SDMB, with all due respect, you are too fucking slow. And, fellow posters and myself are sick and tired of getting “page cannot be displayed” errors, because the SDMB hasn’t supplied the proper amount of computer power to handle the number of posters that post here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that you provide this board free of charge, and we should all be happy with what we get. But we are not happy (isn’t that right, fellow dopers?)!!!
We are tired of spending a goodly amount of time trying to get our posts just right, only to be met with an aforementioned “page cannot be displayed” error (which, by the way, I am sure I will get when I try to submit this post). We are sick and tired of having to highlight and “control C” our posts, and then save them in Notepad, and then try to resubmit them at a later time, preferably at 4:39am, which, by the way, is the time that I have researched, is the most likely time one can post to the SDMB and reasonably expect that it will show up right away.
Well, I’ve ranted enough. It is now 4:03pm on the east coast. I am now going to submit this new thread and sit here until I see it actually show up. I predict it will be quite a while. I’m now copying it and saving it to a Notepad file. Wish me luck. God knows, I’ll need it.
Ok, ok. I just previewed my post, and it showed up at 4:10pm. But, do you think this will make me retract my statements above? No, it will not. Because, I’m now going to actually submit my post. I guarantee it won’t show up right away, and then I will feel vindicated.
If it does show up right away, this will only be proof that the SDMB has the ability to sense what a poster is typing and planning to submit, and to decide to post it right away. Therefore, I take back my earlier guarantee that this post won’t show up right away, and thus predict that it will!
Wait a minute, while I ‘control C’ this post and save it to Notepad, and then, by all the gods, I promise to submit it.
Geez, I can’t believe that in my rush to point out that my post showed up right away, I didn’t notice that the post subject of “!” had been substituted for my original post subject: “SDMB Facists Plan a Secret Plot to Overtake the World”.
You’re getting much more than you pay for. Everybody’s frustrated, but life is like that. If time is that big a problem for you, you’re probably doing it on your boss’s time anyway. Maybe you can get him/her to write a nasty letter to the Recorder for you. I’d say appreciate what you have, show a little patience, and put a sock in it.
I find it odd to constantly have the “it’s free” argument presented.
Surely this would not be accepted as a counter-argument to any other debate topics posted on the board? What is basically being said is “Shut up and stop complaining”. The same could be said to anyone who rants or indeed complains of legislative problems or whatever.
Are note the users of this board, in other words the ones providing the content which we read, entitled to have opinions as to the functionality of the board? iampunha is, imho, entirely wrong in stating “that gains, at best, minimal value from you?”. In the larger perspective, the board gains its entire value from notcynical, and every other member of the board. The only possible way I can make sense of that comment is if iampunha is referring to number of posts, and I think we all agree that its not the size of your postcount but what you do with it that matters.
Personally I find the technical funcionality of this board to be fairly awful, and that is comparing it to other well-frequented, content based, free sites. I think that the providers of the boards would benefit from fixing the problems, as they are not going to get any better with time, but rather the opposite. There are many ways in which the problems could be eased, not all of which need to cost a lot of time or money. I think I have posted my suggestions elsewhere as to how this could be achieved, I would probably post them again if there were a thread from the board owners asking for advice or suggestions.
Main point of post however, let him have his rant, he is entitled, and the defeatist comments of “thats life, suck it up” are, by me at least, completely unappreciated.
I agree with the OP… and for the life of me, I cant understand why some people get so defensive when the problem is brought up. Could someone enlighten me?
Comic Book Guy: Last night’s “Itchy & Scratchy” was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn’t great, but what right do you have to complain?
CBG: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart: What? They’re giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them.
CBG: [pauses] Worst episode ever.
I feel so honored! First, a thoughtless and witless response (Ya-a-a-a-awn) was offered, and then I was called a name, buckaroo. This name calling alone is enough to make me never want to post here again. Especially because it was served up by SPOOFE, who has no less than 9196 posts to his credit.
Hmm … “Gun control should be outlawed because it is unconstitutional” … “You’ve got a friend in Libertaria” … “Ask the Gay Guy!” … “The Ethics of this Business Decision” … “Is Catholicism a Cult?”
To be quite frank, I don’t see how the “it’s free” argument is a logical answer to any of these debate topics (some recent, some hypothetical, some not-so-recent).
The “It’s free” argument could aptly be used in these scenarios: “My free lunch isn’t big enough” … “I want more free money from the government” … “My birthday presents were inadequate” … “Sex seven times a day isn’t enough” … well, I guess that last one;) Because guess what? It’s free!
Or, more properly, “shut up and stop complaining about a free service, or offer up a way to fix it.”
Bullshit. Firstly, with respect to legislative problems, a hefty number of those of us complaining about those problems also pay taxes, which means we have a say in what goes on in the government. However, as the vast majority of us pay jack shit to post on/use this board, there is a (quite rightly, IMO) “take it or leave it” opinion here.
Am I aggravated by the fact that I can’t always access the boards or post or load threads in less than half an hour? Sure. Does that mean I’m going to demand better hardware while at the same time shelling out not so much as one red cent for said hardware?
The Chicago Reader, IIRC, runs this board at cost.
Sure thing. You’re allowed to have an opinion. But your opinion might be wrong. If your opinion is that the SDMB is here purely to serve your whimsical fancies, for example, I think you might be wrong;)
If I host a free discussion group every week at my house, and I provide snacks and a comfortable area for discussion purposes, and fairly safe discussion topics, and you don’t like the flavor of croutons in the salad I make, you’re free to object. You provide content (I assume, for sake of argument) in the form of discussion. You drive, or bike, or walk, or teleport, or whatever, to my house for the discussion group.
It’s my house. It’s my money. And if you don’t like it you’re free to either leave, ameliorate the situation (either by suggestion or by implementation of something I agree to), or host (those being the three easiest options).
How very (naively) noble … in what sense does the board gain its entire value from notcynical, or from anyone? The only person I could possibly see the board gaining its entire value from is Cecil, and even then, without Jerry the Tech God, we’d probably still be down for board upgrades from this past February.
I was not, in fact, making any sort of reference to my post count. I can even recall saying several times on this board that post count almost invariably means jack shit. Take, for example, jdavis (otherwise hailed around these parts as Jerry the Tech God) and handy. The latter has, IIRC, over 12K posts. Jdavis might have 100. I doubt you could find a substantial section of the board who thought handy was more important to this board than Jerry.
And you are doing what, exactly, to amend this situation? “Whine whine whine … this free service isn’t good enough. Make it better or I’ll …”
Yeah. You’ll…
Who/how so? And how do you justify, to the ChiReader, any business expenditure toward a service that generates no income and in fact is (as has been said previously) run at cost? “Gee, this free service we offer could be better, so let’s pour more money into it. Wait … we’re not actually generatingmoney from this…”
Humor us:) However, I rather doubt (again, as has been said before on this board) the higher-ups haven’t considered any idea any of us has.
He’s allowed to rant and we’re allowed to call him on the stupidity of the rant summarized best as “I am going to complain about this free service from which I gain quite a bit and which doesn’t especially gain from my presence/involvement”.
Man, I had such high hopes for this thread based on the title “!”
But, alas, when I opened it, it was just a rant about the poor hamsters. Reminds me of the joke aboke the person who complains about the horrible food-- and small portions.
Besides Brian Ekers and iampunha’s posts below yours, there’s this recent thread on ATMB, about a plan in the works. Previously, any attempts to try to donate have been met with the problem that this will run up a tax bill for the Reader, on a service that already costs them money and time.
In other words, this isn’t a new complaint, and most complainers bring no real solutions.
