This is an anonymous email that was sent to me yesterday. This person is unhappy with the upgraded discussion forum. As with any big change, there is always someone unhappy. I can respect that but what I can't respect is someone who makes an insulting statement anonymously. Take a read at what was sent to me and tell me how I should respond...
Just wanted to tell you that I think your so-called new and improved site blows, and so do a lot of others judging by the complete lack of posting activity on it since unveiled. It's cumbersome, tedious, and just plain hard to read. Just thought you should know. You've taken something that was not broke, and gone and "fixed it". Remember "New Coke". Please consider restoring the old site and format. Thank you.
I can accept constructive criticism and suggestions but broad comments that say "it sucks", "it blows", etc. will not inspire or motivate anyone (especially me) when I am the guy being insulted. But having said that, I do want to acknowledge the many positive and thank you emails, posts, and Paypal contributions.
Let me be clear, I know this is an ugly website. Oscar and I are amazed about how this ugly website seems so important to so many people. It's ugly because I just don't want to put in a lot of time and resources on cosmetics but I do care about functionality and automation. I acknowledge that this website can be better on so many levels on so many fronts. But this website is only a part-time endeavor and certainly not a "core business" to Oscar or I.
But what is absolutely important if Oscar and I are to continue to be involved is that there are features we need and want to be effective. These are the major reasons why the upgrade was done.
1. So many people post anonymously. That is fine but we wanted backend tools to track IP addresses, monitor traffic, posts, notifications, etc. No one is being forced to reveal their identity but participants are being tracked so there is no spam or abusive comments. And if something happens, we can do something about it.
2. Facebook and Twitter isn't going away. We needed a discussion forum that allowed some interactivity with social media.
3. I am not a programmer. That means I need to work with software that is still being developed and being improved upon, not one that is going stagnant where I have to beg for latest features. When I started up the forum nearly 3 years ago, it was an impulse decision that was meant to be "temporary". There wasn't supposed to be a long future to this website or forum. It was never supposed to go much past the point of a year or two and I never imagined that traffic and readership would continue to accelerate.
4. We wanted to preserve the existing database of posts. The initial plan was to archive the old forum and posts database. It would have given us more freedom of choice in software but it would have been dramatically disruptive to have one old forum sitting around and a brand-new one starting from scratch.
5. The forums had to be Google and search engine friendly.
6. Waiting to upgrade and update even longer makes the problem even worse because there are even more users and more posts to convert.
7. We wanted better notification features where you can be notified on new posts of an entire forum or an individual post. We also wanted users to do more with their accounts than what they could do before.
Anyhow, those are the high points.
I know the font is a bit small and I am working on correcting and improving the readability. But short of catastrophic software collapse and failure, we aren't going back.
Incidentally, Oscar isn't posting much at the moment because he has been extremely busy with his cases at his law firm in New York. The next priority is his dealing with the clients who hired him for his letter services. And if he has any leftover time, he will try to respond to posts here. WE make no promises to read or respond but we do what we can with the time we have.
In the meantime, if you have specific and constructive suggestions and comments to help improve the forums and website, I welcome them. But don't tell us, "it sucks" or "it blows" or to "go back". That isn't helpful.
Matthew Chan
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