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Well the title sums it up.
Chris, rather than coming back here and posting my top 10 problems with the forums that still haven't been fixed, I've just stayed away for a week or two at a time, where I used to come to the forums virtually every evening. I'll spend 20 minutes in the General Forums to see what's been done to fix the problems (mostly nothing, as far as I can see) and then a few minutes in the Photoshop Windows forum, but the forum is unusable for anything but asking a simple question and getting a simple answ
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I sent this email earlier today:
Subject: Adobe forums
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 04:23
From: Ramón G Castañeda <ramonc [at] surewest [dot] net>
To: <communities@jivesoftware.com>
Conversation: Adobe forumsHello there,
Just wondering: Do you folks ever read any of the comments that we, the users, leave on the Adobe forums?
Best wishes,
Ramón G Castañeda
Contributing to the Adobe Forums since 2001, but
finding the new forums unusable.
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Jive might be more inclined to read the posts if they were constructive instead of general kvetching and reshashing of the same old complaints.
And please remember that it takes time to change software, on a server or the desktop.
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Chris Cox wrote:
…more inclined to read the posts if they were constructive instead of general kvetching and reshashing of the same old complaints.
And just exactly what would you expect, Chris, when all the constructive suggestions, requests and pleas go completely unheeded?
That's just the kind of turtle-shell and ostrich-with-head-in-sand attitude that Adobe execs hide behind in response to feature requests and complaints.
It's just not reasonable to expect your customers not to complain.
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Do you really expect everyone in the world to cater to your every whim instantly? If so, seek help.
John and others have commented on the useful feedback. They (and I) are pretty much ignoring the useless kvetching.
Complaints are one thing. Whining is another. You've gone squarely into the second category.
The forums team is trying to act on the feedback, but they can't change everything instantly (and sometimes have their hands tied by some marketroid manager who never even looks at the forums).
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Chris,
You are as free to ignore my comments as I am to ignore yours when you assume this attitude.
Or maybe I should have phrased it the other way around: I am as free to ignore your comments when you assume this attitude, as you are to ignore mine.
Is it a "whim" to expect basic navigational functionality, usability and reasonable performance? If it is, I'm definitely dealing with the wrong company.
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Chris Cox wrote on 2009-05-06 22:31 :
John and others have commented on the useful feedback. They (and I) are pretty much ignoring the useless kvetching.
I hate to break it to you, but whatever system is used to filter useful
from useless isn't working. Simple messages like "Email threading is
broken. This is caused by headers X and Y missing." or "Your mailserver
is blacklisted on blacklist X." never get any response. But when you two
weeks later start yelling and accusing administrators of being to
incompetent to change the value of myhostname in /etc/postfix/main.cf
suddenly within two hours the mailserver is reconfigured. (Wihout any
acknowledgment of course.)
I would love to have a way to have a working communication channel with
Adobe forum administrators. I am trying very hard to be constructive in
what I write here. I will even dig through the source code of these
forums to reverse engineer why some problems occur:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/1882604
I will even ask others to refrain from posting their "me too" flames
that distract from the issue: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/415216
And all I am asking for is that if I report a bug in these forums, for
instance a case where these forums do not follow the relevant RFC as in
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/415217, somebody responds back and says
"this issue is reported as a priority X bug at Jive".
But as you can see in all the threads I am linking to, Adobe never has a
material response to any issue I report. Feel free to check the rest of
the issues I reported in my profile (people with more privileges will
see many more examples from the private fora).
In reality it isn't whether your message is useless or constructive, it
is whether the subject is something that is an administrative option in
the interface for the forum admins, or not. If it is something the forum
administrators can fix in their interface, such as the email templates,
deleting spam, blocking users, adding permissions etc., you may get a
response. (Unlikely if you flame, slightly more likely if you write
constructively.) If the issue you raise is something having to do with
the inner workings of the forum that Jive has to fix, or is just plain
technically complex, or is asking for information that Adobe in turn has
to ask from Jive, you never get an answer, no matter how constructive
you are.
The sad truth is that when you dig through a few thousand lines of
sourcecode for these forums and then ask a polite question about a real
problem, nobody from Adobe will ever answer you. But if you just use
enough words like "pathetic" and "unusable", you have multiple Adobe
employees in your thread before you know it.
Jochem
--
Jochem van Dieten
http://jochem.vandieten.net/
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They got a response, the first, second, and maybe third time. After someone drove it into the ground, they stopped getting responses.
