Board index PBase News 24-Sep Downtime

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24-Sep Downtime

pegsam
 
Posts: 87

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Sun Nov 08, 2009 6:52 pm


fishit wrote:I agree this whole thing has been not a good thing for PBase and it's customers, but to berate the owners in the forums does nothing to improve the situation, it makes it worse.
If you are not happy with the service or community here at PBase and want to move then do t, but to move and keep coming back and plugging another website like gb_eh, it is unprofessional.
Just leave express why and be done with it, or stay wait for things to be fixed, it is simple as that.

I disagree with your positions on this, fishit. Firstly, PBase "administrators", and I am using that term loosely, are responsible for making the situation worse. While you may think everything is fine and PBase is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it doesn't mean that those of us that feel otherwise are going to make the situation worse. The problems with PBase are because of how the administrators have dealt with the situation. The users aren't creating problems for PBase --- it's totally the other way around.

Secondly, plugging another web site is not unprofessional in my opinion. It's just another option, just like a camera, lens, digital processing software, etc. The problem I see with the loyal PBasers is that this feeds into a false sense that everything is fine. Change doesn't happen without some sort of influence. One of two things is bound to happen to those of us who are complaining: 1) PBase remains the same and we move on, or 2) PBase remains the same and we eventually accept that it will always suck because of poor management abilities of the current administrators. Yes, PBase does have a great community but the unpredictable stability and predictable non-communication by the administrators continues to frustrate. And my concern is that option 1) is realized to such an extent that it affects the PBase community. Kind of like living in a neighborhood where all of your friends start moving out and you are left with vacant houses and/or state-run mental care facilities where the occupants think the neighborhood is just grand.

larsjohnsson
 
Posts: 53

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Sun Nov 08, 2009 7:31 pm


Slugs last sentence in the 31oct update say a lot............

He don't like the visit the forums. Because it's painful to read about all the problems. But he will be back in forums again when everything is good. because then it's fun again.

fishit
 
Posts: 797
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:25 pm


pegsam wrote:Secondly, plugging another web site is not unprofessional in my opinion..


You are entitled to one, every body has one. Mentioning it once would be ok, repeating over and over is another thing.
I am sure the owners and administrators of this website understand people's frustrations, I am sure they are stressed as well.
You can stay or go that is your choice. I have laid out my reasons for staying. You have to make your own choice.
But I fail to see how berating the owners and administrators of this website will do anything to deal with the issues.

If it makes you feel better, have at it.

soenda
 
Posts: 1390

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 12:07 am


I agree with fishit entirely. Doesn't seem smart to berate the folks that are trying to fix what you need fixed.

I don't understand why PBase's own statistics are so critical when before, everyone agreed that the third party (free of charge) stat counters were better. Slug & Co. made PBase compatible with those utilities and they are readily available to anyone who needs the counts.

And I believe that self fulfilling prophesy is a danger in situations like this. A minor problem is being made into a mountain.

Finally, it just seems rude to rig up surveys about leaving PBase and posts extolling other sites. Why the need to proselytize?

You read the inflammatory posts here, you sure don't have to wonder why the site administrators avoid the forums. It must be like having teeth pulled without anesthetic.

eruttledge
 
Posts: 3

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:46 am


Hey there PBasers! The intentions of Slug and family were probably well intended This is not evil management, just incompetent management of what was our resource. You don't have to be mad, you just need to make a business decision. Like others who have posted here, I expect I will let my Pbase account run its course and then quietly leave. Actually, I have already mirrored postings on Zenfolio at http://eruttledge.zenfolio.com. It has been a great couple of years here at Pbase. I hope we may be able to gather again at a stable and creative site again.

larsjohnsson
 
Posts: 53

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:38 pm


soenda wrote:I agree with fishit entirely. Doesn't seem smart to berate the folks that are trying to fix what you need fixed.

I don't understand why PBase's own statistics are so critical when before, everyone agreed that the third party (free of charge) stat counters were better. Slug & Co. made PBase compatible with those utilities and they are readily available to anyone who needs the counts.

And I believe that self fulfilling prophesy is a danger in situations like this. A minor problem is being made into a mountain.

Finally, it just seems rude to rig up surveys about leaving PBase and posts extolling other sites. Why the need to proselytize?

You read the inflammatory posts here, you sure don't have to wonder why the site administrators avoid the forums. It must be like having teeth pulled without anesthetic.


