What Mike and CFH said

“I’ll feed that back”

Steady on, there’s only one dev in, this week. 😘

Genuine question then, if you weren’t a mod, would you be posting similar responses to what you are now, or would you be complaining like many of us are?

Good question.  I dunno.  I wouldn’t be in a position to feed back the responses I get, beyond that I’d be a regular user and be commenting on the issues I see.  Personally as a user I think the BBpress implementation of TinyMCE (the editor) is bobbins, and the site speed is all over the place as discussed at length, but beyond that I’m seeing none of the other issues people are reporting.  Not to say they aren’t affecting people, but they’re either quirks I don’t see or features I don’t use.  I rarely use the mobile site, for example, and have never touched the history feature in my life (I was shocked how many people rely on it).  I’ve used a Chome “search this site” plugin to search the site for years since the one on the old forum was toilet, so that hasn’t changed for me.

Some of the complaints I’ve read (again, speaking as a user) seem monumentally petty, like people haven’t used any other websites in the last five years.  Every other website I use daily has irritations, from pop up “join our mailing list” boxes, to auto-play videos that follow the scrolling of the page in the corner of the screen even after you’ve stopped them, to “this site uses cookies” banners, to sponsored content trying to drag you somewhere else before you’ve even read what you’ve come here to see.  The current forum is far from perfect, but there are many more sites which are a) a far worse browsing experience and b) probably far more popular than STW.  Here’s a random example, from The Independent:

I’ve screen grabbed this at a point scrolling down to where the main headline video disappears and turns into a banner you can’t get rid of.  If you scroll past another five paragraphs – about the most content you can fit on screen at any one time – then you get a “new in pictures” block which is big enough that it literally means there is ZERO content of the actual article on screen.  That’s insane.

This is a commercial website with, I’d guess, a vastly larger readership than STW and a vastly greater development resource and budget being thrown at it.  And I’m struggling to find the “wow, your site is shit and I’m cancelling my subscription” on thread there if I’m honest.

So, in answer to your question, what would I be complaining about?  I hate the editor.  Beyond that, same crap different day as far as I’m concerned as a plain ol’ user.  I come here for the discussions, debate and wealth of knowledge, not the choice of favicon.ico colour.

Stock Android, Chrome, MotoG3.

Pop ups are intermittent. Very bad over the last few weeks, absent tonight, I’ve just logged in and out to check. No porn, just phone scams.

A week ago it w anti virus pop ups.

Only happens when not logged in.

I’m using the forum and phone  in exactly the way I’ve always done.

It doesn’t happen anywhere else.

What would be helpful instead?  Genuine question.

I’m not in IT. 90% of this thread is utterly irrelevant to me.

I’d like someone to post some regular updates in the locked ‘Our Forum’ thread so I don’t have to trawl through this.

That thread is fine, I don’t care who updates it.

As before, all I’d like is an idea of where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.

I honestly don’t think it’s too much to expect.

Flashy, I understand your point of view but disagree.

It’s an unnecessary mess of a thread but the abuse of Drac and Cougar comes across as a bit pathetic.

All they’re trying to do is help. For free and in their own time.

The current forum is far from perfect, but there are many more sites which are a) a far worse browsing experience

I agree, but from the experience of a forum user it’s worse now than it has ever been.

Communication is the issue.

The redirects are getting really intense, can’t manage 2 minutes on the forum

I think the shareholders have worked out there is/was more money on Facebook and are unsubtlely driving traffic that way

It will be like bikemagic in a few months

I rarely use the mobile site, for example, and have never touched the history feature in my life

And

Beyond that, same crap different day as far as I’m concerned as a plain ol’ user

If your not using one of the main interfaces that is struggling then of course your not seeing stuff. At least the devs are all over this and testing in all the major formats to make sure it works

Desktop.

Presumably Windows?  What browser?

Sorry but it’s not clear at all when you start defending or explaining with opinions not facts.

Then that’s a failing on my part and I apologise.  I do try but I’ll endeavour to be clearer.  For future, if you’re in doubt (and care), please ask.

This seems like the perfect time to fire off a well timed footwear jo……oh, I can’t be arsed.

Jimjam, any chance you can snag the URL please?

If your not using one of the main interfaces that is struggling

I am using one of the main interfaces.  Just not all of them.

then of course your not seeing stuff.

Well, yes, that was the point I was making.  “Would you complain as a user?” – “Well, no, I don’t use it.” – “Well, that’s why!”  Um…?

Y’know what, I’m going to take CFH’s advice and step away from this thread for tonight.  Maybe longer.  This is a self-fulfilling bloody prophecy.

