Re: 24-Sep Downtime
Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:35 am
The situation appears to be getting worse. As of today, according to my profile page I have 70,724 comments, and the most recent one was made in 1995. First, this is for a gallery site I established in 2002 and, second, although I've never counted the comments, I think the grand total is actually considerably closer to 50 than it is to seventy thousand. The many and varied glitches that have been assaulting our galleries since the major meltdown of a month and a half ago seem to affect different galleries in different ways, but I think it's safe to say that most of us are sick to death of it. The problem is, that isn't going to do any of us any good, nor will it in any way hurry the resolution of the problem.
I established my first account here nine or ten years ago, and since then have seen PBase go through a few major disasters-- and they've ALWAYS followed the same pattern as this one:
1) Virtually no communication from Slug or Emily
2) Angry subscribers venting their frustration, and receiving neither response nor satisfaction from management.
3) Long, long, LONG delays, in which first weeks, and then months go by without any resolution of the problem.
4) Angry subscribers finally growing tired of venting, with a fair percentage moving to (or simply adding) alternative services, such as Flickr or SmugMug, and the rest simply shrugging their shoulders and deciding not to waste any more energy complaining to a management that isn't listening.
5) When the majority of subscribers have concluded-- privately or publicly-- that the situation will never be put right, it finally is.
This is how it's always been and, I imagine, how it will always be at PBase.
As a result, I long ago decided that while this is a great place in which to share pictures with friends, family, and members of lists or forums to which one subscribes, it is wholly and completely inadequate as a primary site from which to market one's work, and I'd never recommend it to anyone for that purpose. Given the yearly subscription rate, PBase is a fair price for what it is, and expecting it to perform as anything more than that seems pretty unreasonable. I'd never use it as my primary business site, nor expect it to function at that level, and am surprised that others seem to expect a great deal of service for very little money.
Use PBase for fun, for sharing, for inviting critique-- but for your work, establish a dedicated site designed for that purpose. If you don't, and continue to expect PBase to be something it's not, you're going to spend a lot of time feeling very, very frustrated.
I established my first account here nine or ten years ago, and since then have seen PBase go through a few major disasters-- and they've ALWAYS followed the same pattern as this one:
1) Virtually no communication from Slug or Emily
2) Angry subscribers venting their frustration, and receiving neither response nor satisfaction from management.
3) Long, long, LONG delays, in which first weeks, and then months go by without any resolution of the problem.
4) Angry subscribers finally growing tired of venting, with a fair percentage moving to (or simply adding) alternative services, such as Flickr or SmugMug, and the rest simply shrugging their shoulders and deciding not to waste any more energy complaining to a management that isn't listening.
5) When the majority of subscribers have concluded-- privately or publicly-- that the situation will never be put right, it finally is.
This is how it's always been and, I imagine, how it will always be at PBase.
As a result, I long ago decided that while this is a great place in which to share pictures with friends, family, and members of lists or forums to which one subscribes, it is wholly and completely inadequate as a primary site from which to market one's work, and I'd never recommend it to anyone for that purpose. Given the yearly subscription rate, PBase is a fair price for what it is, and expecting it to perform as anything more than that seems pretty unreasonable. I'd never use it as my primary business site, nor expect it to function at that level, and am surprised that others seem to expect a great deal of service for very little money.
Use PBase for fun, for sharing, for inviting critique-- but for your work, establish a dedicated site designed for that purpose. If you don't, and continue to expect PBase to be something it's not, you're going to spend a lot of time feeling very, very frustrated.