1. So why is it smart to turn the table and berate the Pbase members instead ?
2. Everyone have not agreed that third party counters are better. You just made that up of course. I have not agreed.
3. How rude is it to post the 31st October update like slug did. And then not follow up, fix, or even tell us why nothing get fixed ?
4. To defend the admin. when the avoiding the forums after 1½ months problems. Only the really hardcore fans that will defend anything can do that. When reading your post and defending of everything here....it's like everything is perfect and the people here should just pay their fee and be quiet....

I have been a Pbase member for nearly 6 years and never complained before. But this is too much to keep quiet................

tim32225
 
Posts: 89

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 5:27 pm


Some people are only happy when they are crying. I presume they crave the attention they think it brings them.

I've been here for many years, and although I'm not too thrilled about the current problems, I understand that stuff happens.
While Slug is admittedly not so great at providing timely updates, I believe that he and Emily have worked very hard to try
and get things back to normal, so I'm willing to cut them some slack.

I do hope the counters work again soon. I'm pretty sure they have already tried to get it back online because the other day
I saw an extra line of red text direcly underneath the counter line at the bottom of my pages. It said something about the
counter, but was not working. I'm thinking that they are probably trying to get the bugs out of whatever they are about
to put in place in the way of stat counters.

I've been outspoken here myself in the past about the bug still not fixed with the 'flash status' in the exif data table. But I
got an email response from pbase letting me know it has been fixed in the new system that is not yet online. Hopefully the
whole of pbase will be a lot better soon.

I've looked at some other sites too, just like many here have done. But I prefer the available customization of pbase, and I
have fun with different stylesheets, etc. Bottom line is I'll be sticking with pbase and hopefully things will get sorted out
pretty soon. I do not want to be limited to the 'canned' look of places like smugmug, and the selling is not any issue for me
as I set up my own system for selling right here on pbase.

That's the way I see it....
Tim

http://www.timrucci.com


fishit wrote:
pegsam wrote:Secondly, plugging another web site is not unprofessional in my opinion..


You are entitled to one, every body has one. Mentioning it once would be ok, repeating over and over is another thing.
I am sure the owners and administrators of this website understand people's frustrations, I am sure they are stressed as well.
You can stay or go that is your choice. I have laid out my reasons for staying. You have to make your own choice.
But I fail to see how berating the owners and administrators of this website will do anything to deal with the issues.

If it makes you feel better, have at it.

bracciodiferro
 
Posts: 42

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 6:52 pm


I don't want to believe!!!
Nothing works here....
Only one thing works :
only my countdown time of service,
and It took off a month of service!!
Hey pbase team are You crazy?
You must firstly do these things :

"PBase will soon be much better than ever.
Speed.
I've been on a quest for speed. Already most pages load significantly faster and soon they will be even faster.
We have several new machines, as well as a lot of hardware upgrades to the database machine sitting here waiting to go in once I've finished trial upgrades on the test machine.
Stability.
Already we have a database server set up in standby mode. If anything terrible should happen to the main database server, the standby machine is ready to go online to take over the job.
Software.
We've been rewriting large amounts of the PBase software over the last year or two. We'll be getting it all online as soon as we can.
Hitcounts/Statistics.
We've completely redone the statistics system and these pages will be coming online in the next couple of days. The new system will be far more efficient. (less work for the database), as well
as having much more information than previously available. Stats for the last month will be there. This info is not lost, just currently not displayed."

Slug promise this!

Paolo
http://www.paolopeggi.com

soenda
 
Posts: 1390

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 7:39 pm


larsjohnsson wrote:
soenda wrote:I agree with fishit entirely. Doesn't seem smart to berate the folks that are trying to fix what you need fixed.

I don't understand why PBase's own statistics are so critical when before, everyone agreed that the third party (free of charge) stat counters were better. Slug & Co. made PBase compatible with those utilities and they are readily available to anyone who needs the counts.

And I believe that self fulfilling prophesy is a danger in situations like this. A minor problem is being made into a mountain.

Finally, it just seems rude to rig up surveys about leaving PBase and posts extolling other sites. Why the need to proselytize?

You read the inflammatory posts here, you sure don't have to wonder why the site administrators avoid the forums. It must be like having teeth pulled without anesthetic.


larsjohnsson wrote:1. So why is it smart to turn the table and berate the Pbase members instead ?


Where, exactly, did I berate you?


larsjohnsson wrote:2. Everyone have not agreed that third party counters are better. You just made that up of course. I have not agreed.


