Imminent Forum Demise

Report · Apr 03, 2009

As you are no doubt aware:

>ANNOUNCEMENT: Forums will be unavailable for planned system maintenance starting at 3pm PST on April 3, 2009. New forums will be online on Monday April 6, 2009.

Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

And if you want to go somewhere to get your questions answered where you can also do useful things like post screenshots and files, etc then you are more than welcome at AudioMasters where we might get the odd blown fuse, but at least we can mend them...

Report · Apr 05, 2009

http://cid-af5aec0e9ab4b07b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public

What I'm saying is that I like the look of the new forums over the old bland forums.

I haven't had a chance to thuroghly go over it yet. But you do have a point about audio files.This is a forum about audio software, and being able to post audio clips should be mandatory. In the meantime though, I have posted some old music samples of recordings I made back in the '70's at a website called SkyDrive supplied by MicroSoft. They give you 25Gigs of space on the web, to store and share stuff. It's like having an off site computer hard drive just for safety backups.

You should be able to access the recordings at the above link.

Report · Apr 05, 2009

For more information about SkyDrive goto....

http://www.windowslive.com/Online/SkyDrive

Report · Apr 05, 2009

Hmmm.... I came back to the office and find my email inbox full of notifications of all your replies. I did not subscribe to this thread. Well, I didn't intentionally subscribe. We'll have to see about this one.

I did notice the missing FAQ, but figured that's because all the links are broken. Well, silly me, on second thought links weren't what made that forum work. So major oopsie there.

RE Eric S 1: My old login consisted of my screen name and Adobe store password. That was refused for this forum. We were warned of this some months ago, that the merge of forum and store logins was coming and to update our account accordingly. After several attempts, I finally got in using my real name and Adobe store password, which then automatically connected me to my screen name identity.

Remember, Audition is the one product Adobe refuses to promote for itself, so that's why there's no ability to upload mp3 or wave clips!

While it's easy to point out the shortcomings of the transition, at least this launch, at this point a day early, isn't the unmitigated disaster of the last attempt to "upgrade." So maybe there's hope for the problems at hand.

Report · Apr 05, 2009

Nice that the place got a nice paint job, but for all the graphical advantages of this system, what really counts does seem to be lacking: threads viewed per page defaults to 30 regardless of what you set it to, and posts per page doesn't seem to be alterable beyond the paltry 15. Tell me I'm wrong! Makes speed reading take longer. At least all replies show up sequentially regardless of where you hit the "reply" button.

Now I know: if you create a thread or a reply to an existing thread, by default you are subscribed to email notifications unless you go into your profile preferences and disable it. Personally, I find it very irritating to have that many emails, so the choice is obvious. Interesting change of procedure without my input.

Where is the sub-forum for older versions of Audition? Is this the point that all previous versions of Audition and Cool Edit are jettisoned? Maybe that can still be corrected too.

Report · Apr 06, 2009

MusicConductor wrote:

Hmmm.... I came back to the office and find my email inbox full of notifications of all your replies. I did not subscribe to this thread. Well, I didn't intentionally subscribe. We'll have to see about this one.

I did notice the missing FAQ, but figured that's because all the links are broken. Well, silly me, on second thought links weren't what made that forum work. So major oopsie there.

Had exactly the same problems with emails, and I deliberately unsubscribed, so that's screwed in a particularly spam-like way...

As for the FAQ, this was noticed in the trial period, and complained about. Nothing at all happened, so you can read what you like (or don't like) into that. Personally, I think that it's a direct snub to Ozpeter, who put in a lot of work on them. Fortunately we realised that this was going to happen, and 'resuced' them all - just as we did with the old Syntrillium forum archive. So we will revise them all a bit, and repost them on the forum that actually tries to provide some sensible backup for Audition - however old it is. So you won't find them here...

RE Eric S 1: My old login consisted of my screen name and Adobe store password. That was refused for this forum. We were warned of this some months ago, that the merge of forum and store logins was coming and to update our account accordingly. After several attempts, I finally got in using my real name and Adobe store password, which then automatically connected me to my screen name identity.

Remember, Audition is the one product Adobe refuses to promote for itself, so that's why there's no ability to upload mp3 or wave clips!

While it's easy to point out the shortcomings of the transition, at least this launch, at this point a day early, isn't the unmitigated disaster of the last attempt to "upgrade." So maybe there's hope for the problems at hand.

I had the same problem with logins - despite fixing this (I thought...) recently. It hasn't reconciled the two that I apparently have, and I can't access the usual one, so you now get a helpful reminder tagged onto my user-name... Perhaps I shouldn't complain about that!

