Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:38 pm
Please change at least the "home" tab back to the profile page or even the root gallery from the "dashboard." That switch just really reaks of forcing feature farther down user throats. Forcing me to have to go to a page to click another link or start typing the corrrect url are not endearing qualities. You waste my time, good will and your bandwidth. The release came off as forceful not beneficial. From the number of complaints, pbase is far better at not creating new features and keeping the site up and stable.
A suggestion for improvement
A remove or hide dashboard option for the account. I can look at my profile page and see the dates for comments and figure out if there are any new ones. There is nothing I liked about the dashboard from the roll out, even giving it a second look after adjustments were made. Nothing at all. My response is to flee from the page as fast as possible. If it went completely away, I would be happy and more forgiving. It saddens me to say that about PBase. Normally features I don't care about are ignored and glad it makes some other users happy.
Another suggestion is put it as a link/option just like the "view full statistics" feature on the profile page. Problems solved. Some will use it and some won't. You can listen to the users that want and like it then tweak to their suggestion. Ignoring a link and scrolling past it is pretty easy. You don't have to scrap all the work nor deal with hurt feelings with the projector creator(s)
One of the reasons I continued to use and pay pbase was for the very important fact my account was left alone and as a user I was left in peace.This fact was mentioned in letters sent with payments. The dashboard has destroyed that condition. Free sites get away with ramming changes down peoples throat with no option to the users except to leave, sites that collect money don't only risk loosing a user, they gamble with a source of income. When people complained about not having what they want in the forums I often said you can make it clear with your wallet. There are plenty of free photo hosting sites, if I want to be treated that way. The value in pbase has greatly diminished. Partial site navigation is an "annoyance" to use polite wording.
My prior support and then payment history speaks to how much I liked and wanted to support PBase to the point I'm at 3 years before I would have to send another payment in. Although I was very likely to send another one to make sure a piece of local social history and friends was always there while sites like geocites, aol hometown, earthlink, mindspring and numerous other names hosted websites disappeared. I liked Pbase because it didn't follow image shack, flikr and numerous other sites behavior patterns. That at times made me wonder whether they were trying to drive away a certain user demographic group or to slow down growth.
Now Pbase's behavior has changed. This an extremely out of character style for added features and one that was not well thought out. The amount of free photo hosting with direct linking not to mention link previews that display images all eat away at the features & value here. The being left in peace was one of the biggest draws and values for me. Which has been greatly reduced.
I have no interests in most the widgets and java script people tried to cram on their pbase accounts. I felt it was great when all scripts got banded. Cleaned up and made browsing other's galleries' pleasant and peaceful. Nowadays I seldom browse other PBase users. The "statistics" feature was nice and an occasional interest more for the random images. When I want to see the number of hits I still prefer the edit gallery option.
I'm Sorry Emily, I know it must hurt personally for your project to receive such a harsh and negative rejection.
A simple drag and drop from the user desktop would have been a feature more usable and better received.
As far as facebook changes mentioned in other posts, they've pretty much lost me for their attitudes over user content and the pathetic attempts to add features farther down grading the site and interface. FB present level may be a plan "..if users start paying they'll quit writing new code...". I'm on my way out and planing my exit move and content downloads.
I was ready to support Live Journal until the way LJ acted about deleting people's accounts and communities without warning. Without any thought than key wording without any review of actual content.. This happened a couple years back and it will be a few more years before they re-earn trust to get any financially support. None of the "extra" features for paid accounts matter to me but I'm also that "sucker" who sent money to people for share ware. I was at the point of buying a permanent account until LJ's staff went on an out of control site change rampage and shutting numerous fandoms and slash communities down, going after breastfeeding communities and/or icons as pornography ect. They still haven't recovered some the great writers and fanbase. Translated there are enough other sites out there, if you ignore how I(users) want to be treated, I(users) will find another option. Churn is part of the industry but once you foster ill will with your customers, it is very hard to undo the damage. I've gone form feeling part of the site to be a customer that needs to consider all other options. That is not the PBase I supported.
I have time left on my account to wait and watch with hope that the PBase I cared about run by people that respected their users and their desires will come back. Instead of the making new shiny features that just rehash information in a less useful way for the sake of we need an update to something philosophy. To help spread our greatest project 4evar we'll force it and change the site navigation so everyone will wind up into it whether they wanted to or not....