So how do you like the Forums?

[Julie Wilber]

Hi everyone,

I've been going through my emails and private messages and trying to put together a "state of the forums" type report, but then I thought that it would probably be easier to go directly to the source. So, how is MIVA doing with the Forums? Are our posts informative and worthwhile? Are we active? Are we responsive?

This is your turn to really vocalize both the good and the bad.

Thanks!

[wcw]

Unless I have missed something, I no longer have a way to save interesting emails with content that I refer to at a later date. I have emails going back to the days of htmlscript in the mid 90s that are easily found by scanning the email subjects in a particular date range.

Miva employee participation far exceeds the participation in the user groups.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Bill, you can use the thread tools icon above to email the thread or a particular post to yourself.

Julie, I still think the search routine stinks. Once in a while I do not get email when a new thread is started or replied to, that I'm subscribed to.

I will agree the MIVA response is good. I would like to see more response from engineers and tech support people, especially addressing and giving updates on status of bugs.

[leslienord]

I really don't. I may not answer many questions but I'm answering even fewer now. Sure I get all the Thread Titles but I have no idea what the question is unless I stop what I'm doing and go read it in the forum.

This past week I've discovered just how hard trying to get the "right" answer can be using the Joomla forum while rebuilding a site.

At least this forum has a few dedicated users that have the time to monitor and answer questions almost instantaneously. :(

[Random Confusion]

I have just come back from Federal Jury duty and will have to go back on thursday. In that time I have received over 180 e-mails from the forum stating new threads have been started. This is one of the last ones I've yet to touch on.

Pros: I can go through and quickly decide that many topics are ones I don't need to touch on. I have 180 e-mails and not 2000 e-mails.

Cons: I can not see how important a thread is by seeing the initial notification. Usually the more replies to the initial topic is, the more likely that I might want to take a peek and read up on it. I can also no longer see the digressions and permutations that happen that become something that I would want to see because it touches on what I'm doing.

Overall analysis: Cold, impersonal, to the point. What used to be a meeting on the porch of the general store to swap stories has become a posting of "lost dog" on the bulletin board inside the door of the local supermarket.

RC

[Julie Wilber]

Julie, I still think the search routine stinks. Once in a while I do not get email when a new thread is started or replied to, that I'm subscribed to.

I will agree the MIVA response is good. I would like to see more response from engineers and tech support people, especially addressing and giving updates on status of bugs.

I am constantly tweaking the search aspect. I know it's not perfect, but it is an ongoing project for me.

As far as the content of a post. Once I subscribe to a thread, I see the message that has been posted. When I am subscribed to a forum, I do not see the content of new threads. I want to make sure everyone is on the same page.

As far as engineers' response, well they do have their jobs to do and I try to run interference for them. I've tried to address the bugs, either by confirming, getting someone to look into them, or making sure that they get on a shortlist. I am essentially one of the go betweens, and a lot of times, our community members answer the questions so quickly, there's really no need for Jim or Q to jump in and say, "Yeah, what Soandso said".

Keep up the comments!

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

[qoute]Cons: I can not see how important a thread is by seeing the initial notification. Usually the more replies to the initial topic is, the more likely that I might want to take a peek and read up on it. I can also no longer see the digressions and permutations that happen that become something that I would want to see because it touches on what I'm doing.
[/quote]

funny...i feel the opposite...in old email days, I could assume that a post with dozens, hundreds of respsonses was another flame fest or whining post...fortunently, their seems to be little of either on the forum...<G>

[wmgilligan]

Pro...
I love the fact that I get less email. Very few are trying to sell me something, or scam me.

Con...
I feel like I am missing out on things, as everytime I visit - there are many posts I have not seen. I did like the way the old system would generate responses fairly quickly.

Bill

[Southlander]

I like it a lot better.

Sean

[Kent Multer]

I have mixed feelings. On the plus side, I must say that it's nice to receive fewer emails, and to be able to dismiss the threads I'm not interested in with one click.

On the down side, I agree with all the people who've already pointed out that it takes more clicks than necessary to find out whether you're interested. There are very easy fixes for this:

1. Change the From address of the emails to specify which forum the message is from.

2. Change the Subject line to actually tell the subject, instead of just saying "new message in Forum X."

3. Change the content of the message to actually include the text.

Really, I'm surprised I have to ask for these; they seem so obvious. As long as your server is doing all the processing to send emails, it wouldn't take much extra work to actually include some useful content.

