The New Layout

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Member for

16 years 3 months

Posts: 1,813

Khalem............    

Pleased to see you are still around. 

The platitudes contained in your last message mean nothing. I have followed this thread for the last three weeks and everyone (with about one exception) who reads it is totally dissatisfied with the new format. Many regular readers / contributors have already walked away and as far as I can see that trend is only going to continue.  Really, really sad to see this once great Forum that was widely used, going down  the pan.

I asked previously, why will no one with some authority from KEY come onto the Forum and explain/justify the changes that are taking place.  This plea was ignored back then. I have no reasons to suppose the plea will receive any more attention this time.  I feel, we, the readers/ contributors are being treated with utter contempt. Of course the Forum is KEY's property so they can run it how they choose but most forums rely/depend upon a meaningful ongoing dialogue between the Forum owner/operator and the users.  None is taking place here.

Khalem.... See you talk of "passing on things to the developers". Are these folk incapable of reading the messages for themselves and seeing the forum users are completely dissatisfied ?? 

Signing off with very little expectation anything will change for the better..........

PM

 

 

Member for

18 years 1 month

Posts: 2,123

Khalem: thanks for your reply to my pleas for information, although you only really say, "Wait and see".

Good job I keep looking at this thread as I am no longer informed of a reply to my messages (as I've already said).

Please, please try to get the message across to those in charge that we are very unhappy with so many lost functions in what was a fine tool for serious aviation historians. Several people already spelled it out that this is not just a Facebook style place for platitudes, but a site where seriously minded historians (mainly amateur, but none the less serious) are used to get together to learn and to pass on data.

I see that once again my years and posts counts have not shifted for some weeks now. Anyone else note this?

Help! Laurence

Member for

14 years 5 months

Posts: 590

I've been a member of this excellent forum for some years, and very much enjoyed reading the threads. However I can't get on with this new layout, the top yellow title line popping up and down, so sadly I don't think I'll bother with it as things stand.

Jules

Member for

19 years 7 months

Posts: 1,566

That useless expanding and contracting yellow line is a pain in the arse - it doesn't serve any useful function because it's only highlighting something we are already aware of.

Member for

18 years 1 month

Posts: 2,123

More woes. Maybe it's been pointed out already, but I only saw it just now: if you manage to find an old thread in which there were pictures in the body (not just links) there are no pictures any more. 

Laurence

Member for

12 years 5 months

Posts: 388

Will give it another couple of weeks. If its not any better then I'm done. There are other forums out there. They have had plenty of time to change things and I'm finding it takes so much longer to actually achieve anything here.

Does anyone remember the term 'User friendly' because I think the people in charge have forgotten it 

Member for

12 years 4 months

Posts: 277

Not surprisingly all the promises of "we'll look into that" or we'll sort this soon " seem to have come to little or nothing.

"The Duxford diary will  migrate across". Really ? when ? This year or next ?

Seriously, how hard can it be ?

Beginning to think as someone else said recently " this is it ! "

Shame there isn't somewhere else all us members can easily migrate to and carry on as before.

 

Member for

11 years 8 months

Posts: 1,354

The new format is not completely bereft of good bits. Like the F-111 swing wing, stolen from Barnes Wallis’ original work, there are promising bits that, given more time, will eventually resolve into a good design. As a phone user, with one foot in the Millenial morass, I have discovered good application of the ‘swipe’ function to rapidly navigate. My other foot is cleaven, resembling a goats, so I recognise I am also becoming a Grumpy Old Goat, loathing change. I have also read lots of literature on poor Generalship, to try and understand why men were  sent in, wave after wave, to be machine gunned in the trenches of WW1. I understand this as poor leadership, not thinking things through beforehand or not having the ability to react quickly to new circumstances. Just keep sending more men into machine guns until ‘something happens’ The more men die, the more intractable the leadership becomes, the more men die etc until there is a change of leadership. Change of leadership only happens when there is a ‘hue and cry’, when the true facts become so blatant they are impossible to ignore. Buller in Afghanistan, Gallipoli, RAF Fairey Battles in France, Dien Bien Phu etc etc. so I fully expect that Key Aero must double down on a less than fully resolved idea to create custom hosting software and merge proprietary journalism with my content, losing lots of my content on the way. Perhaps later someone will realise the mistake was in not appreciating that the Forum was really a partnership between amateur content providers and professional journalism. It could have worked very well, if this understanding permeated through the Process of Change. The amateurs drew a physic salary from fee free sharing and learning, while the professionals carefully drew from and nurtured a paying audience, albeit via ‘old school’ magazine. Now it’s all fooked. Now it’s dying. Now management are doubling down, until ‘something happens.’ I think the Grumpy Old Goats need to rise up, grab some pitchforks and march to the Chateau where the Generals are ballsing out some private for putting caviar on over burnt toast and instead burn the Chateau.  Accordingly, this is a call to Act before it is too late, before you in turn are sent into the machine guns or chose, in despair, this pointless fate. Change will not come from being polite. Adolf was unfailingly polite to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Chamberlain. You must set up and migrate to another Forum. No one will make your perfect Forum, you must make it. At all times this new Forum must be open to being purchased and integrated by Key, under a Sale Agreement, that like Hong Kong, gives it at least 25 years of being Honkers. If Key doesn’t buy, then Your Forum and you will remain unmolested, so both pathways are good. Do nothing, and the Grumpy Old Goats will be asphyxiated under the confident, over ice creamed, guileless great posterior of the Millenial Generation, filled with vigour and vim, driving the whole show over a cliff. Allow this, and what Putin did to the Crimea will curse you and your progeny, because you knew, you knew about the forest pass through to the Maginot line, you knew that Hampdens and Manchester’s would not cut it, you knew about the Trojans and their tricky horses and you fell silent on the Forum; you could have passed the torch but you let the flame die! Grumpy Old Goats, rise up ! As Macaulay said in 1831 : ‘the aberrations of power, unguided or ill guided, are ever in proportion to experience, and life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes”. I have ranted enough! Go to Forum Historic Community on FB and consider helping. 

