Quoting UnattendedBag (Reply 21): or has been acknowledged as a problem by DM and is being looked into/fixed.

How do you know it's being fixed? I'm not saying it's not, because I don't know either way, but can you guarantee all of these problems are being fixed? Some of these problems have been going on for ages, so when exactly will they be resolved?

Quoting EZEIZA (Reply 22): but can you guarantee all of these problems are being fixed?

Can tell me they are not being fixed?

I provide no guarantees. All I can do is look at past problems and note some have been fixed, some have not. That leads me to believe that in time, the problems that have not been fixed, will be.

Quoting UnattendedBag (Reply 23): Can tell me they are not being fixed?

I think I had already answered that  

Quoting EZEIZA (Reply 22): I'm not saying it's not, because I don't know either way

The thing is, some of these problems, minor in many cases, have been going on forever, and the OP's concern is legit, because at the end of the day, we are paying customers that excpect a full service that is having a lot of problems. Some people might care more or less about it, but it is a fact that the service provided has been far from perfect in the last year.

Say you pay a membership for a Gym, and they have a problem with their hot water for example. One day its ok, two days? fine ... now, after 3 or 4 days where the problem remains, yoy start to wonder, and asking why we are paying money is a perfectly good question IMO.

Chaps, it's great that we can have discussions like these; it really helps us to gather some feedback from the membership. However, with that said, we're not all fighting battles against each other here - if the thread is going to stay open and the discussion continue, we need to start to appreciate each other's points of view and stop attacking people for holding their opinion. Everybody has raised valid points in the thread and we must respect and try to understand the different perspectives that have been offered.

Quoting Bigjuliechc (Reply 6): From my understanding of this site, if you are not a "First Class Member" you do not pay for anything on this site! I might be wrong on this one; no doubt someone will put me right.

The membership works on a three tier system as follows:

First Class Membership
$5 a month for access to all the features associated with First Class Membership.

Premium Membership
$25 as a one off payment to Airliners.net, the membership grants posting rights in all the forums only, along with other privileges associated with the forums.

Photographer Account
$Free as a way for photographers to upload photographs and have limited posting rights in the Aviation Photography forum.

Please click the links above to find out more about the different types of Airliners.net membership. Memberships are held for life unless deleted by the crew for a specific reason.

Quoting PhilSquares (Reply 7): To the mods and other posters. To be honest, I never have had any problems with the site until about a month ago. Since then it's been a steady decline. If the site exhibited problems in the past, I certainly wasn't effected by the problems. I do travel about 2/3 of the month, and spend quite a bit of time in hotels, so any problems I noted I might have chalked it up to internet problems.

Phil, I appreciate that problems appear to have manifested themselves a lot recently. We have a much more stable platform to work with than we have had in the past months. Any issues that are cropping up at the moment are usually isolated problems pertaining to a certain feature. Previously, one problem would be affecting an array of features across the site. Anybody who remembers the bug we had that kept checking users out will remember just how frustrating and all encompassing that situation could be. We know that there are still problems present, exactly the ones you mentioned, and positive action is being taken to combat these - namely the database rewrite. Once the database is on a common code platform to work with, we can address of the little annoying bugs that are present.

Quote: I do appreciate the programming issues involved, but if you look at other sites, such as PPRUNE, their site seems to be fairly consistent in terms of performance and reliability. And, tha't s purely free site.

As Chachu201 mention, PPRuNe a totally different kettle of fish when it comes to programming. Anybody can go out and buy vBulletin software that they run; think of it as an out the box package. The Airliners.net forums are completely unique; they were based on code originally but Johan had rewritten them almost beyond the point of recognition. This is why we see that the forums on Airliners.net are completely integrated into site - rather than being a 'bolt-on' page. In terms of software management, PPRuNe requires very little compared to Airliners.net - again, this isn't excusing the issues that are present, but it is worth bearing in mind when making comparisons.

Quoting RJdxer (Reply 13): There always seems to be some sort of upgrade in the works. I'd settle for what you have if it would just work right. Perhaps that is what you should set your sights on.

I'd like to reiterate a passage from my earlier post, which will hopefully go some way to answering your point:

You have to be aware that Airliners.net is a bit of jumble in terms of code; one of the key priorities for the site is to have a standard code platform to work with - to implement changes and resolve problems. Think of it a bit like a an old patchwork quilt; we are trying to replace each patch with a new patch - but this takes time. However, we're looking at the release of a full database code rewrite in mid November - this should help enormously towards the errors that we are still experiencing. We understand that we are having problems with lag - posts taking time to show up, for example - and other niggles, such as the spell check and edit function that have been mentioned.

