general forum feedback

[chipsample 9]

I really don't feel like participating anymore. It just seems that the entire thing is trying to push me out and I can't fantom the energy anymore to bother.

 

Another hear hear!

We could start another forum where we can dance and sing and discuss about 3D printing the way we like it. I would really want that place to be the Ultimaker forum though, the interaction between manufacturer and pro-users is so valuable. But if we can't find that here, perhaps we should start/find something ourselfs.

@Daid, hope you'll be ok!

I too hope Daid will STAY with UM community regardless of whether or not I ever get my old login-back.

Daid will always be a software engineer, and he'll always land on his feet. His work is known throughout the 3D community, and he'll always have a job, most likely within the 3D community.

The AMOUNT OF LOST MAN HOURS in HQ, let alone out here in the user community in all this fiasco is staggering!

Getting my old log-in back is only one problem.  Finding anything again is totally another.

Another thing that gets me is this:

UM pulled of a terrif ranking for their product.  Marketing shouted it far and wide.  The instanaity of CHATROOM RESPONSE from the pros is what made farting around with UM printers bearable in the first place. That's because help was INSTANTLY there for the asking, WHEN THE PROBLEMS OCCUR in real time, no fuss, no muss, no judgment, just collegial INSTANT help.  

And man oh, man but does the newbie buyer of UMO, UM2, GO and Extended have their problems.  That is well documented....well, it WAS well documented, now that I think about it.

Ask yourself, HQ. Has marketing fielded one print profile Q? Or one my layers won't adhere to each other. Or one print speed reco Q? Have they analyzed one gallery photo and posted a solution within 20 minutes?

No. You've got ivory tower syndrome, and those jerks need to be canned. In one fell swoop, they destroyed their own press generated buzz, and wiped out multiplied thousands of user hours which have gone into making these units something besides an expensive toy, suitable for the geeks on the planet.

That's ALL gone.  That continuity has been destroyed.  I still see Gr5s name on the "new front page"...in the how many have posted brag column.  Big deal. What is this? A quarter Video Game front screen?  NOT! How does THAT help me?

And these stupid conversational "bubbles" format which each up my time on the homepage? The old, small footprint "recent posts" did great and one could keep up with the innovation around here, AND the Q&A that was constantly occuring.

I have no desire to poke around the helpful print galleries any more, where so much of my learning was taking place, which allowed me to save visiting LIVE CHAT for when I really needed some answer, and needed it quick.

Answer me this, HQ.

How has this colossal error you made in this non-improvement reduced HQ response time to help ticket?

How much has this bumbling at the top levels increased parts shipping time by diverting energy and focus and destroyed morale at HQ?

How has this put money in OUR pockets --YOUR CUSTOMER BASE-- who are trying to get the hang of your complicated, NOT OFF THE SHELF, plug and go box with lights that make noise and screw up my print jobs? I WANT to make a living in this brave new world? Marketing has done jack for me.  

Me??? I've lost money over the last 3 weeks. I've got P'O'ed customers. My phone isn't ringing as much as I need to keep messing with this brave new bizarro world UM has succeeded in creating.  I've got incalcuable and non-recoverable lost opportunity costs.  And the damage to my quick turn around time has resulted in unhappy customers for ME, just because someone sold you a bill of goods, and you didn't have the horsesense to listen to your own people like Daid. Instead let marketing lead you around by the nosehairs and raid your corporate coffers?

If you are so damned proud of these "developers" whom you hired to screw us, then tell us the name of their firm. I'll go get some of my lost revenues out of their hide, since they have YOUR money.

Fire the marketing team. They aren't worth the price of coffee they are consuming.

Fire the "developers" who couldn't find their way around an old fashioned darkroom with developer solution in the print trays without a flashlight if their lives depended upon it.

Pull the plug on your grand experiment which has hurt us as users, and put us back into communication with each other which brought us instant help, resulting in money in our pocket and willingness to say nice things aobut UM products even though we were lying through out teeth most the time, out here in the field.