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 434

Can I have some of what you are on please, Brexit would be done in an hour and the whole world at peace with each other .

Never in the field of online forums has so much truth been spoken in so few words

Member for

16 years 2 months

Posts: 823

Erm….. yes, well, hidden in there are some solid truths. As a card-carrying Grumpy Old Goat I share your concerns and I hope they are too by the less grumpy and old forumites. What was a sound forum for good, in-depth, well-illustrated discussions is now falling apart through Key's indifference.  No longer my first port of call for historic aviation, I'm afraid.

Member for

4 years 5 months

Posts: 5

I suppose a simple reversion to the old forum is out of the question? As otherwise, I'm done.

Member for

19 years 5 months

Posts: 9,821

power and passion...

Complaining the "swing wing" was "stolen" from Barnes Wallis is silly, rather like saying Mitchell stole the Spitfire wing from the Wrights (or whoever else you care to name) or Sikorsky stole the helicopter from da Vinci.

Despite the layout changes, somethings haven't changed on the forum...

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 119

Maybe they should wrap up the forum servers in grease proof paper and bury them in a crate under an airfield in Burma.

It's a pity these forums seem to feel quite difficult to use and navigate, for me they just aren't enjoyable to browse and read in their current configuration.

Also disappointed that I didn't realise such a dramatic change was coming and lost all the private messages, so from members now longer around anymore.

Member for

15 years

Posts: 1,712

Good point lanc35, I hadn’t realised about loosing the private messages till you mentioned it. Yes that is a bugger.

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

Perhaps the footfall on this forum is the most telling thing. By my calculations, there have been just twelve posts (excluding this one) in the past twenty four hours. I can remember a time when there would be more than that in just an hour. It does appear that members are voting with their feet. And if, ultimately, there is no more than a handful of members left posting, presumably their posts will produce so little response that even they won't feel it worthwhile to persist with this forum. And if this prognosis is anywhere near being accurate, the apparent inertia on the part of Key Publishing is beyond my comprehension.

Member for

19 years 1 month

Posts: 6,043

It was similar the last time they 'updated' this forum - they did not try out a 'test version' before 'rolling it out' - although at least the last time it was still more or less in the normal/usual forum format.

The forum users are in a similar position to somebody buying a new british car model some years ago - where the new car was launched before all the bugs had been ironed out and therefore the early purchasers then had to be the test drivers as well.

It is really puzzling though why the webby and or the 'developers' do not seem at all interested in interacting with the forum members,there is a lot of experience/knowledge going to waste amongst the members on here.

I will probably lurk here till xmas,but I am not posting much due to the dire layout and limitations of this layout (still hurts my eyes to look at this screen) ,if it is not sorted by xmas I will give up with it.

Member for

15 years

Posts: 1,712

Jeepman we haven’t seen the new FlyPast yet, so I am hoping that It hasn’t been spoilt as much as this forum but it remains to be seen. I did wonder about it in an earlier post on this thread. 

Member for

6 years 2 months

Posts: 313

Well, having looked at this a few times on my new smart phone, if this redesign is supposed to be easier and more user-friendly on all the mobile platforms, I shudder to think what the old forum was like on a smart phone, because this ... isn't easy to read/navigate/use.

Member for

11 years 2 months

Posts: 180

I note that many of the previously highly valued participants here are now ignoring this Forum. It leaves a big gap to be filled somewhere - and some one WILL do it. 

Will that cause KEY to pull out ? Better, perhaps, that they do so sooner rather than later, I suggest.

 

Member for

17 years 5 months

Posts: 8,980

The new site layout makes dreadful sound good.... it is worse than dreadful. I have tended to stop coming on here as its just awful to navigate and look at, nothing is concise nor clear and to have to click on forums to find the other rooms is pitiful. one hopes the magazines are doing well, because the forum isnt, and If it remains like this I will probably wander off and that may also mean my magazine subscription wanders too, as the site was always in my eyes part of the magazine experience.