Quoting EZEIZA (Reply 14): I don't doubt they are actually working on the problems, I just don't hold my breath waiting for them to get fixed any time soon.

As I said above, I wish we could all swap positions for a day to allow you to see how much work actually does go on behind the scenes. Chris Willet is working constantly round the clock on Airliners.net, but he has an enormous list and has to prioritise accordingly.

Quoting PhilSquares (Reply 19): This isn't about the direction of the site, it's not about Demand Media, it's about functionality of the site. Nothing more, nothing less. If all the tender egos on here can't accept the fact the site isn't functioning as it had in the past, then figure out a way to accept that and move on. There is no subersive movement I am trying to promote. I would just like to be able to spell check without having to cut and paste in MS Word and have the ability to edit my posts.

Phil, again, I appreciate your attitude and I hope we can restore your faith in the site very soon. I understand that it is not a solution, but for a short period it might be worth you trying a spell-checker add-on. I use one - because my spelling can be quite spurious at times - and I've found it hugely useful across a large number of sites - especially those that don't have spell-checkers built it. This is by no means a solution, and the Airliners.net spell-checker will be fixed, but it's something that's worth looking into if you're posing on a lot of forums.

Quoting Elite (Reply 20): ALL members are valuable regardless of their account status.

Exactly - and if anybody is having any problems, please do contact the crew; we are here to help and are always happy to talk.

Thanks,
-Gofly

Quoting UnattendedBag (Reply 2): Paying for? I don't see "First Class" next to your screen name. What the hell ARE you "paying" for?

PhilSquares has paid for his membership here in addition his contributions to this via his high quality post are near priceless. His expertise in the aviation aspect of this site are second to none. In fact he is the very type of member that this site needs to maintain the quality of the civil av part of the site. He is more than a member, his expertise puts him pretty dang close to consultant status

To have someone like PhilSquares take time out of his downtime to share his insights with us is something we should be thankful for. We should not be chiding him for not paying enough cash to meet the expectations of a few.

It appears just as PhilSquares rewards us with his informative posts he has been rewarded by the membership as he has a very imperssive list of high quality members who include him on their respected user lists. In fact if I had room on my respected user list PhilSquares would be a rare addition to my list

Thanks "Phil" and keep up the fine work

IHAP

Quoting Ihadapheo (Reply 26): his contributions to this via his high quality post are near priceless. His expertise in the aviation aspect of this site are second to none.

I agree. But that wasn't what I was talking about.

Quoting Gofly (Reply 25): We understand that we are having problems with lag - posts taking time to show up, for example - and other niggles, such as the spell check and edit function that have been mentioned.

Until the miracle cure arrive why don't you fix them the way you did before you decided on a miracle cure. They seemed to work then, are you saying that they won't now or that someone is just to lazy?

Quoting Chachu201 (Reply 8): It can't be denied that A.net has problems, of course it does, noones denying that. However, I find that I very rarely have issues with the site these days, and stability is returning. I am genuinely excited (and thats not customer service propaganda!) about the release that is happening in mid-November that should mean an end to database bugs and provide a framework for development. As Gofly said, we're soon releasing a chat platform, I've been testing this and it's fantastic, miles better than the old chat, and one of the best I've seen. I plan to spend more time in there when it's released. As to your comparison with PPRUNE, its worth remembering that PPRUNE is a forum powered by the Invision forum software (a commercial package), which is much less of a "wild child" that the A.net code is. However, over the coming months, that "wild child" is going to be tamed, and from that we'll build stability and functionality.

If you haven't implemented it already, look into CoBIT - audit/governance procedures for IT management. With this supposed "wild child" of a application you have here, you need to really audit every change/fix even more carefully before rolling it out.

Quoting UnattendedBag (Reply 2): The site is running much better than it did several months ago.

Really? And yet new things keep going wrong. Up to a few days ago the forum expansion button still worked. Why did it suddenly stop? I see they are "working on it". How long do they need? In Johan's day stuff like this was fixed almost immediately after it was brought to his attention.

Quoting Gofly (Reply 5): You have to be aware that Airliners.net is a bit of jumble in terms of code

And yet this "code jumble" worked fine under the previous ownership.

