Everybody in this thread has a legitimate gripe. But in fairness to TubaDiva, she gets dozens of emails every day on matters from board behavior to poster behavior to requests to change usernames to mod applications to communications with other mods and admins to God only knows what. She gets PMs, probably also in large numbers. And she moderates ATMB.
Unfortunately for Tuba, she has no secretary to sort out the junk mail, respond to the boilerplate stuff, and forward her only what she has the ability and the authority to do board-wise. I know I’ve complained about her before, and even now in the Seven thread, I’ve asked her to please do more than her (first?) post indicated she would do.
But I mean talk about a full plate. Tuba’s got a full plate.
EDIT: It works! I could log in but was unable to post this morning. It’s mid-afternoon in Thailand right now, the wee hours of the morning in the American Midwest. We’re 7 hours ahead of GMT. Could the time have something to do with it? Increasingly, I am simply not allowed to post in the morning.
This is inconvenient, as this time of day I’m out and about and have to borrow someone’s computer. I like going over the Board at home with my morning coffee, but Alas! That may not be possible anymore for a while.
I knew Tuba Diva was an Administrator but did not understand she was the Webmaster. Didn’t mean to depersonalize her by referring to “the Webmaster.” Still no answer to any of my e-mails, but I assume she’s reading this thread. I would really, really like to be able to post at home in the morning again.
In my opinion, the volume of complaints has dropped, as the ‘why bother, it won’t make the slightest difference’ team expands exponentially.
Outnumbered only by the, ‘I’m not going to believe anything they say anymore, having been misled so often in the past, so why bother complaining’ team.
I think TPTB read this as ‘there aren’t really all that many complaints, so how bad could it be? Let’s just ignore it.’
But, y’know, who ARE the powers that be? I have no idea. It’s not Tuba or Dex or any of the admins, and it certainly isn’t the mods. It might be Ed, but I doubt it. Ed knows about the complaints. He does read the board, and even participates from time to time (especially lately). Jerry also knows about the complaints and the problems.
So, TPTB are people who probably never read any of this, and everything chokes through a single pipeline: Ed. He might (and probably does) tell TPTB what our situation is. Maybe Jerry does, too. Or maybe Jerry just does assignment work — like write an accounts payable module, or trouble-shoot the sales report which isn’t adding up. I don’t know.
And Marley et al can act like I’m being all dramatic and all (when in reality, the drama is in their responses to me), but there’s no denying reality: if anyone is listening, no one is responding. (And “Hey! We hear you all ready!” is not a response. It’s just an acknowledgment.)
Well, I guess I’m wrong. Apparently Ed is indeed the power that be. The other threads discussing similar issues have all been closed with the explanation that it is Ed’s decision to make. Even the very careful explanation about not needing specific data, but only configuration specs went totally whoosh. Oh well. Whatever.
Brit here. Very poor performance. Generally, before about 1-2pm in the afternoon my time there’s little point coming here. I can get to the SD page but if I click on Message Boards nothing happens. Or, if I do manage to get to the front Message Boards page, when I click on forums and threads nothing happens.
Things get better in the afternoon, when the services approaches normal/satisfactory. Nonetheless a little disappointing, given that it’s the only site I actually pay to belong to.
This would all seem to be symptomatic of serious problems somewhere along the line, but it’s all just speculation until and unless the powers that be tell us exactly what’s going on, what the problems are, and whether the SDMB will survive.
I’ve never been a heavy user but the few times I’ve tried to post lately I’ve had to deal with timeouts, database errors, etc. Board performance has been shit for years. They can’t or won’t fix it. So yeah, fuck it. There are other places on the internet to go.
EDIT: It works! This is the first time in about 24 hours I’ve been allowed to post. At one point this morning, I could not even read or navigate the Board anymore. This is sort of like being banned.
I find it a bit odd that a Mod or Admin has not popped in to say if they’re looking into the problem.
Yes. I asked this in post #23. It is the lack of response that I find really frustrating. I am a paying customer, and it’s only polite to respond to a valid complaint.
So, whoever is responsible for this, please talk to us.
We haven’t said anything because we have had no information to give you.
The staff is very much aware of the problem – we use the board as much or perhaps even more than most people because we need to read so much here. We’re as frustrated and unhappy about it as you are.
Ed and Jerry have been made aware of the situation. We’re waiting for information/answers ourselves. When we get something that we can share of course we’ll pass it on.
For the past five minutes I’ve gotten nothing but blank white screens. Right now there are three duplicate threads in Cafe Society. Is this some kind of fucking joke? Are they deliberately doing this because they resent people complaining about the performance? Seriously, what the fuck is this all about? I’m going to complain about it from now on, every single time it happens, right here, until something is done about it. Because they need to KNOW they have a responsibility to keep this forum running. It wouldn’t be so goddamn galling if EVERY OTHER VBULLETIN FORUM on the internet ran properly.
(Let’s see if this post goes through; I tried posting earlier and it didn’t work.)
Do the admins track any metrics to keep tabs on board performance or aid in troubleshooting? It’s one thing to get angry posts from customers (those who are able to post, that is), but I’d certainly hope that there’s some sort of monitoring system in place to help the admins get a handle on what the root issues might be.