I'll never buy another of your products, nor upgrade again. The instantaneous input into Cura upgrades is another thing that is gone. Why? Has Marketing ever written one single line of Cura code?

Now, YOU'RE going to lose money, yes, even MORE money because you've not pulled production forward but shoved New Unit sales off the end of the gangplank.

Part of what got UM its highranking you WERE so proud of was the instanaity of pro-user help, IN CHAT and in a usable forum. I remember reading it and thinking it was worth checking out. You've made your competitors extremely happy by your deeply flawed ability to evaluate what WE need out here in userland, not what makes your homepage more attractive than GTA5 welcome screen.

Now we have a welcomepage from hell at the expense of revenues in my pocket.

DEMAND YOUR MONEY BACK, and then send me my portion of lost revenues. Wrap my share of lost revenue in a box of cuban cigars.  Then maybe I'll start referring people to UM again and lie about how easy it is to get help in less than ---what is it now, 3 weeks and counting?

Add three more weeks to this mess and you'll just about be at exactly how long it takes you to ship a replacement bowden tube or replacement knob, or bad circuit board, etc., let alone shipping out a brand new machine.

Oh, you say shipment is now at 8 weeks.  

That enough proof for you? How much pain can you stand at HQ??

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[personal-drones 44]

Hello everyone, just a quick post to say that I was finally able, today, to reset my password and login, after much struggle with the password reset form that was just keeping reloading itself. Today, it worked. I would like to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to Sander and to Zenalda of customer support for the great and careful assistance during these days of exclusion, it was not funny to be locked out from my favorite community. Also thank you so much to Swordriff who has been really helpful and supportive in this period.

I hope that, as myself, now also the other members who were locked out can be back. Anders Olson and Dim3nsioneer, time to try again to reset this password!

See you all on the forums! Cheers - PD

[SandervG 1,521]

Dear @Chipsample, thank you for your reply.

I must say, I find it a bit difficult where to start replying on your post..

Reading it I have the feeling you are currently experiencing some difficulties, but not necessarily caused by the forum?

All the content from our previous forum is moved to the new forum.

If you are in need of help, and you don't want to see all the latest topics?

Try the following: Is it hardware related? Go here:http://ultimaker.com/en/community/hardware/troubleshooting

Help is just around the corner.

If you want to save time, for now I would recommend to use the search option from the website, over the current one in the forums. Both work fine, but I hear from a few users that the community-search option doesn't always give the desired results so we have to look into that. The global search option covers both the support pages as the community platform, so there is a big chance it will show you the answer you are looking for.

About your last remark about shipping times, these are the latest dates from HQ:

small orders like spare parts, filament etc; 2-5 businessdays

Ultimaker 2 is 2 weeks

Ultimaker Original+ is 4-6 weeks

Heated bed Upgrade is 6-8 weeks

and the Ultimaker 2Go and Ultimaker 2Extended since we have just started shipping them and they are brand new products are at 8-10 weeks.

If you have an order which exceeds these dates, please get in touch with us and we will make sure a mutual solution is found, like we always do.

If there is anything else from your post which I have missed to address, please feel free to let me know.

Thank you!

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest
typo

[SandervG 1,521]

Hello everyone, just a quick post to say that I was finally able, today, to reset my password and login, after much struggle with the password reset form that was just keeping reloading itself. Today, it worked. I would like to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to Sander and to Zenalda of customer support for the great and careful assistance during these days of exclusion, it was not funny to be locked out from my favorite community. Also thank you so much to Swordriff who has been really helpful and supportive in this period.

I hope that, as myself, now also the other members who were locked out can be back. Anders Olson and Dim3nsioneer, time to try again to reset this password!

See you all on the forums! Cheers - PD

Good to have you back!

