For the first three months of this new forum I had terrible trouble using this new platform - with dire speed issues, broken functionality, and time and again losing my replies.
Having been on the previous two forums for something like 12+ years, and feeling part of the community, I was determined to help (along with everyone else) to get it working again, so I persisted, spent hundreds of hours reproducing and documenting dozens of things which needed fixing.
However, after about three months of providing solutions, submitting browser traces, Wireshark files, and asking for specific changes which I knew would make a difference, it became apparent that nobody was listening, nothing was being done, Lithium were blamed for everything, and Jack seems incapable of understanding simple networking concepts and how they relate to website design and the huge impact that has on customers like me who have a low speed high latency broadband connection.
This broken forum was wasting so much of my time, because the effort to reply to anything took ten times longer than previously, and the fact that I STILL have to compose replies in an external text editor and paste them into the HTML tab (because the RICH TEXT editor just doesn't work), that I decided to take a summer break from participating - in the hope that after say six months, some of my fault reports will have been implemented.
For four months I stayed away, but one day I saw an email from a forum member (who I have a lot of time for) who was asking for help, so I thought perhaps I will help him out and see whether the forum was now in a usable state.
I was immediately dismayed to discover @jaread83 seems to have lost his list of things he was going to get Lithium to fix, as NOTHING which affects me has been solved - AFTER SIX [-Censored-] MONTHS !.
The other telling thing is @jaread83 has done absolutely nothing to fix my 11 to 22 second forum page loading time problem, despite me having provided all manner of technical information and suggestions for him to work with - which would make this site dramatically faster for everyone.
Then the first time I go to report a new problem for Jack to investigate, I get a response to the effect that it's not his responsibility to fault find my router configuration (because I have a setup which he clearly doesn't have clue about) and somehow a Lithium fault which crashes my browser session (just by pressing the PREVIEW tab while in the HTML editor) is somehow down to my equipment (NOT!). Then just to put icing on the cake, Jack's accompanying speculative "technical" guess as to what happened, suggests a problem which would not have been possible if he had actually implemented the very first suggestion that I had made when I first logged into this new forum all those months ago and saw what a pigs ear this new platform was.
So like @Townman, I am sick of this mess, and I don't know what to do about it.
- If I disappear and come back, all my significant previous efforts get forgotten.
- If I disappear completely, then I'm losing some good friends who I enjoy helping out.
- If I complain I get Chris and Bob telling me that Jack has done a great job - ON WHAT ?
- If I keep reporting stuff, it gets ignored, or that somehow it's my fault.
- If I try constructive solutions, the pathetic answer is "we don't have access to Lithium code".
- If I ask Jack, well it's apparent that he really doesn't understand anything technical.
- If I ask, who other than Jack can I have a technical discussion with, no reply EVER comes.
I want to stay, because I've made a lot of friends, and I enjoy finding technical solutions to other customer's problems, and until recently I felt like a valued member of this community.
So I'm left considering my options, as like many other long time forum members who now barely make an appearance, I'm now really struggling to find any enthusiasm to continue.
I want to know, is Plusnet committed to getting this forum working in the near future, and are they going to employ web design staff who know more than [-Censored-] ?
And just for the record, just while I was composing this reply, thirteen different things went wrong with the forum editor, and I lost everything twice, and I now have an authentication error, preview has permanently failed, and pressing POST resulted in this reply being rejected and the forum landing page seemed to be a random destination !.
BobPullen recently said "I can tell you are frustrated" YES and I'm even more frustrated and angry now, when all I want to do is try and compose a constructive reply, when your damn forum errors and crashes every few minutes, and there is nothing left that I can do about it, and the useless forum designers do sweet F.A.
Why is there nobody from Plusnet taking control of this project ?, nobody seems to be in charge, nobody is taking responsibility, nobody is maintaining visibility of (any) progress being made, nobody seems to be holding Lithium to account, and Jack is our only contact - doesn't understand what is going on, goes around blaming everyone else, and doesn't actually fix anything satisfactorily.
@@@@jaread83 and the other apparently anonymous so-called "designers", get your act together and PLEASE fix this forum
I'm sure the moderators are going to have a great time reading this, but somebody needs to stand up and point out that something needs to change - as the the current forum team has failed.
Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Avoidance of swear filter edited as per Forum rules.