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Chris,
reactions are very different responses. The sad truth is, for whatever reason, some of the very simple requests have gone unresponded to and certainly not implemented.
One case in point: breadcrumb links on the bottom of the page.
We have been asked to put the concerns in one thread. That was done. Nothing was seemingly done about the requests. Again, a simple response that "we are working on that" or "that will never be implemented" is better than the silence.
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Chris Cox wrote:
They got a response, the first, second, and maybe third time. After someone drove it into the ground, they stopped getting responses.
It is sad that, while we are told that no Adobe employee is under any obligation to even read the messages in this forum, and some are theoretically not reading them, we have some hosts and employees who have the time to tell us to shut up, or write responses such as this to a most respectful message from someone who is more than just an average user.
Perhaps we are also expected to shut up in the product forums? Well I, for one, am finding that I am devoting much less time in them because I waste too much time just getting in there. I also have no obligation of getting in those forums, and I only do it at times when I'm iddle. Now that I have spend a lot of time reporting on things that are not working properly, my time for the product forums has nearly vanished.
We (and I include JC and his team here) were forced a completely uncooked version of the new forums. This was patently obvious during the trial period, when it would have been prudent to postpone the definitive fusion. Now we (JC and team included) are suffering the consequences of such an untimely decission. Please don't ask us to just sit and wait for a miracle that won't come.
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Chris Cox wrote on 2009-05-07 00:43 :
They got a response, the first, second, and maybe third time. After someone drove it into the ground, they stopped getting responses.
No they don't. Because for every single issue you see in my list my
message is the first time. Or it may be the second time if the first
time was a message I posted during the test phase that got deleted there.
This is exactly why I am saying the system isn't working. Initial
reports from me never get a response. Even when they actually precede a
stampeding horde of complaints that Adobe does respond to by a week
(outgoing email blacklisted) or two weeks (threading doesn't work). That
threading issue that kanguyen is referring to as being worked on in
http://forums.adobe.com/message/1945165#1945165? Guess who initially
reported that with zero response on about March 23th? (Yes, that is
right, that was during the test and a week before email responses even
started working.) Fast forward to April 9th where it took a long rant
(and again calling people incompetent) and suddenly Adobe people notice
somebody hadn't just reported it weeks ago, but also had solutions:
http://jochem.vandieten.net/2009/03/31/the-new-adobe-forums-unfulfilled-potential/#comment-230
Your assertion that when issues are newly reported they get a response
the first times, and no longer when they are repeated, is simply not
true. And I challenge you to check my user history and prove me wrong.
Jochem
--
Jochem van Dieten
http://jochem.vandieten.net/
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No, Chris, no.
Like this, look: http://forums.adobe.com/message/1945520#1945520
And Dorothy, if you are not in a position to provide similar feedback, as I imagine is the case, and you want to carry on posting in Forum Comments, please take off your badge and participate like any other user (you are a user, aren't you?). You've made a number of totally valid and reasonable posts about features you like, don't like, would prefer to see changed, glitches you've encountered, etc. Why not leave it at that and just lose the soapbox?
Marching up to a group of adults and launching into them, berating them about their behaviour, will only get you some raised eyebrows and frowns, as it would in real life (try it out in a restaurant near you) - you're lucky if that's the least you get as a reaction. If you want yes ma'am, sorry ma'am, you need first to establish your credibility as a person entitled to act in that way. Neither host status nor a badge alone will cut it.
And before you start ... of course I don't claim to speak for everyone, of course those who disagree are completely welcome to chime in and say so - but I am a very long way from being alone. Clearly this is not a teacher/student situation, but you risk a similar reaction to that experienced by a substitute teacher who has not yet established his/her own personal authority. Incredulity.
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Chris, on the other hand, enjoys hard-earned respect as an expert in his field. Nevertheless, that does not translate into the right to lecture or hector people for expressing their frustration and dissatisfaction. It's counter-productive.
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Jesus Christ will you frickin get over your self ?!! S. Cox is right you all are acting like spoiled brats. If the forums don't work the way you want, don't use them. No one is forcing you to be here !!
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Hey! In Post #8 I said:
"Having said that, apart from the speed – or lack of it – I find there are ways round everything if you use a bit of initiative.
(Without any scripts or blockers!)
I am now comfortable because I am adaptable."