It's easy to point out the shortcomings because there are many of them. And most of them were pointed out during the 'trial' period. And nothing happened about them, so I'd say that there's very little hope at all about fixing any of them. So I thought that at least I should get the quoting style back, because despite all of the 'nicey nicey' look, it's simply too hard to distinguish different parts of the text unless you do. That should happen automatically, but it doesn't. In fact, to get anywhere at all with the layout is now quite a lot harder than it used to be. Basically, it sucks.

And as for this 'points for answers' thing - whoever thought of that, and why? What a particularly ridiculous and pointless thing to do.

But like I said at the start of this thread, there is an alternative...

Report · Apr 05, 2009

This is a test of out-of-sequence posting. I hit reply to Ozpeter on page one, and this reply does show up chronologically. That's good, I think.

Report · Apr 05, 2009

I know I'm off in the wilds of Australia but I'm finding this new format pretty slow to load when I click on a new thread or hit the "Reply" button.

Also, anyone else slightly concerned that Audition doesn't merit it's own graphical shortcut on the main "Forums" page and has been relegated to the second division "use the drop down menu" apps?

Bob

Report · Apr 05, 2009

And have any of you noticed the "points" system implemented? On calrec's thread about the installing Cool Edit on a new hard-drive, there is a point system listed at the top of the post - 10 points for a correct answer and 5 points for a helpful answer. Why?

Report · Apr 07, 2009

Another thing I'm getting somewhat hacked off about is that I've discovered that I have to make a deliberate attempt to stop email notifications all over the place - by default they seem to be turned on. And even after I've turned them off, they get turned back on again.

Somebody should be taken out and... made to alter all the defaults. Or just bring back the old forums. They weren't great, but they were nowhere near as bad as this one is. You'd have thought that they'd learned their lesson from last time, wouldn't you? But no...

Report · Apr 08, 2009

And also if you click on "stop email notifcations" for a particular thread, nothing happens and they remain on even if you've changed your default preferences. I've now put forum mail on my spam list to get rid of it.

Report · Apr 08, 2009

Dave K4 wrote:
And also if you click on "stop email notifcations" for a particular thread, nothing happens and they remain on even if you've changed your default preferences. I've now put forum mail on my spam list to get rid of it.

That's probably a good idea - as is creating a separate account called adobespam@... and redirecting it all there. What appears to happen is that whenever, and every time you make a post to a thread, the email notification thing automatically gets turned back on, so after every post you make, you have to turn it off again - unless you want to get the email of course.

Anyway, that sucks big time too.

Report · Apr 08, 2009

It appears I am *not* able to stop e-mail notifications when somebody posts here, even if I turn it off. (The feeback after hitting the button is kind of ambigous (major FAIL in any software design!), so I've tried all options to be sure). Since I do not want my Inbox to be littered by all your writings (not that it's your writing per se that's trash, but you know), could you all just please STOP posting ???

(Yeah, right. Thanx)

Has anyone found any way to give some people in charge some feedback on this?

The 'submit product feedback' seems to be just a way for the company to collect other's ideas for free - it doesn't lead to any support / FAQ or actual feedback (as in negative feedback) options that I can see.

This sux

Good for AudioMasters, but I participate in other forums here too...

Otherwise, have a nice Easter holiday everyone! Off now.

Report · Apr 08, 2009

mikromidas wrote:

Has anyone found any way to give some people in charge some feedback on this?
The 'submit product feedback' seems to be just a way for the company to collect other's ideas for free - it doesn't lead to any support / FAQ or actual feedback (as in negative feedback) options that I can see.

Bit of a can of worms, that. This whole 'people in charge' thing is kinda interesting at the moment... but when it comes down to basic forum design and usage, I don't think that anybody will get anywhere on their own. You have to bear in mind that 'they' did this because they thought it was right, not because any of the end users asked them to. If you go back to the last fiasco, you might recall that what the end users actually wanted (and got in the end) was to have the previous version put back again.

And now they seem to have foisted another one on us, and all that distinguishes it from the previous version is the detailed nature of the complaints - but not the quantity of them. Both versions they've put up suck because they don't address the actual needs of forum users - which are to be able to manage easily what they want to post, look at and reply to. I don't think that most of us care really about what it looks like - primarily people ask questions, and want answers (or at least some sort of discussion about an issue) about the software they're trying to use. What they don't want (but are having to put up with here) is to have to ask a load of help-style questions about the forum they're trying to get help from about their real problems - that just gets very heavily in the way, and constitutes a major noise in the system. And it's what AudioMasters trys to avoid.

Honestly, I think the best thing we could all do is just go away and let this forum die. I never thought that I'd end up writing that, but how else do you get them to take any notice, other than voting with your feet? Nothing else seems to work, does it?

Report · Apr 08, 2009

Sorry guys, I don't feel any need for navigating subject lines like:

Re: New message: "Re: Imminent Forum Demise"

Nor for having to scroll to see whether a post is a followup to something I

posted ....