I seem to recall reading, quite a while ago, that some new features would be added to the forums to allow "all-email" processing. Granted, posting by email has problems; I can live without that. But I think we were told that more detailed emails would be coming "next week," because there was a module available for vBulletin that would provide it. Has that feature been added, and I missed the announcement?

One final comment: when I subscribe to a thread, it seems logical to assume that I want to subscribe to the thread. I don't understand why I get emails that say, "unless you go to the Web site to view this message, you won't receive any more email from this thread."

[mvmarkus]

Hi Julie,

On the positive side: I am happy to see that Miva Corp has finally give the support team the possibility to participate so much more here than before on the mailing lists. This is truly great.

Well, the other side is a consequence of not being reminded through the constant emails: I realize that I simply forget about the list and the community. I never go to the forum except when a notification hits my inbox. It is not that I don't care - it's simply out of sight and out of mind, and my time doesn't allow me to spend more than a few minutes to look around here.

Yeah, I miss the experiences of peers, anekdotes, even the rants and whinings, all that stuff that makes out a community that is busy with itself, but that is nevertheless a profoundly human beast, and as such incredibly useful and valuable... provided you know where to find the "Ignore"-key in your email program.

Where before we had a few places where everybody met, the party now takes place in a house with hundreds of rooms. I am still searching the kitchen - that's where the beer is: the only place where you can always be sure to meet everybody at some point of time.

Markus

[Red Flare]

I am fairly new to the community and programming in general, I caught the old mailing list by about half a year.

I changed my notifications from "instantaneous" to a "daily updates". This is to make sure that I receive notifications of updated threads, and not just the new once that get posted. In this regard, I like email more. Since I have gmail I can label the conversations and file them away. When a new response comes, the program simply pulles the old message out of storage.

Miva employee's involvement makes a huge difference :) .

Generally I like the forum more.

[apanda]

I think forums are much more technologically advanced than an email list, so I love it. I think letting go of the old listserv style is a major upgrade. Listservs are 1996-ish to me. As for trying to monitor the forum through notifications, I don't think that is very efficient and prefer to just scan through "new posts." That is how forums work best. I don't think anyone is going to be happy if they are trying to use this like the old mailing list.

And the search in my opinion is MUCH better than the search at the old archives. Viking Coders' archive had a useable search, but ever since they stopped updating their archive, I was never able to find any useful results using the miva archive search.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

While i agree that the forums are an improvement, I have to take issue<G> with the notion that simply because something is technically "older" its somehow not has good. While I'm no luddite, neither am I a "if its new--its good; if its old--its bad."

Email lists have their place, just so happens its not in the general support of Miva Merchant.

[apanda]

I wouldn't say I like the forums simply because they are "new." It's because the new technology makes them better. More technology = more features, ease of use, not having to keep a personal archive on your own computer just to keep track of your messages/messages you found useful (just use the advanced search feature), not having to publish your email address for every spammer and their friend to pick up, having anonimity so competitors cannot identify you and monitor your strategies, being able to read messages without having to sign up, not having to submit to receiving hundreds of emails just to participate, etc. = UPGRADE. These things were not widely available 1999 and earlier when listservs were more commonly used. This is why I think upgrading to a forum is WAY overdue. I was elated when I heard a forum would finally be available.

This is only my humble opinion. :)

[Random Confusion]

Guns are more technologically advanced than swords, yet a sword will kill you just as surely, and even do more spectacular damage than a gun.

Just because something is "more advanced" doesn't necessarily mean that it's better.

[quote=apanda]I think forums are much more technologically advanced than an email list, so I love it. I think letting go of the old listserv style is a major upgrade. Listservs are 1996-ish to me. quote]


RC

[apanda]

Guns are more technologically advanced than swords, yet a sword will kill you just as surely, and even do more spectacular damage than a gun.

Just because something is "more advanced" doesn't necessarily mean that it's better.