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The only point I am trying to make is that there is so awful much noise and static in this forum that John would have to use a machete to try to find the important stuff. It would take a full time staff person to try to keep up back here, especially given that once you get someone's attention, you're not willing to let go. I'm not being arrogant when I say that no one is obligated to spend time here, I'm being realistic.
In a lot of ways, this software sucks. There is a lot of work for John to do... he has collected the list, done, or is sorting how to do, what is in his area to do; he has passed stuff on to others that is outside his capability, and works with them doing testing on a test server and providing additional feedback. He also has to work with his managers and those that hold the purse strings for stuff we want that is over and above what is included in the contract. And I imagine that everyone is getting their budgets squeezed, including him.
So he simply doesn't have the kind of time that people here thinks he owes them. And, no, 5 minutes won't do it. Even the most basic interaction is going to take 15 minutes... to log onto the forums, read a bit, compose a reply, and go back to the rest of the to-do list. And you guys never are willing to let it go at that... you always come back with more stuff for him to answer.
I am saying give the guy a break. Give him the info he needs to do his job, without a whole bunch of surrounding chatter, and let him take it and run with it. You guys have more then ten years of knowing that he busts butt to make the forums as good as they can be. Give him the space to continue doing it here without demanding that he split his attention more then he has to in order to accomplish what he has to, and wants to, get done. If he doesn't take time to keep us up to date on his progress, have faith that he's working with our best interests in mind with whatever constraints that keep him back from doing whatever he can to achive perfection. Rest assured that he has his times of frustration and disappointment also... and don't make it tougher on him by continually harping on how horrible it all is.
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Even the most basic interaction is going to take 15 minutes...
EXACTLY the point most of us have been making as to why these forums are a problem!!!
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> Give him the info he needs to do his job, without a whole bunch of surrounding chatter, and let him take it and run with it.
OK, that's easy. Use the same solution that was used the last time a non-fucntional forum was rolled out. Roll back to the previous working user forum.
Best,
Christopher
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We cannot go back to webx.
How many times do we have to say that before it sinks in?
And while this forum has problems, it is far from "non-functional".
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Chris Cox wrote:
We cannot go back to webx.
How many times do we have to say that before it sinks in?
until we believe it. i don't. <shrug>
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Chris Cox wrote:
We cannot go back to webx.
How many times do we have to say that before it sinks in?
Interesting that's the first time I've heard that.
And while this forum has problems, it is far from "non-functional".
Well I guess its time to leave. Let the blind lead the the blind.
Chris did they give you a bonus to spout this crap? You know this is a disaster what politics are in play here?
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Chris Cox wrote:
We cannot go back to webx.
Why not?
Because Adobe are in a financial bind and can't afford to pay for a decent web site service so had to go hunting in the Bargain Basement and found … Jive?
I am certainly getting the impression that the Adobe Corporation is on the skids.
First we saw the appalling drop in the level of Customer Service (due to the move to India for cost-saving reasons) and now we have the complete disembowelment of the Forums because Adobe can't afford to pay for a decent service here either.
If Adobe is not prepared to spend the money to provide us with the tools that we have stated that we need, they will just have to manage without our help in their Forums.
I, for one, am no longer prepared to waste my time answering Users' questions in any Adobe Forum until Adobe provides a speedy and efficient working environment similar to the one that we had with Web X.
Neither am I prepared to contribute until both the Points system and the "Community Experts" labels are removed — both of which features I find thoroughly insulting to the rest of us.
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Ann Shelbourne wrote:
Why not?
<snipped to conserve space>
Hear! Hear!
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Chris Cox is an honorable, standup guy. If he says they can't go back to WebX, I believe him. Sad and frustrating it undoubtedly is. The "why" is irrelevant at this point.
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Ramón G Castañeda wrote:
Chris Cox is an honorable, standup guy. If he says they can't go back to WebX, I believe him. Sad and frustrating it undoubtedly is. The "why" is irrelevant at this point.
without a doubt. i have tons of respect for chris. i don't doubt he believes that, or has convinced himself he believes it. after all, i believe he still collects a paycheck from adobe. a nice paycheck can help you believe an awful lot. but i don't. and i see what goes on in big corps. from the inside. from idea to planning to execution. not all ideas work and "CAN'T" can be a very flexible word.
on the other hand, i've also seen groups and some very "unsinkable" people go down because they failed to be able to admit that they have a failed project on their hands and rather than dump that albatross and move on, they tie it around their necks and wear it like a badge of honrror until it stinks to high heaven. THEN the body count starts to rise...