Forum Feedback

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

Sorry, forgot to tell you -- our team has made some changes to improve the sluggishness of the site. Has anyone noticed improvement? For me, I was having a terrible time getting pages to load, and getting frequent timeouts. Today, everything has been loading very fast, and all of my posts have gone up quickly.

If the site is still as slow as it was before, please let me know. Thanks!

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

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Plankton wrote:

Hi Tony:

 Well, I logged in just now and so far I am pleased to report...

 That I have the formatting toolbar and the site is significantly faster.

 The text is no longer squished together.

 So far, so good.

 Thanks.

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You're welcome, and thank you! Without your feedback, we wouldn't have been able to address these issues.

[rayofsunshine]

So far this morning, It's much faster.  Everything loads great and I haven't had any timeouts. So good job!

As for viewing the profiles. I can't view member profiles. Says "Access Denied" and that I don't have privelages.

I can view my own and I just viewed yours Tony, but can not view anyone else's.

[Plankton]

Hi Tony:

Under "Friends," I have also noticed that the ONLINE vs. OFFLINE status is extremely hard to see.

Take a peek.

I would think that if you are ONLINE - the light should be a bright green, which it isn't.

As for OFFlINE, how about a bright red?

As for the speed...

There is still a bit of tweaking that is needed, IMO, especially when replying to or editing a post. I sense a lag up to 5 seconds.

I also notice that the screen tends to slowly scroll from the top of a page down to the end. Like a delay.

Cannot access many profiles - get Access Denied.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

[boneidle]

Hi Tony.

Yes Forum a lot faster this morning, most of the time.

But still some way to go, at least , I'm not having to refresh any pages now.

I'm also unable to view some profiles.

If it helps,   I am able to see yours,  but not AllenM's.

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

PROFILE ISSUE: when we updated the software, some of the default settings changed. One is the following:

My Settings > Preferences > Privacy > Show Profile to... default is now NO ONE. This is to protect your privacy. If you would like to share your profile information, please change this setting on your profile. The reason you can see my profile is that I have it set to "All". Thanks!

[boneidle]

Thanks Tony,

I see this also goes for ' Show Online Status'.

I used to like seeing who was on line.

Still never mind.

[Plankton]

Hi Tony:

Thanks for the heads-up on the User Profiles. I thought the other way was more fun, though.

Also, please check the RESET button in those categories. I tried to reset (guess to default) my changes, but it didn't work.

Therefore, I had to click on them manually, to initiate the changes.

Are you having the same issue?

[AllenM Norton Fighter]

Hi Tony,

These profile privacy settings are intended to hide everything, including online/offline status and time of last visit?

These two things do not seem to be indicative of any sort of violation of privacy, those two things are just general information such as being able to see the time of a user's post.

So now with the default being NONE as you said, then that would seem to indicate that even really basic things like online/offline status and time of last visit will be locked for probably over 90% of new users coming to the forums.

Most new users do not think about making more than the bare minimum profile changes, just enough to get set up so they can post. Most simply will not think about making this sort of change even if they are OK with those basic statistics being displayed to everyone.

Is this really the intent to hide even the most basic information like this?

If it really needs to be this way then so be it, but might I suggest at the least that this should be mentioned to the user during registration so that they can make an informed choice? To have it hidden where most users won't even know it is there doesn't seem like the right approach.

For all the existing users, might I suggest also posting an Announcement in the Forum Feedback section so that people will know to make this change if they do not want their basic statistics hidden? For people logging in for the first time after this change I would even suggest a little informational message on this, after they enter their password.

Further, the section on your profile on the upper left is called Public Statistics. I've been on these forums for a long time and I always interpreted that to mean PUBLIC regardless of any profile settings. That is apart from something like email address which is obviously a privacy thing.

Thanks

Allen

[floplot Norton Fighter]

Hi Tony

Why bother even filling out everything on the profile if no one can see it by default with no warnings or instructions to any one about it being closed by default. If you want to send someone a pm and don't know their formal name in the forum without looking for a post by that person, then you can't even send a pm to them. For some people in the forum, I use shortened names when typing to them and don't remember the full complete name. I used to click on their name and use send a private message to this person and then was able to do that. With everyone being blocked, I couldn't do that. Just now, I spelled someone's name incorrectly, so the pm didn't get sent. I always call the person by a shortened name. If this is going to stay closed by default, then there really has to be instructions or a warning that this is happening now. There's privacy and there's privacy. I think it should be turned on by default which a notice that if you want it kept private, then to make it private. This making it private by default, takes something away from the user friendly notion of the Forum.