Drastic Suggestion: please reply if you agree

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi Reibuehl,

Thank you for your reply.

Whoops, sorry if my reply came across defensive!

My intentions actually are the far opposite of "whatever you will say won't change my opinion". I hope that the changes we will make to the forum are the proof of that? (most changes yet have to be released, but we are working on those).

That said, we try to be as flexible as possible, but we can not change our direction based on every opinion (or 10). It is a very difficult balance we have to find between choosing a direction and implementing our communities suggestions.

Sometimes it is easy and we can implement suggestions and ideas, sometimes a request can not be fulfilled. I hope you understand.

Well.. next time I will think twice before saying something about the vibe here. Lesson learned

[nallath 1,120]

we can not change our direction based on every opinion (or 10).

Soo, lets talk about the elephant in the room. What would change the direction? Would the direction be changed if the number of posts declines? If a hundred people say that they believe it should be different? If five thousand points 'worth' of people would say it? If one reseller says it? Five resellers? A combination of the above? If we suddenly get a lot more (or less) simple questions with support?

[Titus 170]

I have not said that you released it unannounced. I said apparently untested and I stand to that. Whatever was discussed on the old forum, it has apparently not helped to test BASIC functionality like jumping to replies, mail notifications, etc.

 

That was never discussed since it was obvious to everyone that the good things would stay in stead of dissapear. Just like spam. Nobody ever mentioned that there shouldn't be spam. That is a basic function that sjould be there. @SandervG I'm ok with helping improve the situation, but right now it could look like you released a product and assumed we would fix it for you. The amount of time people put into giving feedback here would have been better spend in feedback on prints, methodes etc. And that is valuable time lost, in case of the basic stuff that should have been really obvious. Not the fine tweaks that you can expect from new projects.

@Nallath Good point.

Another elephant in the room(oh boy I love elephants, as a good Mechanical Engineer from Delft should): Why was the forum released in the state it was in. Can you enlighten us in terms of your own expectations/requirements that made you release. Or was it time driven?

I don't want to seem offensive in any means, I'm just curious.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Guest

[korneel 176]

Hi Korneel, thank you for your detailed post.

I understand your feelings, and I would be happy to give you an equally detailed reply in return but in the basis I could be short: Sorry, but hosting a new (different) forum is not going to happen. We- ..... -different method. failed.

well, perhaps I'm simply wrong. or to old to understand these new things :)I'll check back in a month when\if the fixes have been applied

I will give you a more detailed reply then. The intentions of my reply is find the reason of your discomfort or the discontent with the new forum. In my opinion I could influence your feelings in 2 ways, either explain why we did why we did and create understanding and insight, or change whatever creates your feelings and turn them into more positive ones.

I have already tried to explain why choices were made and that this forum is part of a larger concept. That is also the same reason why we can not migrate back to the old/another forum. Instead, we will make this forum better.

In that case, we are all happy, no?

In order to successfully do this, we need an overview of the things that are lacking. We have already started developing these new features so we should experience improvement (hopefully) this week.

In regard of your reply you address a few reasons of why this forum does not do the trick for you. For example;

You have to dig around through spam; A better spam filter is in the works so you shouldn't have to worry about this for long.

You have to log in every time; another fix that is on our developers desk atm, you shouldn't have to worry about this for long.

Chat: Something that we are looking into too and will most likely be implemented soon in a rather basic but functional way.

A filter on last visit + notification improvements are also in the works.

Maybe it is difficult to envision it now, but by taking away these obstacles we think the forum will be more like home for you.

There is no reason to compare it to the progress of YouMagine. Ultimaker and Youmagine both operate as separated organizations and have our own tools at hand.

I do understand the train of thought, but we are pushing for fast progress so it shouldn't something to worry about.

We understand the feeling you are trying to get across. Which, for some users is a slightly dissatisfied feeling. My attempts are to acknowledge them, and work with your feedback. Work with your feedback so in return hopefully to change your feelings towards more positive.

My apologies if my replies have been to pragmatic.

If I have missed anything from your original posts or something you want to know, please feel free to ask.

