Category: Zone BBS Q&A
here are some more wholes which are frustrating, and it gets on my nerves sometimes to put up with it, and I am not posting it to that other board as it's not related to anything in it. but more problems are in existence, I was thinking about it. related to my rant below if there was an edit feature I could have edited my subject to add more to it. however, unfortunately there is no edit feature to be sene on here!
First, whatever admin is responsible for the upkeep of the server has to try to figure out why there is so much connectivity issues. This really isn't new, and there's been more and more times that the site is down not only for maintinence but it goes down for a day or even more. sometimes less, but that is still not good, last night it didn't just go down, it practically vanished from the face of the earth! this is also unprofessional. you don't see facebook or twitter or myspace, going down like that, it always means that the server is not good. Reliable servers do not crash, or worse, vanish! and, it's not only frustrating, when you enjoy the site so much and as a bit of a long standing member of course not as long as some, but it's also puzzling. It's probably some central problem that needs to be fixed. for one, I've heard that this sites coding is a mess, organizing that might be a good start to a better working server. yeah, if something is a mess, it's obviously not going to work. and, harder to spot, problems. It's important to look professional, and, it doesn't look that way at all, from the lack of real moderation, not watching what people say, but looking after the organization and upkeep of the site which is not there at all! Not only that but it's nearly impossible to reach someone important enough to change and fix issues! People need to be easier to contact! IT's frustrating for people who likes the site, and would think of supporting it if it was better managed, kept and ran. there is nobody present to report problems to, no answers often when support is e-mailed. This is not professionalism! I know you have a life, I am sure all of us do, but you are also running this site, which is a responsibility. Having a life is no excuse for irresponsibility. If you choose to own, manage, and run a site along with your life then do exactly that, if not, then why are you still running the site. just some thoughts.
secondly, what is up with some of the speeds of the page loads when someone is checking the stats and the problem with other users? it goes so slow that you think it might have crashed, I mean an intermediate page with a timer would help a bit. and, sometimes other features like jumping in and out of the audio profile takes a while to load up.
Thirdly, the boards are pathetic and primative! It is poorly designed in some ways. so we can post but when we make a mistake there is no edit button, when we have decided we don't want to post after all or if we posted one or more extra duplicate post after we have already done the posting there is no delete button. it is impossible to undo! this fources people to double post, I mean that isn't a good thing, when people double post it clutters the board, and sometimes you post two of the same post on accident, there is no way to delete it not even your own post! that also creates clutter and the last time I checked besides boosting post count, it's not such a good thing. come on now, seriously? I have seen some primative boards but at least they have the delete and edit button. if no delete button you should at least let people edit! I have been a member for 4 and a half years now and I don't get the ranks there, that is pretty pointless too, at least on other systems with such rankings you earn something with it. I mean I like the post counter but to have ranks but no meaning to them, personal texts are great but the other uncustomable statuses are a bit random.
I just hope something is done about the things I said here and some of the other things I said in my other topic.
Hello. You have a right to your opinion and your say, so here is mine.
First the Zone is not a Facebook or a large corprit organization, but is run buy a small group of good people. Because of this the resources available to the site are not at the levels of a Facebook.
I also enjoy this site much, but some understanding and patients needs to be allowed, due to the people running this site doing so without major pay, but as a hobby, or a small business that doesn't earn them a total living I am sure, so much of the technical is done from free time, or out of love for the blind comunity.
I see this as a great service, and I support the site as offten as possible.
If you have technical skills you can lend and they are excepted help out. If you have extra cash that can be offered buy a premium membership, and purchase one for others you see do not have them. Servers, domains, and electricity, and time are all costing someone here something.
For this to be such a small organization my hat is off to the people that do it. This site has been successfully run for many years, and the small issues you posted are far and few, and to me that shows me the people care, because its not the money.
Even if they receive some add, and donation dollars, they deserve every penny of it.
You think the Zone needs a better more reliable server, pay the cost, and you've got room to gripe.
Peace.
hello rachel.
i'm really enjoying your posts lately!. really valuable points!
first off, with the site connection issues, it's really anoying me too. most of the time now when i go to log in, the site is either slow, does not load at all, or loads the homepage, but when i go to log in goes slow again. i'm really anoyed it with it- in fact i'm passed anoyed. i want to scream in to the darkness- fix the speed!. but to who!. that's why i've not been here as much- only really to see the boards. i really think, while i'm on the subject- they should at least update the news file with reasons for why the site was down. you're right!. it's un professional!. and as for contacting the support staff, well, cls- sure it's easy to write to them, but i agree the admins are letting this place go a bit. i hardly ever see j or chris here.
i can't comment on the site statistics, because i don't really use that.
as for the boards, well we do have the preview option feature- which i think is great.
as for the deleting board posts, i think that either firstly it does not let you post- so it says something like, this post is identical to what you have just posted, and will not be aded to the topic
either that, or they have a set time limit- like you can't post 2 messages in like 2 seconds. once you posted one, you simply can't post another- because it will ask you to wait. problem solved!
oh and i have no idea what you meant by the board ranks- do explain?