Wise move Cougs.

FWIW I think that you and Drac are doing a bang up job, above and beyond the call of duty.

Seriously trying to be helpful here as most people seem to see you as a voice of stw. Start with Mark Said and we can take that as comms from on high, we will put anything else down as opinions not from stw .

Your also not using the mobile interface, it’s one of the bigger problems. If you did you would probably see what others are seeing. Though as said any sane Web dev would be testing on all platforms before implementing stuff. You know because.

Pop ups are bad for me tonight. 10  minutes of fighting them to be able to read the rants, helpful feedback and excuses on this thread. I’m not a big contributor but have been a subscriber in the past and probably been on the forum daily for over 10 years. It is currently feeling like a pain full break up from a long term relationship, but in this situation it is you and not me, you just do communicate anymore. I don’t understand you and your lack of interest in my needs is redirecting my affections elsewhere.

Maybe we need to go to counseling but you have to want to listen to make it work. Call me when you are ready to talk..

Don’t leave it long can’t promise I’ll still be waiting

This seems like the perfect time to fire off a well timed footwear jo……oh, I can’t be arsed.

That’s a shame.

Would have been a shoe in.

Presumably Windows? What browser?

macOS. Firefox and Safari show same increase in advertising elements.

Thanks Perchy and Rusty.

Posted from my mobile device with which I have no issues.

I’ve never made any real contribution to a it/techie thread’s as I know naff all about that stuff. I have added stuff to the redirect/ popups thread’s as I thought it might be useful as I tend to always view the site on an android phone and my use of the site has gone down. I can live with the pop ups as there are nights like tonight where I have had none. What’s put me off more is how quiet it’s gone around here. I know none of the technical stuff but it feels like the life is being sucked from the place, there are times it’s like tumble weed. I love the site, over the last 10 year’s I would bet it’s the site I have spent the most time on. I don’t mind the owner’s being div’s or the mod ‘it must be you’ line’s, as I tend to come for the contributor’s. And that’s the bit that’s feels like it’s going, seems a bit like a good time to make a push to be a big hitter 😉 and I’ll keep trying till it either really grinds down or sorts itself out, and hope it’s the latter.

tjagain wrote:

Personally I would like to see a ” sorry we effed it all up, we are doing a b and c to try to sort things out” and regular updates on progress

😆 – apparently this is all as planned and expected based upon the extensive testing they did on multiple test servers before rolling it out, and if you want to understand you’ll need to come and visit STW towers, because it’s impossible for all us web/db devs to understand otherwise.

I suspect you’ve got enough data points now, but I very rarely browse on mobile but went on the site on my phone for the first time since the update a few days ago and got over 20 redirects within a few seconds – Android Loillipop

I’ve been pretty quiet on this thread except for some issues that I (constructively, I believe) pointed out earlier. I normally use the forum on a Win 10 PC with Firefox logged in as a subscriber. As an experiment, went on my Android 7.0 phone with Chrome. Instant fake virus popup from us.dializd261or.top/u23s/0_index0.php?mode.

One try, one popup! ITS DAMN FRUSTRATING FROM A USER’S PERSPECTIVE!!!

I’m also frustrated by the lack of updates from STWHQ…

Thanks for the response Cougar.

I think we’ve characterised the pop-up plague as being primarily Android targeted though one or two people have noted them on iOS as well.

A day or two ago I noted that on my iPad if I navigated to the main front page of the site then the browser (Safari) crashed. It still does so. However if I open the main page of grit.cx then there’s no crash.

Since both are part of Gofar and ISTR that Mark said they were aiming to have both sites use the same backend systems I have to assume that something unsavoury is being served to the STW homepage.

Ok so, an answer to all problems could be for user run rival forum and step away from this. I’ve seen it done with some music forums that I frequent when they closed for whatever reason and the user base transferred over.

I’m certain that ‘we’ could do it better, how hard would it be for someone with some server space some bandwidth to share and collective knowledge.

Anyone up for starting an independent MTB/log-burner forum?

What I find a bit sad is that before the update, when an ad was causing problems, it would be reported, and, usually, something was done about it.

This doesn’t seem to happen now. Maybe they can’t, maybe they just can’t be bothered. Either way, it shows a massive amount of disrespect to the people who made this forum what it is, or, sadly, what it was.

In other news: I spoke to Mark earlier about the redirects. No-one at STW has been able to replicate the issue so far, across multiple devices. That’s not to say there isn’t an issue, just that they can’t (yet) see where it is.

Sorry to say this.. but we’ve heard this argument before..and a massive thread ensued, it’s simple enough to search for that thread and it wasn’t all that long ago either..was it.

