Airliners.net Site Upgrade Announcement & Discussion

kulverstukas · Sun Jul 03, 2016 2:02 pm

JohnKrist wrote:
beiaard wrote:
Just wanted to add my two cents here....

Please list all questions that you feel are of low quality, that we should censor for being stupid. Tell us what an acceptable question should look like. Please tell us what the minimum qualification for joining our forum should be, so we can draw a line of wanted users and users non grata.

I feel sorry for you and Kas, John. I can understand your frustration and sadness as people constantly blame DM and crew. I can even believe your (and whole crew) intention is to make site even better. Alas.

You write recently that Anet is "the service". I personally - and I think a lot of people who uploads photo or posted in forums - doesn't look at it as at "service", instead they think it was aviation enthusiasts community. Photographers and forum posters feels that they was contributors to the site and in this as much volunteers (working for free) as screeners and moderators.

And they feels frustrated now that they was not even asked about ongoing changes and now they feed with promises and bullshit about site future.

PS: I don't know why I wrote this. May be I still believe that owner will listen for us. May be I'm just idiot with some spare time to spend it here in site related forum

Sun Jul 03, 2016 2:12 pm

Kulverstukas, I think us in the volunteer crew pretty much consists of a cross section of the user base so Inreally do not think asking the entire community would have generated any other feedback than we did. And everything written in this thread was pointed out during beta and staging phase. However DM management had a strong belief in the new design, and I have been in that position myself in my professional life. But, as we now have seen, the users reacted and responded pretty much like we did, less the anger though. We had some other design elements changed and removed during beta and staging, but not all. Changes are coming, to what extent we do not know yet.

kulverstukas · Sun Jul 03, 2016 3:16 pm

JohnKrist wrote:
And everything written in this thread was pointed out during beta and staging phase.

As Angad already said, you are a better man than us. "I would've walked the second they pulled that crap."

JohnKrist wrote:
However DM management had a strong belief in the new design, and I have been in that position myself in my professional life.

In my opinion it's time for DM top management to come out to public and take responsibility. May be I want too much.

Sun Jul 03, 2016 3:40 pm

If I quit my job as soon as I and management disagree I wouldn't have stayed anywhere more than a month

ssteve · Sun Jul 03, 2016 4:17 pm

JohnKrist wrote:
Kulverstukas, I think us in the volunteer crew pretty much consists of a cross section of the user base so Inreally do not think asking the entire community would have generated any other feedback than we did. And everything written in this thread was pointed out during beta and staging phase. However DM management had a strong belief in the new design, and I have been in that position myself in my professional life. But, as we now have seen, the users reacted and responded pretty much like we did, less the anger though. We had some other design elements changed and removed during beta and staging, but not all. Changes are coming, to what extent we do not know yet.

You know what the says? They don't care to bother with regular users. That makes me sad. I was willing to see this as incompetence, but now I just see it as malicious.

I know what content farms are like, and how they intentionally make intentionally annoying 35 page listicles from 30 photos, and that's where I see this going-- YOU WONT BELIEVE THE LANDING ON PAGE 27. That's atrocious.

They could at least not destroy the forums at the same time.

B737900 · Sun Jul 03, 2016 4:42 pm

StuckinCMHland wrote:
sudden wrote:
These are not changes, but a whole new site. Not to say it's bad but a a question of getting used to.
But would have been nice to see some of the good old Anet shine through in the new version.
Was actually going to ask for a "Home" icon but found it when clicking AIRLINERS

Great post, only it is too positive. This is an awful change to the site and I may well stop using it very much. The old forums had such an easy way to post comments and log in, a great way to check spelling, and you could do it while easily looking at the thread or the comment you are responding to. In short it was a very functional site. This new site is just change for the sake of change, and much less convenient. the worst thing about it is the 'no post' message because some one else made a post. If I want to change a post after seeing another post I always thought that I could EDIT my post. I guess that's not an option anymore.

Internet sites are becoming more a pain in the neck than anything else. They are either redone solely for the sake of iphones or android devices, or they are just changed for the sake of change. I am very disappointed in the changes, there is nothing positive to make the user's experience better.