Quoting Gofly (Reply 5): As has been pointed out, the site is running much more smoothly than has been

Maybe much more smoothly than it has been since the DM takeover, maybe, but not nearly as smoothly as before the takeover.

Quoting Gofly (Reply 5): The site suffered far more downtime when Johan was running it

Downtime I can handle. Plenty of other things to see and do while the site is down. However, having things not function while browsing the site is what really irks me.

Quoting Jetblueguy22 (Reply 12): If you don't like it leave. They aren't holding a gun to your head.

In my opinion, Phil is one of the most valuable members of this site. I'm sure you have learned a lot from posts by him, just as I have, yet you're inviting him to leave because he aired some valid gripes? Why so quick to jump to DM's defence? What do you get out of it? If Phil leaves this site would be way poorer off. On the other hand, I've never learned anything from you, so if Phil's presence on this site bugs you so much, why don't you leave? You definitely won't be missed nearly as much.

I appreciate that you are trying to fix all existing bugs, and that the new release in November is supposed to fix the majority of issues. However, the way I see things is that up till now you have been trying to fix one-off issues, but the way that manifests itself to general users is that functionality that had worked perfectly well in the past suddenly stops working (for example, the ability to show unread posts, as has been mentioned in another thread).

Now, forgive me, but I have worked in IT for the past 20+ years, and whilst the latter years have seen me working on the more "functional" side of things, in my early days I was a developer. I just want to say that I would never have released any software changes during that time without first thoroughly testing that the changes I had made had fixed the problem. Even as a functional analyst, I would still test any changes passed on to me by the developers before signing off those changes for release to users.

Apologies if I'm over-simplifying things, but the way it appears to me is that you're not thoroughly testing fixes before releasing them into the production environment.

In short...test your changes properly before making them live!!!!

[Edited 2008-11-08 15:38:36]

I don't understand why they just throw up beta.airliners.net and put the new code there. Move the 'everything else forum' onto the beta site. Leave the aviation forums until you know the code works. Problem solved and free testing. Total cost; time to setup a copy of the database and an A record, plus about 5 link changes.

Quoting ACDC8 (Reply 15): It baffles me why anyone would shell out an extra $5 a month to go "First Class". A couple years ago I would have, but I'm sorry to say that the way this site has been run over the last year is not worth me paying extra money out of my pocket. To be honest, if I were paying for a First Class membership, I'd be complaining right and left just as I would if I was paying for any other service that wasn't working the way it should be.

No watermarks on the pics...great since I use them for my wallpaper. No ads to mess with (I know, I know...I use adblock, but some still sneak through), the news section, etc...

Quoting Euclid (Reply 30): Downtime I can handle. Plenty of other things to see and do while the site is down. However, having things not function while browsing the site is what really irks me.

Quoting PhilSquares (Thread starter): First the problem was with editing posts and getting error messages. Now the spell check won't work at all. It was sorking for a time if you previewed your post and then used the edit function to correct any spelling errors. Now you get an HTTP error 500 when you try to use the spell check function. These are but two of the problems in the site and are just the tip of the iceberg and are by no means all encompassing.

I had serious reservations about renewing my subscription last year, due to all the problems on this site. I have to agreed with Phil that the list of problems keep growing, this is not the way to keep your members happy. Spell check has been down for how many weeks. Months when we checked your profiles, the message was nice try hacker..The non-aviation page is just dead now, especially with the election over, the topics are down to parking your car, classes one taking, etc. I just get the feeling that DM just wants our money, and customer satisfaction is a distance fourth or fifth on their list of priorities. That's my three cents.

Quoting UnattendedBag (Reply 2): The site is running much better than it did several months ago. There are still glitches but it is no where near as bad as it was immediately after the server migration.

This is true. But it's still not up to the pre-migration standard. And that's the frustrating part.

-Mir

Quoting Mir (Reply 35): This is true. But it's still not up to the pre-migration standard. And that's the frustrating part.

Agreed. I frequently open photos to get a 'default image' placeholder; I have to refresh to view the image. This isn't a one off; it happens daily at the very least, and often with the 'top of 24 hours' photos - what message does that send?

Then there are times I do a search for 'England' or 'BLK' for example, and no results are found.

I never had issues like this before the migration. I accept that the code may well be a mess; but why can't these issues be prioritised. A casual viewer having the same issues may well not return here when there are several rival sites which do have full functionality.