 

I just think we have reached a point where we will have to agree to disagree.

I can give you my opinion and views, and you are free to use them as you want.

there is no responsibility you have towards me, and I'm just happy that Ultimaker has always supplied a platform for opinions, lessons to learn and just in general good fun.

I completely understand your vision Sander. You're moving into a communmity instead of a stand-alone forum. totally understood.

I think you vision is sound. no discussion around that.

now let me tell you about my background. without going into great detail, at the end of the day i'm responsible for selling, envisioning and implementing new direct communication systems for customers with 30.000 employees and more.

One of the things that I do is talk to customers on how to migrate from an old to a new telephony system.

Out of experience I have noticed that if I take away someone's phone, give him a very good looking new phone, but take away ability that user has been using on a daily basis, my project will fail.

honestly, I feel the same thing has happened to me know. yes I got my shiny new phone. but things I did on a daily basis, chat, new topics, good overview, posting and attaching pictures, so many things are just not possible anymore.

to me it feels a date has been agreed, first the 16th, then the 21st, when a new community HAD to be online no matter the consequences. and that is what has happened. a new community site is online. By not having feature parity nor meeting the communities expectations

I think the logical step is to take a step back, work with the old forum for a while (which should be online anyway per the promises made) and work with the community to get a new community environment online. If you can fix everything that you said you would in a couple of weeks with the best developers, You can make a lot more money for a different employer..

[deepshots 2]

One thing I just realised that makes the new "forum" seem so un-forumy is the lack of activity counter. Post count and the latest reply time stamp is an old and proven method of quickly seeing what part of the forum is active and what not. On the forum overview please add post count and latest reply after each of the boards... and who posted it.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Guest

[shurik 87]

I have always liked the old forum and had stated more than once to many people all around (not just on the forum) that the community of UM doubles the value of the printer itself.

I like no less the openness and sincerity of the UM staff in everything they do. It is priceless, again. Right now, it is the only thing keeping me visiting this strange site as what it had became.

Reading the latest conversation in this only of the two topics I suceeded to follow, one frightening idea comes thru to me again and again:

One fairly successful company had controlled about 60% of the market, and due to its own very unique vision and total detachment from the users, in 2-3 years they got down to just 2-3% and never recovered.

It was Microsoft who had Windows Mobile on virtually every non-Apple mobile device until Android made its debut. The rest is history.

I was wrong many times, and I hope to be wrong again. Please, however good the vision is, do not go too far with it without looking back.

[peetersm 124]

A summary of the upcoming improvements:

- Filter: New since last visit.

 

I hope you really meant read post tracking, where individual posts show which ones have been read in the thread. I want to be able to see read posts while in the thread, not a filter that would just show a list of posts like the current filters functionality.

Also I think people have been saying pretty loud and clear we need the over view page back. The current layout requiring you to go into each sub section is a time killer.

I really feel way more disconnected here from the content I came to read and interact with that in any other forum/community page. This new design is disconnecting people, kinda the opposite of the stated goal.

[chrisw 70]

Agreed. Several months ago this was a great site for me to learn the basics about my UM2 and about 3DP in general. When I had an issue, the answer would be easy to find in past posts, or I'd ask in a new post, and somebody else would be quick to solve my dilemma.

Now it's difficult to do much of anything in here, which leads me to look for other 3DP info sources online.

Why is that?

Does the way the forum is categorized not make sense to you?

This new forum should be more obvious where to find the topics you are looking for.

All/Most of the old data is migrated, it is more efficiently categorized and the basic Q&A still works so what leads you to think you can't do much in here in contrary of the old forums?

Even though the forum search needs to be improved, the website search option (top right corner) works very well.

Looking forward to your reply.

Sander,

This is my third attempt to reply to you... not your fault, but something about the design of this page just tends to reject my attempts at navigating it.

For example, on my first attempt to describe some of my complaints with this page, I attempted to open a view of the Categories in a new window. At the top of this page I right-clicked "Forum", chose "Open in a new window". Sure enough a new window opened, however this one in which I'm writing also vanished and went to the main Forum page.