I completely agree with your assessment of this 'new' site.

Sun Jul 03, 2016 5:28 pm

ssteve wrote:
You know what the says? They don't care to bother with regular users. That makes me sad. I was willing to see this as incompetence, but now I just see it as malicious.

I know what content farms are like, and how they intentionally make intentionally annoying 35 page listicles from 30 photos, and that's where I see this going-- YOU WONT BELIEVE THE LANDING ON PAGE 27. That's atrocious.

They could at least not destroy the forums at the same time.

Guess you could read in anything in whatever I post, but you could also look at it as someone daring to try something new to break old patterns, unfortunately their vision was not met positively in this case. If no one ever tried anything new we would all live in an amish world...

rg787 · Sun Jul 03, 2016 7:09 pm

Well, I think you have seen a lot of complaints and some good things to, but I read on another topic that the majority of the users didn't say anything. After more than 20 pages from this and another threads you probably narrowed the main aspects people talk about, why don't you do a poll asking what users prefer? This is not hard to do and you probably would get more feedback and make users feel better about the site, and you didn't even have to comply with the pool. I think this is what is missing here, because you spent a lot of years saying there were upgrades coming and didn't even show a bit of it asking what did we think before putting it online.

kulverstukas · Sun Jul 03, 2016 7:17 pm

JohnKrist wrote:
look at it as someone daring to try something new to break old patterns, unfortunately their vision was not met positively in this case. If no one ever tried anything new we would all live in an amish world...

Yes, it's now everywhere, not in this field of internet sites only. I need reliable and strude AWD car to drive to my parents home in the forests, but when I want to buy new one I learn that it's however looks great, cost twice, cannot drive in the muds, cannot be repaired in the fields, but look, it now can connect to your iPhone! and don't you like this big touchscreen and fancy blue lights on gearbox shift handle? Unfortunately, it can switch itself on and smash you dead at he driveway of your own home, but we will issue software update in couple month!

mrvark · Sun Jul 03, 2016 7:32 pm

The information about each image is too far below the image and far too spread out--what is that, triple spacing? PLEASE tighten it up so it's not necessary to scroll through it.

Sun Jul 03, 2016 7:51 pm

mrvark wrote:
The information about each image is too far below the image and far too spread out--what is that, triple spacing? PLEASE tighten it up so it's not necessary to scroll through it.

Agreed, and it's on the list of things to be done, tightening up the overall layout

mariner · Sun Jul 03, 2016 8:50 pm

[color=#000000][/color]

beiaard wrote:
Just wanted to add my two cents here. I've never seen a community go to absolute shit as quickly as I've seen Airliners.net do so. The contributions and contributors here had always been of very high quality, and now we have (presumably) children asking questions like, "why aren't there more trijets?" and "why isn't there food on domestic flights?" I've been a member of this forum for quite some time, and a reader for even longer (since about 2000), and I'm sick to have decided that today is the day I visit A.net for the last time. I don't typically use strong language, but since I'm pretty pissed and since I don't intend to be back around here, I'll close my longstanding relationship with this website by saying congratulations, Demand Media -- you've fucked a really great thing.

As long as Ive been around, which is a long time, a.net has always been a slightly uneasy alliance between the "children" as you call them who just want to talk about airline liveries or food on flights and those who have somewhat higher aspirations for the thread topics - LOL. It hasn't just started recently.

Instead of cursing the darkness you could try lighting a candle. Start a thread that meets your rigorous intellectual standards - see how that goes. :-)

mariner

canyonblue17 · Sun Jul 03, 2016 9:04 pm

He's not cursing the darkness - have you seen the new site - he is cursing the brightness. So many of the tweaks that have been promised have still not showed. Visitors and views are way, way down. And I am moments away from pulling my 500+ photos to another site.

mariner · Sun Jul 03, 2016 9:14 pm

canyonblue17 wrote:
He's not cursing the darkness - have you seen the new site - he is cursing the brightness. Visitors and views are way, way down.