I should have taken the time to phrase my thought more precisely. It isn't a matter of my having made anything up. Rather that I was expressing my impression that those who cared about counting PBase visits believed that the third party counters were more accurate. You have to admit that many say that PBase's own count is overly generous. I am not making that up. I don't feel like spending the time citing all the examples. If you have not noticed that, then nothing I quote will convince you.

larsjohnsson wrote:3. How rude is it to post the 31st October update like slug did. And then not follow up, fix, or even tell us why nothing get fixed ?


I don't think "rude" meaning "discourteous" or "impolite" is an accurate assessment of Slug's statement. It has proven to be inaccurate and overly optimistic, but it was not intended to embarrass or manipulate. It is that intent---to exaggerate, manipulate and embarrass---that I find so hard to take among some of the complainers. It comes across like walking into another person's house and spitting on the rug. The homeowner is being challenged to do something about it. This seems preposterous to me because we want Slug & company to work on improving things, not on moderating this forum.


larsjohnsson wrote:4. To defend the admin. when the avoiding the forums after 1½ months problems.


I don't know what you meant with that sentence.

larsjohnsson wrote:Only the really hardcore fans that will defend anything can do that. When reading your post and defending of everything here....it's like everything is perfect and the people here should just pay their fee and be quiet....


You are projecting something onto me that isn't there. I have said it doesn't make sense to castigate the people you want to be fixing things. I have said that, and this is my own opinion, the affection for PBase's own statistics seems very sudden and disingenuous. And I have said repeatedly that I am concerned about self-fulfilling prophecy about how awful things are risks losing PBase entirely.

I am asking for a tiny bit of restraint. How you turn that into my being a zealot escapes me.

larsjohnsson wrote:I have been a Pbase member for nearly 6 years and never complained before. But this is too much to keep quiet................


Lars, I never said you should keep quiet. I argued particularly about promoting other sites and putting up surveys that have the potential to harm PBase. If you are going to come back at me, please direct your comments to what I've actually said.

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:05 pm


tim32225 wrote:Some people are only happy when they are crying. I presume they crave the attention they think it brings them.

fishit wrote:
pegsam wrote:Secondly, plugging another web site is not unprofessional in my opinion..


You are entitled to one, every body has one. Mentioning it once would be ok, repeating over and over is another thing.
I am sure the owners and administrators of this website understand people's frustrations, I am sure they are stressed as well.
You can stay or go that is your choice. I have laid out my reasons for staying. You have to make your own choice.
But I fail to see how berating the owners and administrators of this website will do anything to deal with the issues.

If it makes you feel better, have at it.


If you were pointing that remark at pegsam, it could have been better expressed and more obvious.

If you were pointing it at everyone who has posted in one way or another indicating that they are annoyed by various outages and glitches, irritated by the fact that Slug seems to operate by the policy of "trust me" without reciprocating that trust by letting people know what's going on, and above all infuriated by the lack of communication especially when times for fixes slide by, then writing them off as criers who are only after attention is not appropriate, dude.

Not appropriate at all.

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:40 pm


soenda wrote:
larsjohnsson wrote:3. How rude is it to post the 31st October update like slug did. And then not follow up, fix, or even tell us why nothing get fixed ?


I don't think "rude" meaning "discourteous" or "impolite" is an accurate assessment of Slug's statement. It has proven to be inaccurate and overly optimistic, but it was not intended to embarrass or manipulate.


Oh for the love of mike... would you care to get out a textbook on etymology and we can debate the meaning and nuances of the word "rude" back to the equivalent Aramaic? By the time we're done Slug may have finally figured out how to update information on a status page. But probably not.

Lars is right. Slug's action, or more precisely his inaction, is rude. It is discourteous. It is impolite.

Giving people an undertaking to do something in a certain timeframe, and not being able to do it for whatever reason, is not "rude". It's life. That happens sometimes.

Giving people an undertaking to do something in a certain timeframe, not being able to do it, and then not bothering to say to those people "Look, I'm sorry, we tried to implement it, but we ran into problems x, y and z. Our next steps will be to do a, b and c. With luck, this will result in the problem being fixed by {insert # of days here}, but we can't guarantee anything except that on that date, if it still isn't working, we will definitely let you know what's happened."

No, ignoring people, particularly people who pay for your services, is rude. I don't care how many dictionaries you throw at it, it's rude. And I don't buy that there is ANYONE, ANYWHERE, who is so weak in communication skills that they just can't get that fact.

soenda wrote:It is that intent---to exaggerate, manipulate and embarrass---that I find so hard to take among some of the complainers. It comes across like walking into another person's house and spitting on the rug. The homeowner is being challenged to do something about it.


That analogy stopped being appropriate when we started paying annual rent for the "house".

soenda wrote:This seems preposterous to me because we want Slug & company to work on improving things, not on moderating this forum.