The owners obviously subscribe to a number of Ad Revenue streams, one of/more of are clearly affected by the pop-ups and redirects so a simple case of turning off all then reinstating one by one will isolate the offenders. And yes.. Mark did do that last time and yes, we know he reduced the Ad-Revenue stream from one (maybe two) of them, and it got better for a period of time.. now it’s all back with a vengeance.

If my organisation had issues with this particular issue, there would be immediate and forced action..

CFH and many others (me included) have moaned plenty of times about the same issues on the pop-ups/redirects that it’s blatently obvious that it’s isolated to Ad-Revenue streams.

Sorry you have to come on here without reasoned answers or any support from STW other than what you’ve posted above, I do think it is perhaps time to step away from the problem and maybe provoke an action from above..

Have avoided posting on these threads as wanted to see how it all panned out and give benefit of doubt really.

Sadly the form has become less busy, slower to use, and more annoying, and that’s ignoring the actual ‘it all went wrong’ stage of the initial upgrade. I’m just not enjoying it like I used to and I chose to turn off my auto-renew digital sub yesterday. This isn’t a flounce, if things get better again then I’ll re-sub and probably spend more time on here again, but right now I’m disappointed and find the whole experience frustrating, so I’m spending more time on other forums.

I do work in IT, I do understand the problems involved in big updates to incumbent systems* that have a colourful history of maintenance and past hackery, but someone cocked up big time here. Whether it was the testing (or lack of), deployment and implementation, or simply that this level of disruption was expected and they’re just not communicating properly I neither know nor care at this point, I’m just disappointed.

Nothing more to say really other than add me to your stats of disappointed ex-subscriber until/if things get better again.

Hey ho, that’s how it goes…

* bigger, older and more complex than this forum for sure, with far more drastic consequences if it goes wrong, but that’s not really relevant, there’s probably loads of us on here with this kind of experience .

Sadly the form has become less busy

Numbers are up!

there’s probably loads of us on here with this kind of experience .

…and you’re all wrong!

Less forum activity but Poll replies are steady.

This suggests, in the short term at least, front page hits are up despite lack forum use.

This doesn’t seem to happen now. Maybe they can’t, maybe they just can’t be bothered.

There’s a short answer to this, and a long one.  I’ll spare you the long one as a) it’ll just provoke all the experts who know better and b) I really can’t be bothered.  The short answer is that it’s being worked on but it’s far more complicated than you imagine.

The owners obviously subscribe to a number of Ad Revenue streams, one of/more of are clearly affected by the pop-ups and redirects so a simple case of turning off all then reinstating one by one will isolate the offenders.

That’s essentially what’s happening, only as I said it’s slightly more complicated than that.  I’ll give you an example:

“it’s possible to actually cause more problems with rogue ads and other delivery issues by making big sweeping changes like suddenly taking a network that was happily delivering high quality ads to 10% of our ad calls and suddenly making them an exclusive provider of 100%. “

After 24 hour’s of trouble free browsing on Android I have finally got lucky, about 5 times now 🤗

Which phone are you going for then?

What? Isn’t the Moto 3g the stw phone of choice? 😱

Given the backward steps so far regarding the forum update i expect the phone to be

i’ve scrolled the last few pages and cant see anyone else having the same issue, when I scroll down a thread using mouses click wheel, if i scroll back up adverts or article appear covering the screen, they go if i start to scroll down the page.

Also, when I scroll to towards the bottom of the thread and clear the last thread, the page jumps back to the top of the thread. This doesnt happen if I scroll the page via page up or down.

 it’s far more complicated than you imagine.

Are you sure? I can imagine some really complicated stuff.  🙂

Why isn’t this thread a sticky?

Are you sure? I can imagine some really complicated stuff.

Same here, the digital twin proposal I was working on looking at combining 20 odd bespoke systems into a real time decision making system with learning and prediction was complicated

Why isn’t this thread a sticky?

Why isn’t this thread a sticky?

Because it doesn’t need to be. There’s already a sticky thread ‘our forum’ where we receive timely updates to keep us informed about the progress being made by the forum…

Because it doesn’t need to be. There’s already a sticky thread ‘our forum’ where we receive timely updates to keep us informed about the progress being made by the forum…

What the thread that hasn’t been updated in 2 weeks? Those timely updates…

Yes, hooli, that’s the one.

They’ll unsticky that soon, as it’s not getting enough use. 😏

Is it just me or are a lot of the back issues not available for download any more?  Was trying to get the issue with a route guide for an upcoming trip and there is no link to down load it.