[chipsample 9]

Your biggest miss is 4 misses, actually.  YOU FAILED TO ADDRESS:

DESTROYING LIVE CHAT in the name of "marketing improvement." You have the gall to not comprehend how instant help when printing problems arise impacts your user revenue stream, order fulfillment, reputation, which was NOT occurring before you destroyed chat and is occuring now? That's cheeky of you.

You failed to address any acknowledgment of USERS' lost revenues and lost opportunity costs out here in the field with your poorly advised and executed "improvements."  

You failed to disclose the name of the firm who are your DEVELOPERS so we can not have our opinions muted by HQ's gatekeeping.  FUrthermore, I would like to be spared ever doing business with them in the future.

You failed to assure us of Daid's Job Security.

 

Dear @Chipsample, thank you for your reply.

I must say, I find it a bit difficult where to start replying on your post..

If there is anything else from your post which I have missed to address, please feel free to let me know.

Thank you!

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[rigs 735]

Hello everyone, just a quick post to say that I was finally able, today, to reset my password and login, after much struggle with the password reset form that was just keeping reloading itself. Today, it worked. I would like to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to Sander and to Zenalda of customer support for the great and careful assistance during these days of exclusion, it was not funny to be locked out from my favorite community. Also thank you so much to Swordriff who has been really helpful and supportive in this period.

I hope that, as myself, now also the other members who were locked out can be back. Anders Olson and Dim3nsioneer, time to try again to reset this password!

See you all on the forums! Cheers - PD

Ouhhhhhhh ! bienvenue amigo !

[SandervG 1,521]

Your biggest miss is 4 misses, actually. - ....-

If there is anything else from your post which I have missed to address, please feel free to let me know.

Thank you!

 

Thank you for your reply.

Please allow me to get back on those points which I have missed in my previous reply. We are sorry about taking away the chat function.

You are not the first to report this back at us, and it is on our list to reinstall. It may not be helpful right now, but perhaps it gives you some reinsurance that it will be back.

If you are in need of a fast answer, you could post your question on our forums. Not always, but occasionally you have a reply pretty fast. Otherwise, for technical help  we are also available by phone. If you are in the US you can also rely on our service hub, supervised by Simon (illuminarti).

About the lost revenues, I fail to see how that has anything to do with the new community platform, my apologies. Would you mind elaborating?

Who developed our website and community platform is irrelevant. They have worked on our request, if you want to leave any remarks you can send them to me in a DM.

You could also leave them here, but judging by your tone of voice I feel the need to ask you to stay polite, thank you in advance.

About Daid's job security, that is and has always been in his own hands.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest
typo

[personal-drones 44]

Mon ami Rigs, nice to see you again! Now, I haven't followed closely the forum lately, for the well know reasons. Is the "Friends" feature gone? Hope it can be restored back, I loved to have forum friends

[personal-drones 44]

There is a bug that should be easily fixed in the pages graphical layout.

If a username is too long it will "spill" in the column of the posts.

See the red arrow in the picture below.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[SandervG 1,521]

That is noted, thank you for sharing.

I don't know if you have read the full thread (if not, brace yourself!)

but that particular fix doesn't have our highest priority at the moment.

Now that everyone can log in again hopefully we can go without '-TheGuyKnownAs..-

Nonetheless, it will be addressed!

Thanks!

[jhertzberg 19]

I was idly scrolling through the people list to try to get a handle on how these monikers were assigned to users. I noticed the massive number of "Tech Head" users who have account creation dates in 2011 or 2012, but have zero or one posts to the forum. Were their post histories lost, or are they long abandoned accounts that should have been culled? Did the old forum keep track of days since last visit?

[Titus 170]

That is noted, thank you for sharing.

 

I posted a similar screenshot and reported that error a few days ago when the guy known as was first replying. If you already noted it then, nothing said, if you missed that back then you might have missed more and a reread might be useful

[SandervG 1,521]

That is noted, thank you for sharing.

 

I posted a similar screenshot and reported that error a few days ago when the guy known as was first replying. If you already noted it then, nothing said, if you missed that back then you might have missed more and a reread might be useful

Don't worry, I haven't missed a thing!