He was cursing the "juvenile" nature of some of the threads, which is hardly a new thing on a.net.

canyonblue17 wrote:
And I am moments away from pulling my 500+ photos to another site.

Okay. The site works fine for me, but each to their own.

mariner

Rdh3e · Mon Jul 04, 2016 1:33 am

mariner wrote:
mariner wrote:
I sympathize with your frustration, it took me a wee while to learn how to do it and I had a lot of help from other members - it all happened upthread (about page 22) over several posts. I'll explain it in my layman's terms, the way I've learned it, although I'm sure there are more technical explanations.

Step 1: Choose the a.net photo you want to include, right click on it - (control/click on Mac) - and select "Copy image address" from the list of options that appear.

This does not solve the problem. I'm not trying to post a pic that is already on A.Net. I'm trying to post a picture that I have on my desktop. The picture is a spreadsheet of all airlines YOY stat changes for Q3 2016. I'd show you the old thread so you could see what I'm talking about but the image links no longer work.

Because of the text formatting issues there is really no way to display as much information in the density that we were able to previously.

mariner · Mon Jul 04, 2016 2:20 am

Rdh3e wrote:
This does not solve the problem. I'm not trying to post a pic that is already on A.Net. I'm trying to post a picture that I have on my desktop. The picture is a spreadsheet of all airlines YOY stat changes for Q3 2016. I'd show you the old thread so you could see what I'm talking about but the image links no longer work.

Because of the text formatting issues there is really no way to display as much information in the density that we were able to previously.

Ah, sorry, then, that's all beyond my ken. I thought you were talking about simple photos, but I know very little about spreadsheets. Maybe one of the mods would know?

mariner

ArmitageShanks · Mon Jul 04, 2016 4:08 am

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1336607

Why was that thread heavily edited and many posts deleted that broke no rules? It is now locked.

Why is this? They were only discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed offer.

ab2carlos · Mon Jul 04, 2016 4:14 am

Please return with the old site. Sorry but there was so much better!

kulverstukas · Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:50 am

ArmitageShanks wrote:
https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1336607

Why was that thread heavily edited and many posts deleted that broke no rules? It is now locked.

Why is this? They were only discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed offer.

Oh, another huge nail in the coffin of A.net is on the way? DM is not satisfied with traffic generated by aviation photos database and decided to make this site another content farm - aviation themed? Will we see "10 advices to survive in aircraft disaster" and "Why planes are from steel but not fall from the Sky" at the main page?

DEKRC · Mon Jul 04, 2016 9:43 am

One of my pics can´t be opened anymore: https://www.airliners.net/photo/untitled ... na/2689317
There is always the same error:
Oops! An Error Occurred
The server returned a "404 Not Found".
Something is broken. Please let us know what you were doing when this error occurred. We will fix it as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
So what is to do?

Mon Jul 04, 2016 9:48 am

Hi
That's due to the ä in the link, I'll add it to the list of things to be fixed.
If you exchange the ä for an a it works, so it's a backend thing.

https://www.airliners.net/photo/untitled ... na/2689317

airkas1 · Mon Jul 04, 2016 11:06 am

Rdh3e wrote:
This does not solve the problem. I'm not trying to post a pic that is already on A.Net. I'm trying to post a picture that I have on my desktop. The picture is a spreadsheet of all airlines YOY stat changes for Q3 2016. I'd show you the old thread so you could see what I'm talking about but the image links no longer work.

Host the screenshot somewhere else and then link it in your post using the image icon in the toolbar above (when writing a post). I myself use dropbox and find it most pleasant, but any photo hosting site will do as well (imageshack, photobucket, etc.).

angad84 · Mon Jul 04, 2016 11:18 am

kulverstukas wrote:
So this move to make site looks more "stupid user friendly" is quite smart in current business model. At least, after ten years of supporting mindblowing and annoying useless purchase it's time for DM to milk the cow and then sell it to slaughterhouse.

I have to admit I strongly considered this possibility at first, and it seemed quite plausible, because the crew are volunteers and not part of the formal management of the site. It would be very easy for DM to do it without making it known, and justify folding A.net if they reduce it to a hollow shell first.

