they’re entitled day off to keep a few forum members a little happy, although I’m sure it wouldn’t, is really a bit well sad.
is really a bit well sad.
This
Fine, stick your head in the sand. It’s of minimal concern to me as it’s not actually my business.
Sure, I’d miss it if it does die off (yes, even you a_a *sighs*), but it would just be another website I don’t go on much any more. I suspect that was the view of most of MTB-wales’s customers too.
With a mild twinge of dirtiness, Drac's right.
I work in the public sector and I do work in IT. Obviously because public service, I have worked many weekends, but on matters that impact folk - to try and even suggest some £25k devs should give up their weekend to fix some glitches on a coffee forum is a bit silly 🙂
Yes I’d hate to see the place fail I’d miss but the thing that would bother me more is knowing how much work and pride my friends have put into this place over the years, how many people who I now know through here who I call friends.
Still fail to see how that stops people having their days off though
The green text has gone so I'm fine now - that was genuinely unreadable, so much happier! Keep going Mark et al - if I managed to read GoFar on my 'wait five minutes for the download' dial up connection all those years ago, I'm sure I can hang in there while you make all the behind the scenes technical wizardry work 🙂
“to try an even suggest some £25k devs should give up their weekend to fix some glitches on a coffee forum is a bit silly”
Perhaps. But as a few have said, the Internet is a fickle place, and previously popular websites have fallen out of favour remarkably quickly. We can joke about it just being a coffee forum, but in actual fact it supports a very vibrant small business of which many of us are quite fond.
It’s not the few big hitters I’m worried about it affecting, it’s the thousands of other visitors from whom most of the ad revenue is generated. That and having screwed up this site’s amazing ability to be near to top of seemingly irrelevant google searches and be usable once a link is clicked would to me indicate that fixing it was imperative for all who draw income from it.
Perhaps its the industry I'm in but you work until its fixed, no questions no time off.
I have had staff called in from Holiday, weekends don't exist if the business is down.
Even more so if its something you started?
“Still fail to see how that stops people having their days off though”
It doesn’t. It just means they get them in lieu once the job’s finished. If the forum really is as important to the business as we’re led to believe, then for the longer term chance of having a business to work for, going in this weekend might not be such a strange idea.
What is it you do in the public sector again?
Sounds like a shit employer MrOvershoot forcing staff to come in.
Anyway we’re moving away from the point of this thread.
Zokes its still working christ you're a one man army of posts yourself. Its hardly the the end of the world that a few features are missing for a bit
"Anyway we’re moving away from the point of this thread."
Proof that its still the same as ever!
He doesn’t have a point at all. I work in the public sector and not in IT, if I don’t finish something before my days off it waits until I come back to work. I can’t go for a ride another day as it’s not my day off.
Presumably these things you put off until after your days off are things which can wait, and you don't stop halfway to hospital with a patient because it's the end of your shift? In IT there are also lots of things you put down on a Friday and come back to on a Monday - however I've also worked on weekends and late at night to get stuff finished because it had to be finished. IT development is presumably somewhat different to your job in that most of the time there isn't any reason why you have to be in on any given day or at any given time, so if you do work all weekend you can then just have the next couple of days off, which makes the last bit there spurious.
I've refrained from commenting on that before, because I like the idea of IT guys having time off, but your comment deserved a response. Personally as an IT guy I'd rollout a new system on a Monday rather than a Wednesday if I wanted to have the weekend off.
Though I have to admit to being impressed with how secret they kept the sandbox testing they did before the irreversible rollout - that must have involved quite a few people over quite a long time.
“What is it you do in the public sector again?”
I work for a scientific research organisation, which has deadlines to meet both for internal and external clients. If I wish for my team to win another project from said clients I try not to miss said deadlines.
As I said before, I then go riding next Wednesday instead.