Can someone please explain to me why it is that, issues such as the photos not being displayed, have taken three months to be addressed (and it still isn't fixed), when previous management with far fewer resources fixed similar issues in 3 minutes?

This question, and others that are similar, have been asked over, and over, and over again. We keep hearing "we're working on it" and yet the bugs remain. It is now November 17, and the much talked about update to the site is nowhere to be found.

[Edited 2008-11-17 11:50:42]

Quoting Flynavy (Reply 37): We keep hearing "we're working on it" and yet the bugs remain.

Not to mention, new bugs popping up almost on a daily basis.

Quoting Flynavy (Reply 37): This question, and others that are similar, have been asked over, and over, and over again. We keep hearing "we're working on it"

I think a lot of us have just learnt to accept the way things are being run now.

Personally, I've given up on waiting for the fixes. No point in asking about them either, you just get to hear the same blah, blah we've been hearing for over a year now.

We are busting our butts to track these bugs and fix them correctly. The old bugs would get fixed but they created other bugs like the ones you are seeing now.

Quoting Deeplight (Reply 39): We are busting our butts to track these bugs and fix them correctly. The old bugs would get fixed but they created other bugs like the ones you are seeing now.

I do hope that you understand our frustration though.

Just something I would like to point out to this sites crew and team. My comment in a previous reply in this thread ....

Quoting ACDC8 (Reply 38): you just get to hear the same blah, blah we've been hearing for over a year now.

.... wasn't meant to be directed at any member of the crew or team directly. So I apologize if anyone took that personally. I'm sure you're all working hard at trying to get this site back to what it was before. But please do understand that there are times when the patience of some of the community really does wear thin given the length and amount of time it has taken to get some of these annoying problems resolved.

Again, I do apologize if anyone took that comment personally, that wasn't my intention.

Quoting Deeplight (Reply 39): We are busting our butts to track these bugs and fix them correctly. The old bugs would get fixed but they created other bugs like the ones you are seeing now.

I appreciate that you are working on it, but with all due respect, how many times have we heard this? Obviously something is not working with whoever is responsable of getting the site fixed. How long has it been? seriously, it is getting a bit boring to hear the same over and over again.
rgds

Hi All
I agree its hard for me to read my own post....we are doing a push today and I'll report back shortly on the fixes this week. Many thanks to all of you for your support and patience.
Paulo

I have just done a personal 'test' to look at current functionality in the one area above all others that bothers me the most - being able to successfully and speedily open photos.

After opening many photos on a number of pages I was pleased to see that well over 90% opened pretty much immediately. Even those few that took a few seconds and gave me the 'Loading' message appeared soon, and I didn't once have to see the message about trying to retrieve my photo (successfully or otherwise), see that 'default' image box or, worse, got nothing happening at all.

This is the kind of functionality I want to see permanently and is - for me - the key area to get right. It is what will influence the impressions of members and casual viewers alike. I really hope this becomes the norm again.

I have to say I often find things work more smoothly for me at this time (early morning UK) and are far worse in the evenings, which looks very much like a server load issue. I really hope the guys behind the scenes get this one resolved asap.

Unfortunately the spell check still isn't working.

Paul

Hi guys,

I won't comment on any that has benn said above as there's nothing new I could add; however let me add a quick sidenote.
I've been trying out Google Chrome as my new browser for the last 2 weeks and it really is a great improvement to IE and even Firefox. The pages (especially A.net) load much faster and you even got an integrated spell checker.
Just to make sure, I don't hold any shares on Google and neither do I try to cover up on any issues A.net may have technically but I thought it would be worth to mention to have you enjoy the A.net experience even more.

Cheers,

Thierry

Quoting Psych (Reply 44): I have just done a personal 'test' to look at current functionality in the one area above all others that bothers me the most - being able to successfully and speedily open photos.

I have to say I did not share your luck Paul. I just had the "Photo could not be retrieved" message followed by a non existant picture ...  

Firefox, IE, Google Chrome..., are you kidding?

Never want to see:

"Sorry, we could not find any results with that criteria.
If you reached this in error, please post a message in the Site Related Forum.

View unique entries matching your search query (without any pictures)"

Your site isn't functional, that's fact! And were are paying therefor.

Tomas

Can we have an update on the present status of the comprehensive improvement package that was promised for mid-November?

Quoting PhilSquares (Thread starter): What Am I Paying For?

......naked women, as everywhere else on the internet


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This acceptance would make Johan fall off his weekend resort in the Maledives.