My impression over the past couple of years has been that they are not happy with the site's revenue generation anyway, and spending half an hour of dev time and $17 on a crap forum theme would really be quite a cheap and convenient way to kill this place off.

But then I noted that they had done a decent job of the migration, so obviously put some sold man hours in there, and are working to address complaints as they arise (the results are debatable). Obviously not a quick and dirty job.

That's when I was reminded of something a professor of mine used to quote very often - "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence" - and realised that there doesn't need to be some grand conspiracy theory. They f***ed up, plain and simple. Looking at traffic stats and user participation, I wouldn't say this is up there with the Digg fiasco, but that's pretty much what's happened. And ironically, that will probably make them double down on the stupidity. As the content generators flee for greener (or at least less brown) pastures, DM will face lower and lower traffic, and will do sillier and sillier things to try and keep revenue up.

I'm not going to pitch a fit demand my stuff be taken down or my account deleted, or whatever. But my participation is already down, I haven't uploaded in ages, and I simply don't think I am likely to.

N867DA · Mon Jul 04, 2016 12:54 pm

I don't post often but do enjoy looking at the photos. I noticed that one of the search features that has not been carried forward in a.net 2.0 is the ability to search for photos by decades. The old site would let you choose 1990-1999, which was handy for finding pictures from a range of years. Is it possible to bring this feature back?

airkas1 · Mon Jul 04, 2016 1:15 pm

angad84 wrote:
But then I noted that they had done a decent job of the migration, so obviously put some sold man hours in there, and are working to address complaints as they arise (the results are debatable). Obviously not a quick and dirty job.

That's when I was reminded of something a professor of mine used to quote very often - "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence" - and realised that there doesn't need to be some grand conspiracy theory. They f***ed up, plain and simple.

It's not a quick and dirty job for sure and I like to think we have good contact with the developers about solving all the issues. However, your last sentence kind of sums it up; the site was launched too fast, while there were still too many issues. DM have said that they were quite overwhelmed with the responses (but which the crew saw coming). They've worked very hard since the launch, including evenings and weekends. I'm confident things will look better by the end of this week as per the last update in the Issues FAQ thread.

angad84 wrote:
I'm not going to pitch a fit demand my stuff be taken down or my account deleted, or whatever. But my participation is already down, I haven't uploaded in ages, and I simply don't think I am likely to.

On one side I'm glad to see someone not removing their photos for a change (I personally never get why people do that, it's free exposure that requires no extra effort?), but it's also a shame to see that you are not motivated to upload anymore. I sincerely hope that will change in the future, as I like seeing your photos.

N867DA wrote:
I noticed that one of the search features that has not been carried forward in a.net 2.0 is the ability to search for photos by decades. The old site would let you choose 1990-1999, which was handy for finding pictures from a range of years. Is it possible to bring this feature back?

I will add it to our list, thanks.

Rdh3e · Mon Jul 04, 2016 2:09 pm

airkas1 wrote:
Host the screenshot somewhere else

Thanks, but I was explicitly trying to avoid that.

Rdh3e wrote:
You can see the picture link is now broken. How can we fix this? I refuse to go set up an account on a photo-hosting site, I'm just going to stop posting the updates.

kulverstukas · Mon Jul 04, 2016 4:35 pm

airkas1 wrote:
On one side I'm glad to see someone not removing their photos for a change (I personally never get why people do that, it's free exposure that requires no extra effort?)

It has very simple explanation - imagine that you as an artist sign agreement to hang your painting in museum for free. I think you can swallow the fact that museum was sold and is now converted to private owned gallery which makes money on art sales. But when you one morning come here and see that now old building is demolished and owner builds a shopping mall with your paints on the walls of food court ...

kulverstukas · Mon Jul 04, 2016 4:57 pm

angad84 wrote:
It would be very easy for DM to do it without making it known, and justify folding A.net if they reduce it to a hollow shell first.

My impression over the past couple of years has been that they are not happy with the site's revenue generation anyway, and spending half an hour of dev time and $17 on a crap forum theme would really be quite a cheap and convenient way to kill this place off.