AND: getting all this in email clutters my online version of my mailbox and

makes it in-navigable. Some idiot probably wanted to flash flash prowess

....reminds me of quite a few computer games that started with a lot of

gameplay and ended up containing only empty graphics.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

Report · Apr 09, 2009

I too was getting the e-mails all the time. Then I went to Your Stuff>Preferences and chose to stop receiving e-mail notifications. I haven't received any since.

Making e-mail notifications the default is really stupid and annoying, especially for folks who post on a number of different threads.

I have to agree that it is ridiculous for forum users to have to wade through entire threads to get to the unread posts. I also agree that it is blindly stupid for Audition forum users not to be able to post audio files. This, to me, is an obvious indication that the forums were designed by the Flash/Photoshop/Premiere folks, who might not even be aware they have an audio section of the company.

Report · Apr 10, 2009

Eric's method seems to have stopped the barrage of email for me as well...but the rest of the problems with this new format are still there.

What ever became of that woman who came onto the old Syntrillium forums some years back to tell us how jolly fine things would be on the U2U boards when they closed Syntrillium?

I think I'd like to meet her again....

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Bob Howes wrote:
What ever became of that woman who came onto the old Syntrillium forums some years back to tell us how jolly fine things would be on the U2U boards when they closed Syntrillium?
I think I'd like to meet her again....

Dorothy K? She's popped in to remove one thing that shouldn't have been posted (even though the intention was good), but that's the only time she's visited and made herself known recently. It's possible that she tracks any mention of her name though - so she might reply to this!

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Yeah, that's the one. Coincidentally, her appearance to do that deletion happened about the same time as I was posting my query.

However, current events--demonstrating Adobe's disregard for the actual users of the forum with things like the loss of the FAQs and the default email spam--are what reminded me of her attitude back at the time of the Syntrillium Forum closure. Considering the quality of forum software available off the peg, the way Adobe keep trying to re-invent the wheel...and taking a giant backwards step each time--is quite astounding in its arrogance.

Bob

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Bob Howes wrote:
... to tell us how jolly fine things would be on the U2U boards when they closed Syntrillium?

I meant to add that we were less than convinced at the time of this, I seem to recall. AudioMasters, which was set up then as a direct result of things we both were and weren't told, deliberately elected to use user-friendly software, just to get over what we immediately found on Adobe forums.

I was going to quote another bit of your reply here, but another thing this new 'system' won't do is to let me see the rest of the thread whilst typing this - unless I open up a completely new tab in Firefox and navigate to it - a PITA and quite unnecessary, but what the heck...

Considering the quality of forum software available off the peg, the way Adobe keep trying to re-invent the wheel...and taking a giant backwards step each time--is quite astounding in its arrogance.

And just how terminally awful this really is is amply demonstrated by attempting to do what I just did. I need two windows open, and then I have to resort to the text-only version of the editor, and cut and paste the java code to do a second insert without quite losing the will to live...

All that to do what in the previous version I could have done by typing one bloody character! (>)

Anyway, the point is that yes, there's plenty of much better software out there, and Adobe's previous excuse - that they run a lot of forums, etc and need software that... blah blah is not something that anybody can really take seriously. There are thousands of phpbb sites running, often hundreds on dedicated servers, and they don't have anything like the issues this pile of pooh does.

I mean, who wants to score points for answering questions? This is Kindergarten stuff, isn't it? And do we really need a load of links to supposedly similar discussions on other forums (which clearly aren't similar) - no we don't. Do we need the java editor from hell in order to write simple things? No. There are things that we could perhaps have done with - like a bit of common sense over attachment file types, but oh, no... nothing actually useful at all... just rather dubious window dressing.

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Report · Apr 11, 2009

plarsen@mail.tele.dk wrote (twice):

Which is of course completely fascinating....

Report · Apr 11, 2009

scratch ... scratch .... is this thing on, anybody have a battery for it

.... whatever I type just seems to vanish ... :((((((

Peter Larsen

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Seems to have worked this time - what did you do differently?

Report · Apr 11, 2009

Never mind that for a minute - the insanity continues!!!! Having stopped all of the email (I thought), I just got this:

Hello,

You have received this email because the content you posted below has been
approved by our moderators: (my bold)

Subject: Re: So Buggy...Are the programmers even working on Adobe
Audition?

Feel better now, do you?

Good...

Posted: 4/10/09 11:54 AM

I now need the thought police to tell me that I didn't say anything rude???? What's even weirder is that I'm supposed to be the last person posting in that thread, according to the thing at the top - but that's not so.

This really is turning into some sort of a kiddies playground, isn't it? Or is it 1984 all over again?

I did figure out some of the 'quotes' thing I was going on about earlier though. That icon marked >> (insert) above has a 'quote' option in it. But you still can't see the thing you'd want to quote from in the same tab, so it's still screwed.