Hello, I must say I do agree with the second poster. I don't look at the stats page that much, but it hasn't bothered me, the times when I did look at it. As for the boards you can preview your post. otherwise, I think the boards and the rest are okay. The zone isn't that bad.
to those of you who have such a problem with the way things are done, by all means, find some way to help out yourself. or, if you're unable to, perhaps learn how to be grateful for the time and effort people have put into this sight that wouldn't otherwise exist.
until you've learned coding yourself, or realize what a job it is/can be, I suggest you get a life.
The site has been awfully laggy lately, but I'm not quite sure why some people are so raving mad about it. It's annoying, sure, but twitter and facebook have both had outages, some of which have lasted hours, and they're huge social networks; much bigger than the zone will ever be. As for editing and deleting board posts, that has been brought up many, many times, and the answer has always been no. There have been some suggested ways around this which I feel at least deserve a response from the staff, but we might as well accept that editing and deleting posts the way you describe will not be an option on this site in the foreseeable future.
Hi, As far as the lagging issue, would it really be that hard to come back later when you see the site is down, or try to come on the zone when there are less people, so there's less potential for server overload?
I do agree with you about the double posting thing. That's related to server lag, or sometimes, depending on where the person is located in the world and their connection speed. Some people don't realize that their response has been posted, so they keep hitting the post button until they hear 100% or see the page has loaded. I agree that something should be done about these double posts when they happen. If editing and deleting your own posts is not an option, and there have been some pretty good cases made against that in the past, surely the cl's can clean up those posts every once in awhile. That could be one of the reasons you could report a post, to make it easier.
As for the ranks, I don't see the big deal. I only ever pay attention to them anymore when someone has a custom rank. Otherwise, I just skip right past them. They're certainly not hurting anything, and every forum I've ever seen has a ranking system.
As for the site being unprofessional in general, I would tend to agree. Not because they should be responding to every demand the users want, but because they are being paid, however little it may be in the grand scheme of things. When money is involved, people expect at least a basic level of consistency. Facebook and Twitter are free services, but of course they have many more people working for them than the zone does. Still, things like the raffles and the double posts really do need to be fixed, and because we've heard no responses about them, it does seem a bit unprofessional to me.
Oh, one more thing. I knew there was something I was forgetting. Moderation ain't gonna happen on this site, not the way you described. That's one of the things this site has been against from the very beginning. With such a wide range of topics, it would be pretty hard to stop every bit of bashing that goes on. And besides, where some forum mods draw the line is pretty ridiculous. Running this site with a heavy hand wouldn't make too many people happy, least of all because it's not necessarily right, but mostly because everyone is used to the way things have been since the site launched. So that definitely won't happen.
Facebook and Twitter are not free, they are supported by mass advertising, and the information you post on there is a commodity that gets traded.
Oh, ok. I stand corrected.
rachel. I see that you are a standard member. As it stands right now, sure you can be frustrated, but if you're not going to pay to help support the site, or if you're not going to come forward with all your coding knowledge and make a real difference, just be greatful that you have what you have. If this place is so awful, you have the choice of getting away from here and finding another site to look down your nose at. I just don't understand why you keep hanging around if the site and its other users are so bad. You're obviously getting something out of it.
While I agree some things need to be fixed, it's clear that this is not happening. If you can find another site which gives you all these features and is perfect, please let us know. We'd all love to know of such a place. Mean time, this is what we have. It's not perfect, it's not 100% professional, but imho, it's better than nothing.
I've been a member here since 2005 or 6. and the site has always been pretty dam good. I don't have lag issues, the board ranks amuse me, and as everyone else has said. we're all human, we're not perfect, admins have lives as well. and it's not fair to harp them for stuff that they do or don't do. I know what it's like to have a website. and if something works, don't fix it...
as to edit and delete? no. that's been suggested many times and the answer is always the same, no.
for now if you're so worried about your post, check the preview box before posting.
as to how the boards are laid out, they're fine for me. what may not look right to someone may be the easiest way for visually impaired people to navigate through.
take it from that standpoint.
OK. To cut the editing/deleting post suggestion a tiny bit of slack, I'll offer this: Perhaps there could be an option in account settings to have the "preview before posting" checkbox checked by default? Other than that, I agree with the negative stance here. and please do fix/add/remove anything you consider more important first, if you consider this to be important at all. Just my thoughts.