No, no. I don't think that DM intention was to kill the site fast. But in the business model they use - click selling and content farm operating - that slap in the face for contributors and community is just collateral damage, doesn't intended on.

What about hard time working on database migration - at least it's only asset they think they own and hey, they pay ten million bucks for it, so no "$17 programmers" on this part of site.

peted · Mon Jul 04, 2016 5:06 pm

This site wasn't broken so should not have been 'fixed'.

It's now well and truly broken and not getting any better. Time to have the old one back.

scbriml · Mon Jul 04, 2016 5:54 pm

angad84 wrote:
My impression over the past couple of years has been that they are not happy with the site's revenue generation anyway, and spending half an hour of dev time and $17 on a crap forum theme would really be quite a cheap and convenient way to kill this place off.

They wouldn't need to do that. They own the site, they could simply just turn it off if that's what they really wanted.

Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:03 pm

peted wrote:
This site wasn't broken so should not have been 'fixed'.

It's now well and truly broken and not getting any better. Time to have the old one back.

For the nth time, it was and the old site aint coming back

kulverstukas · Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:21 pm

scbriml wrote:

They wouldn't need to do that. They own the site, they could simply just turn it off if that's what they really wanted.

Except it will be quite difficult to write off debts and explain such move to shareholders. Look wiki about DM and their business.

airkas1 · Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:35 pm

Can we please put a rest to all the DM-is-trying-to-kill-off-A.net talk. This is NOT the case.

DennisK · Mon Jul 04, 2016 8:47 pm

Hi,

just a question.

After you lost fr24 the views decrease massive and after the upgrade the views decrease again.
Now a normal picture has less than 20 views, instead of more 200+. That are less views than on smaller/unpopular aviation Homepages.

What will a.net do, to increase the views and trafic on a.net?

With kind regards,

Dennis

ZeeZoo · Tue Jul 05, 2016 12:23 am

How come it's taking over 3 weeks to make adjustments?

Any low down on what is going to be changed?

Please bring back flags, people.

Zkpilot · Tue Jul 05, 2016 12:35 am

I like how clean the new site looks but here are the things I don't like:

1) Not being able to sort through threads based on ones I have written in/favourited. - I don't want to have to sort through 50 million threads to find the 3 or so that I always read and the handful of others which I have recently commented in.
2) The threads are hard to navigate. Need to be able to go the the latest post quickly. Takes a while to scroll down to the bottom and then click on the final page of a thread and then scroll down through that.
3) Constantly being logged off! I use A.net on my phone and on a computer. I used to be able to leave both logged in for days on end. Now I have to log in after a few hours often. It also doesn't save the details in there to just click login.

TAP343 · Tue Jul 05, 2016 2:38 am

This site seems like the UK after the Brexit vote.

Tue Jul 05, 2016 8:17 am

Zkpilot wrote:
I like how clean the new site looks but here are the things I don't like:

1) Not being able to sort through threads based on ones I have written in/favourited. - I don't want to have to sort through 50 million threads to find the 3 or so that I always read and the handful of others which I have recently commented in.
2) The threads are hard to navigate. Need to be able to go the the latest post quickly. Takes a while to scroll down to the bottom and then click on the final page of a thread and then scroll down through that.
3) Constantly being logged off! I use A.net on my phone and on a computer. I used to be able to leave both logged in for days on end. Now I have to log in after a few hours often. It also doesn't save the details in there to just click login.

1 and 2 you can find answers to in New Site FAQ
www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1335405

3 is an annoyance to us all but is on the fix list

angad84 · Tue Jul 05, 2016 9:41 am

airkas1 wrote:
Can we please put a rest to all the DM-is-trying-to-kill-off-A.net talk. This is NOT the case.

No indeed, but the alternative explanation is hardly encouraging! :lol:

linco22 · Tue Jul 05, 2016 10:12 am

I know this has been requested before, but can you please fix it that when you open a photo it opens the 'large' version? Having to click 'large' below the photo to view the correct sized uploaded photo is very frustrating. I have to then click back twice to return to the database.