RC
See my last response clarifying that statement. By no means is it better simply because it's new. The newer technology, in this case, comes with a lot of features that weren't available in the old days when listservs were widely used. If you want to use a sword and gun analogy, a gun is much more efficient, in my opinion, and you get the job done a lot quicker. So your illustration makes my point, too. It's all in how you look at it, which is why we all have different opinions and preferences. I didn't post my opinion to argue with anyone... It was just in response Julie's question.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

I'm not a big fan of them; they look nice but I can't respond to anywhere near the number of posts I could respond to on the mailing list purely because I don't have the time to go to the forum and click around before I can see what someone wrote to know whether I have something useful to contribute or not. I'm also not confident that posts which may be useful or helpful, but that Miva may not particularly like for some reason, won't disappear after people are no longer looking at them actively. Finally, the search doesn't seem to work well at all.

I do like seeing MIVA staff participating here though, that's a very welcome change from the list in recent years.

[leslienord]

I don't have the time to go to the forum and click around before I can see what someone wrote to know whether I have something useful to contribute or not.

That pretty much sums it up for me too.:(

[Julie Wilber]

I'm also not confident that posts which may be useful or helpful, but that Miva may not particularly like for some reason, won't disappear after people are no longer looking at them actively.

Hi David,

I am going to make this promise again, as long as I am part of the forum, we will not delete any threads, assuming that they don't break any of the rules. I think it's important enough to shout this from building tops if I have to.

Have we locked threads? Yes. Have we moved threads? Yes. Have we deleted individual posts within a thread? Yes. Have we deleted entire threads? Absolutely not. (Well excluding the spam from our down-under friend who wants everyone to run a home nursing center.) While we monitor the boards and messages, we do not usually moderate them until after someone reports a thread or post.

Honestly, to go back a few pages just to delete a thread, isn't worth our time. Now, what we might do at someone point, is create an archive, and move threads that might not be seen to a new home, but the archive would continue to be visible to everyone.

As for the search feature, I have responded to that already. It's a constant tweak here and there for me in between my other responsibilities. Part of me tweaking the search feature is based on how I use it, and what other people report as issues to me, but since I have been active in several boards and run a few, I may have an advantage there. Just as an example, someone at work was trying to pull up a thread and couldn't find it. I pulled it up on my first try. If I know what you were looking for and how you were looking (the you being general here), it would help me out greatly. (I did lower the search character to three though. So you can now officially search for SEO or API and not get an error.)

Thanks!

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

I also had a post in a thread where Subscribe2 was announced it was discounted for an End of Life Sale.

I feel I had a VERY valid point when I asked when support would be terminated for the product.

If we are going to recommend a piece of software to a customer, I want to know when my customer will no longer be able to get support for it.

[gmahler5th]

The new Miva Community forum is a MUCH needed improvement over the ListServ that used to support Merchant users. I hated using the old listserv service, and content was generally hard to find and not very well organized. I am extremely pleased with the forums, and at some level has renewed my faith in the product and the company's commitment to their customers.

With OpenUI and 3rd party module support for 4x I am a very happy customer!

[jason - jmh web services]

I'm not a big fan of them; they look nice but I can't respond to anywhere near the number of posts I could respond to on the mailing list purely because I don't have the time to go to the forum and click around before I can see what someone wrote to know whether I have something useful to contribute or not.

That pretty much sums it up for me too.:(

ditto. end-users are now much more susceptible to bad information and recommendations. With the email lists, they could count on getting many different opinions.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

How is that?

If someone wants a recomendation on how do to do things, its much easier for end users to review multiple listings from a variety of sources in one place...rather than have to weed through multple emails.

Mind you, I do see an issue of Over-posting, and there is still redundent postings, but not nearly as many as before.

But then again, just my opinion.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

How is that?

If someone wants a recomendation on how do to do things, its much easier for end users to review multiple listings from a variety of sources in one place...rather than have to weed through multple emails.

Mind you, I do see an issue of Over-posting, and there is still redundent postings, but not nearly as many as before.

But then again, just my opinion.

That's assuming that the multiple sources have time to read and respond to posts using the forums; I know I respond to far fewer posts now that it's less convenient and I like to think of myself as a source of information on Merchant at least fairly often. :)

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Hi David,

I am going to make this promise again, as long as I am part of the forum, we will not delete any threads, assuming that they don't break any of the rules. I think it's important enough to shout this from building tops if I have to.