Except, of course, that no-one has asked for them to moderate the forum, nor even respond to individual posts in it. What has been asked for, repeatedly over the years, is regular, detailed updates which can be posted in the forum or on a status page. And considering all the many improvements that have been introduced over the years that I've been here (let me think, right click disable and a fiddly pain of a maps option, as I recall), I find it difficult to believe that taking 5 minutes, even 10 out to update a status page is going to make a vast difference to when anything gets done around here.

soenda wrote:
larsjohnsson wrote:4. To defend the admin. when the avoiding the forums after 1½ months problems.

I don't know what you meant with that sentence.


Don't or don't want to? He meant that Slug pretty much ignores all of the complaints. It's "too painful" to read them, so if he ignores them maybe they'll just go away.

You want to talk about "self fulfilling prophecies"? There's one for you right there.

hydro2005
 
Posts: 6

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:20 pm


Just wondering about the 3rd party stat counter that has been referred to on here. Can anyone point me to that? Also, can it work regardless of the status of PBASE counters?

Thanks.

P.S. Haven't really looked at these forums before now. I must agree with those that believe simple communication would go a LONG way in duffusing critisism about these tech difficulties. Most people would be more understanding if they weren't left hanging for so long. It only takes a second to enter a blurb to let your customers know you still have a heartbeat. Something like "I had hoped the stat function would be up and running by now, but here is what is happening......" They could have the babysitter type that one, for crying out loud. It just seems discourteous to me, and if it isn't in their DNA to provide this basic communication to paying customers they should get someone to handle that aspect of the business. I'm guessing 5 minutes a day from someone who can log onto a forum should dbe enough.

In the vacumn the lack of communication has created, it looks like the customers have resorted to ripping each other for entertainment!

Even while I am somewhat amazed at the cavilier attitude shown by PBASE or slug or whoever is pulling the levers, the basic site is up and running and the stat counter isn't that big a deal to me personally. If it was, I would have left by now. For the short term, I'll wait for a bit to see if they get their act together.

RICK

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:42 pm


hydro2005 wrote:Just wondering about the 3rd party stat counter that has been referred to on here. Can anyone point me to that? Also, can it work regardless of the status of PBASE counters?


Here you go...
http://www.pbase.com/help/third_party_statistics&id=583

hydro2005 wrote:Even while I am somewhat amazed at the cavilier attitude shown by PBASE or slug or whoever is pulling the levers, the basic site is up and running and the stat counter isn't that big a deal to me personally. If it was, I would have left by now. For the short term, I'll wait for a bit to see if they get their act together.


Yup, that's me, too.

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:45 pm


hydro2005 wrote:Just wondering about the 3rd party stat counter that has been referred to on here. Can anyone point me to that? Also, can it work regardless of the status of PBASE counters?


Sorry, I meant to add (and can't edit my previous post), yes, they still work without the PBase counters working. They also provide you with much more information. My own opinion is that StatCounter is the best one (I also use Google Analytics, but seldom look at it any more), because StatCounter lets you see the path that the visitor followed and therefore what caught their eye.

pegsam
 
Posts: 87

Re: 24-Sep Downtime

Post Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:11 am


akmc_in_au wrote:
tim32225 wrote:Some people are only happy when they are crying. I presume they crave the attention they think it brings them.


If you were pointing that remark at pegsam, it could have been better expressed and more obvious.

If you were pointing it at everyone who has posted in one way or another indicating that they are annoyed by various outages and glitches, irritated by the fact that Slug seems to operate by the policy of "trust me" without reciprocating that trust by letting people know what's going on, and above all infuriated by the lack of communication especially when times for fixes slide by, then writing them off as criers who are only after attention is not appropriate, dude.

Not appropriate at all.


Thanks Alan. I'm not sure I think it appropriate to label me as a crier wanting attention either, just in case tim32225 sees that as an acceptable option. I certainly don't mean to attack anyone personally and am just trying to push PBase in the right direction. Unfortunately, this is like pushing a rock uphill because there seems to be a few loyal PBasers that are intent on making the hill a little higher with the "everything is just fine" outlook. The customer service / communication aspect is broken and has been for quite some time. Sadly, the solution to that doesn't require a new server, new software, new stats counter, etc., in order to fix the problem. That could be easily fixed by listening to the complaints about communication and spending a few moments each week to provide an update. And, just to head off those that would feel obligated to reply that those few moments would be better spent on fixing the technical problems with PBase, I don't believe that any time spent on communicating updates would delay the implementation of a fix to the technical problems.

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