Thanks

Colin

ricox · Tue Jul 05, 2016 10:30 am

When I open a picture from photo corner I had already the possibility to zoom over the original size of the pic...
It has been fixed from Search module result but not yet in Photo corner.

Tue Jul 05, 2016 10:36 am

linco22 wrote:
I know this has been requested before, but can you please fix it that when you open a photo it opens the 'large' version? Having to click 'large' below the photo to view the correct sized uploaded photo is very frustrating. I have to then click back twice to return to the database.

Thanks

Colin

If you click your profile and settings in the top right corner there is a setting that allows you to open photos in large or medium as default.
Click here https://www.airliners.net/user/account/settings to go straight to that page

kulverstukas · Tue Jul 05, 2016 11:50 am

airkas1 wrote:
Can we please put a rest to all the DM-is-trying-to-kill-off-A.net talk. This is NOT the case.

Isn't it a time then to close and delete all threads about how awful new site is, erase all "whining" and start heavily premoderate open threads for everything except technical questions and bug reports?

It's not resurrect the dead horse but helps the site looks great again in eyes of owners, management and fresh visitors.

:twisted:

Seriously, endless questions about when thing will return to what community think is appropriate and endless answers "eat what is served on and shut up" just adds unneedful entropy to universe. :roll:

Tue Jul 05, 2016 12:51 pm

kulverstukas wrote:
"eat what is served on and shut up"

The thick blue gravy will come, enjoy what's on the plate meanwhile

But I agree, the endless flood of the same serves no purpose other than letting off steam. We have been very lenient in the moderating in here, regarding attacks on us in crew, DM and users that actually like the new site. The respect for eachother need to return to an acceptable level, if not I will push for bans. It' s time for everyone to just chill and wait for the next iteration of Anet.

ssteve · Tue Jul 05, 2016 1:42 pm

angad84 wrote:
But then I noted that they had done a decent job of the migration, so obviously put some sold man hours in there, and are working to address complaints as they arise (the results are debatable). Obviously not a quick and dirty job.

That's when I was reminded of something a professor of mine used to quote very often - "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence" - and realised that there doesn't need to be some grand conspiracy theory. They f***ed up, plain and simple.

Given what JohnKrist is saying about crew feedback before it went live, there's malice here too. They absolutely want to keep gagillions of pages with nice metadata and keywords working. Great for them should any plane in the database crash and make it into the news. They didn't care to hear that they were breaking the forums, though.

JohnKrist- threats are pathetic.

Tue Jul 05, 2016 1:45 pm

Ssteve, it's not threats. It would be enforcing the forum rules that has been in play since day one. So if enforcing basic forum rules is pathetic, then so be it.

yari · Tue Jul 05, 2016 2:31 pm

After uploading the picture with all that information, registration included, there on final appearance in Queue, the REGISTRATION NUMBER IS MISSING, and picture rejected. Why? What am I doing ( or somebody ...) doing wrong? Thanks, Yari.

ArmitageShanks · Tue Jul 05, 2016 2:47 pm

JohnKrist wrote:
Ssteve, it's not threats. It would be enforcing the forum rules that has been in play since day one. So if enforcing basic forum rules is pathetic, then so be it.

How is talking about the way a company does business or the methods they use to generate revenue against the rules? Why were many posts talking about the history and experience of writing articles for DM deleted? What rules did they violate vs censoring negative opinions of the owners? There was no foul language, personal attacks or anything of the sort.

kulverstukas · Tue Jul 05, 2016 2:50 pm

ArmitageShanks wrote:
How is talking about the way a company does business or the methods they use to generate revenue against the rules?

First rule about DM rules: newer discuss DM rules.

Tue Jul 05, 2016 3:16 pm

ArmitageShanks wrote:
How is talking about the way a company does business or the methods they use to generate revenue against the rules? Why were many posts talking about the history and experience of writing articles for DM deleted? What rules did they violate vs censoring negative opinions of the owners? There was no foul language, personal attacks or anything of the sort.

How is the key word here, the discussions were more expressions of hatred and disgust than constructive. DM is a company, companies need to make money, it's as easy as that.

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