During my second attempt to write a reply here, I started telling you that first story. After I'd almost finished typing it, a big error message showed up on the screen about a timeout. So that text was wiped out... I navigate back here, and this time I'm "copying all" every few seconds just in case, so next time I won't need to retype.

These are the sorts of frustrating issues that I feel are wasting time during each visit here. Maybe it just requires learning the quirks of this system.

Also, over half the time that I'm browsing forums these days, it's on my Android. For some reason this page responds very slowly on my Android browser. So I watch a blank white screen while I'm waiting for it to load.

[chrisw 70]

Agreed. Several months ago this was a great site for me to learn the basics about my UM2 and about 3DP in general. When I had an issue, the answer would be easy to find in past posts, or I'd ask in a new post, and somebody else would be quick to solve my dilemma.

Now it's difficult to do much of anything in here, which leads me to look for other 3DP info sources online.

Why is that?

Does the way the forum is categorized not make sense to you?

This new forum should be more obvious where to find the topics you are looking for.

All/Most of the old data is migrated, it is more efficiently categorized and the basic Q&A still works so what leads you to think you can't do much in here in contrary of the old forums?

Even though the forum search needs to be improved, the website search option (top right corner) works very well.

Looking forward to your reply.

Sander,

First off, this very small reply window in which I'm typing makes it difficult to edit the reply/quote/etc data. That's why the whole conversation is still there.

Next, about the categories. I'm glad you asked because I hadn't really assigned a reason to my feelings of unease about the categories until you asked and made me think about it. I'm accustomed to seeing all forum categories on one page, with brief descriptions of each category next to it, as well as a list of how many total threads are in each category, and how many are new to me.

These days I have no spare time. So when I encounter any situation that is taking more of my time than it should, my brain automatically attempts to evacuate me from that setting. This forum requires too many clicks and too much sifting through extra pages. In other forums I can open one page, do a brief scan of the categories, and instantly know which category I'm going to visit, and why. This one doesn't yet make me feel like I have a direction when I first open the page.

Chris

[eldrick 65]

I'm with those who find the new forum unusable and unreadable.

The old one worked fine, no-one was complaining, and I am truly mystified by why you guys wasted the time and money screwing it up.

I'd suggest that you instead spend your resources on the product: give us a printhead with replaceable nozzles, or a Mutley-type extruder. Expand the print volume (not just Up). Put a faster processor in the electronics.

Do better product sooner and less expensive - forget about "artistic" site design, you're not good at it.

[nallath 1,120]

I'd suggest that you instead spend your resources on the product: give us a printhead with replaceable nozzles, or a Mutley-type extruder. Expand the print volume (not just Up). Put a faster processor in the electronics.

The site did not take away any resources from R&D. Trowing more money at R&D wont make us produce anything faster, as we cant hire engineers fast enough (both because new people have transition periods and because engineers are rare in the Netherlands).

[SandervG 1,521]

Agreed. Several months ago this was a great site for me to learn the basics about my UM2 and about 3DP in general. When I h - ..... - I can open one page, do a brief scan of the categories, and instantly know which category I'm going to visit, and why.  This one doesn't yet make me feel like I have a direction when I first open the page.

Chris

Dear @Chrisw,

Thank you for your detailed post.

I am very busy at the moment preparing for Maker Faire Bay Area and 3D Printshow London so it took me a little bit longer to get back with you, my apologies.

If you allow me to reply on your suggestions; the text editor window now automatically scales to your post, so that should help.

We are working on a different overview which we hope to share with you all later this week, but it should improve the newsfeed and user interface.

By sharing it with you we hope to optimize it before building and it will be a great match with everyones expectations and requirements.

The time out bug has also been fixed.

When an update to the forum is installed you could be asked to sign in again, but it won't automatically log you out.

If you have any more feedback I would be happy to hear about them!

Have you also seen this page, it shows what has already been fixed.

Thank you!

[leon-knook 4]

It is better to make a good copy of something that is working good than trying to make something new which is crap. This website is crap period!