I forgot to add that it was already noted. Since it was @personal-drones first feedback I also didn't want to demotivate him

[SandervG 1,521]

I want to rule out any miscommunications or room for errors or expectations.

Would you all say this description suits the filter we are all eagerly waiting for?

'We will also add a filter, that will enable you to see what the latest updated topics are that you are following, showing partially the latest reply, marked as unread.

Followed by the 'general' new topics/replies.

The filter settings you use will be stored so when you get back to the forum you automatically will have your accustomed overview of relevant information.'

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[ahoeben 1,948]

Not the best descriptive text I have ever read... Here's my go at it.

'We will also add a filter, that will enable you to see what topics have new answers since you last read the topic (or since you last marked the topic as read), with an option to totally ignore a topic or (sub)forum.

The filter settings you use will be stored so when you get back to the forum you automatically will have your accustomed overview of relevant information.'

[SandervG 1,521]

Thanks!

[Anders Olsson 136]

Finally, the login/reset password issue seems to have been resolved.

In my opinion, you can go on and do bug fixes an updates, but it does not solve the main problem.

The design/layout of this new forum is fundamentally flawed, and you would have to look at well established platforms like phpBB if you want something that is attractive for forum-users.

If you do that, you would most likely end up with something that looks much like the old forum, that is why I keep recommending you to open up the old forum again.

There is a reason for the old-school look at most forums: It uses colored bars and colored text, different fort sizes, bold text, post counters and various icons in very clever ways to compress lots of information into a small space and make it easy to navigate.

It might look old school and trivial, but there are years of testing and developing behind these layouts.

It is not strange that people does not feel at home and get a distant/confusing feel at this new forum. The gray/white-ish blur of text and background without any distinct borders or points to fix your eyes on is simply not easy to use. There is a lack of contrast and the layout does not follow established forum standards.

Combined with lots of whitespace, lots of scrolling and numerous common "navigation aids" removed, it simply makes the forum unpleasant, confusing and tiring to navigate.

It is not rocket science as I said. Look at well established platforms, they look that way for a reason.

I have seen another forum where I used to spend some time go a bit in the same direction of fancy/blurry/"modern" look, not even close to as bad as this one, but a bit in the same direction. That was half a year ago and I still spend much less time there than I used to, just because it feels difficult and tiring to use.

So if you really want to continue with this thing I strongly suggest that you heavily modify it, preferably copying the layout and functionality of one of the established platforms.

I would have thought that it would be more motivated to just buy some ready solution though and spend Ultimakers software budget and man hours on for example improving and adding new functionality to Cura.

But that is just my opinion.

Maybe there is a good reason for writing your own forum software, which I fail to see right now (?)

[swordriff 119]

@anders-olsson:

are you sure there is sufficient shielding between the nuclear reactor and your office, at your institute?

[TheGuyKnownAsDim3nsioneer 11]

Hi UM-Family:), some good news, I was able to finaly reset my password yesterday night so I can login again with my "old" account. I hope this is true for others also? @dim3nsioneer, @theguyknownasandersolsson?

@Daid, brave move. I seriously hope that initiates changes (top down) as forseen.

Nope. I still cannot login. As I said, it will at least take another week for UM to fix it. Time is running...

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[TheGuyKnownAsDim3nsioneer 11]

That is noted, thank you for sharing.

I don't know if you have read the full thread (if not, brace yourself!)

but that particular fix doesn't have our highest priority at the moment.

Now that everyone can log in again hopefully we can go without '-TheGuyKnownAs..-

Nonetheless, it will be addressed!

Thanks!

Not everybody can login... as I just wrote you, I still do not get reset emails... :(

It's a pity I can't change my profile's name anymore. I would really be in a mood to change it to 'TheAnnoyedGuyKnownAsDim3nsioneer'.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[foehnsturm 969]

Bug:

Posts of new members waiting for approval already show up in the forum's latest by sorting and in the members profile. Not critical but confusing when you click on that topics and there is no new post there to be seen.