Have we locked threads? Yes. Have we moved threads? Yes. Have we deleted individual posts within a thread? Yes. Have we deleted entire threads? Absolutely not. (Well excluding the spam from our down-under friend who wants everyone to run a home nursing center.) While we monitor the boards and messages, we do not usually moderate them until after someone reports a thread or post.


I started a thread in the "Other Products and Services" forum on an SSL bug in Empresa, it was deleted without any notification to me that I had violated the rules with my post, if that's why it was deleted. The bug is directly affecting people, here are three posts that involve it:

Thread 678 (http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=678)
Thread 1015 (http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1015)
Thread 269 (http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269)

[Wendy]

Personally, I dislike them so much that I rarely ever visit them. I was pretty active on the mail list, and when I had a question, I could usually get information almost immediately.

I can post here and nobody ever looks at it.

As an "end user", the mail list was much more "usable" and informative than this forum. The mail list was so easy to use, I could see every post made to the list, respond if I wanted to -- or file the thread away for future reference, and I could do all that while I was working -- now I have to stop working and go to the forum, which I never do because I'm working.

Basically, I'm on my own now -- and most of my Miva questions are now directed at my hosting provider (thank god I have HOSTASAURUS or I'd be dead in the water).

I see the forums as a way for Miva to CONTROL what information is presented.

I'd really like to see the mail list come back. However, I realize that my opinion doesn't carry any weight here -- I'm just a lowly Miva User trying to operate my business. But that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

[Julie Wilber]

I started a thread in the "Other Products and Services" forum on an SSL bug in Empresa, it was deleted without any notification to me that I had violated the rules with my post, if that's why it was deleted. The bug is directly affecting people, here are three posts that involve it:

Thread 678 (http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=678)
Thread 1015 (http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1015)
Thread 269 (http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269)


David,

Please email me, msbmoderators@miva.com or send me a PM.

MIVA will not discuss any moderation decisions on the forums, whether it be just moving a thread or deleting a post.


Thank you

[ILoveHostasaurus]

David,

Please email me, msbmoderators@miva.com or send me a PM.

MIVA will not discuss any moderation decisions on the forums, whether it be just moving a thread or deleting a post.


Thank you

I'd love to do that so I can find out why my thread was deleted but apparently I cannot:

550 <msbmoderators@miva.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in relay recipient table

[Julie Wilber]

I'd love to do that so I can find out why my thread was deleted but apparently I cannot:

550 <msbmoderators@miva.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in relay recipient table

My fault, I added an "s" where there shouldn't be.

To correct the above post of mine, the moderators' email is msbmoderator@miva.com. I apologize.


Thank you

[kcates]

The forum idea is terrible. With the mail list, the river of information used to flow past my front door. Now the river is in some distant land that I have to journey to at great expense of my time. The forum pages are soooooo slooooooow...

Any chance the first 500 to 1000 characters of a post could be included in the email notification? That way, I could at least see if the journey to the distant land is worth it. People are using subject lines like "why is this happening". How can I possibly tell if that message is worth the trip?

Thanks!
Ken

[Dramatic]

I'm just back from 2 weeks on the road (Wedding/Honeymoon). Keeping track of meu via webmail would have been easy, (or the mails would have been waiting when I got back), but the forums on dialup? forget it!

Much more bandwidth for less content, and there's no tweaks to the forum software that can fix the basic flaw that lack of 'push' doesn't get questions in front of people who know the answers and who care.

[daras]

I like forum form much more.

[Steve - KCCurtains.com]

I don't like these forums, because the email notifications don't include enough information to make me go look at the actual post.

I agree with others in this thread that we need at least the 1st few lines of text included in the email notifications. Many times I have no idea what a post is about by the subject in the email notification. Therefore, if it is not a good subject, I won't waste my time coming to the forum to see the post.

This forum is not a good way to foster community involvement.

[Random Confusion]

To me, it feels like we've gone from gathering around the cracker barrel in front of the general store, to using those vacuum tubes at banks to send messages here and there. The subject is on the outside of the tube and you can see that, but if you want to read the message, you have to goto the telegraph office down the street to read it.

RC
(who grew up a couple of miles from the old general store)

This forum is not a good way to foster community involvement.

[rover]

Don't like it.

So much more of a hassle than the old mailing list.

This is the first time I've even remembered it since 3/29