[Anders Olsson 136]

:-)

I might sound aggressive, but just check in the old forum and you get an idea:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150316054047/http://umforum.ultimaker.com/

For example:

With my current computer I can see four topics at the same time in the new forum.

Using the same level of zoom (font size/readability) in the old forum I can see ten (!) topics at the same time.

However, there is no additional information in the new forum compared to the old one.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest

[SandervG 1,521]

:-)

I might sound aggressive, but just check in the old forum and you get an idea:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150316054047/http://umforum.ultimaker.com/

For example:

With my current computer I can see four topics at the same time in the new forum.

Using the same level of zoom (font size/readability) in the old forum I can see ten (!) topics at the same time.

However, there is no additional information in the new forum compared to the old one.

In regard of information density, we are aware that this currently is a step back and we are looking for the best way to improve this.

Most likely we should be able to make a step into the right directing during next week.

[SandervG 1,521]

Another quick update; currently we have added another filter to the selection called 'following'. Select Latest > Following.

Right now it is a starting point, in a way that it may reduce your view in topics that you don't want to keep track off. It doesn't have a distinction of unread posts yet.

It will be improved/enhanced over time, but for the timing being you may find it useful already.

[chipsample 9]

Your biggest miss is 4 misses, actually. - ....-

If there is anything else from your post which I have missed to address, please feel free to let me know.

About the lost revenues, I fail to see how that has anything to do with the new community platform, my apologies. Would you mind elaborating?

Thank you!

 

Sander, tone criticism is a red herring. For you to suggest that I've been impolite is so bogus.  

I submit your developer vendor does not need protecting.  They've obviously done this similar stealth / surpise technique on others. It worked so very well here when it was unleashed. Now it's been done to us and it is OUR business now to look into THEIR business and avoid them at all costs in any future dealings, either side of the oceans.  To put it another way, do not think of referring them within the halls of THIS user community.  It will not go over well.

Your unannounced closing the entire forum, rendering it inoperable, removing history, images, screwing up search, and doubly capricious removal of live chat were all unadvertised, capricious and financially damaging to your user base.  It smacks of malicious application of creative destruction.

If you honestly cannot see how removal of instant live chat of UM builder community help in the middle of a commissioned print gone awry and that panic mode when promises to clients have been made and UM does not behave as designed NOT DUE TO USER FAULT,....if you cannot see how that impacts revenues of your installed user base, revenues and goodwill you are and always have been planning on capturing to foster future sales and upgrade cycle, you are futher removed from the reality of the destruction forced upon us.  The impact of your capricious decisions and the longer lasting impact upon us your user community are reverberating.  Australia isn't able to help Cypress solve vexing print issues.  Alaska, Florida, NY and Toronto, Netherlands chime in and fix, on the spot, and we are back on task and on schedule.

You are out of community touch, Sander. Ivory tower? Meet bricks and mortar/SOHO pavement!!!

This has gone SPLAT.  Wallets have taken a hit.  

I will rebuild, pun intended.  I will not spend lost revenues I do not now have.  I cannot budget lost customer revenues to spend on more UM product.

You've destroyed something.  And I truly do not believe you are "sorry" in the slightest.  This was an executive decision, and executed perfectly and you, if you are going to represent the head of "community" have to take the hit for the destruction.

To put it another way...you built us a Kool-aid stand, we became your customers, and you closed it without notice and decided to substitute feedlot run-off as the new drink when you reopened.  You still will not acknowledge the smell difference between the two drinks being sold.

This is so bad out here in builder hub land, you have no idea, obviously what you have done.

I'm upgrading to delta.  UM simply has proven they cannot be trusted.   I'll be listing my equipment on secondary market shortly after I quit scrambling to rebuild my 3-D hub reputation which has definitely taken a hit.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Guest