Kalmbach is responsible - no matter if IT is in house or outsourced.
Just because a company has outsourced some aspect of their operation does not relieve them from responsibility to insure that that particular operation is still performed at the proper level of service - service for BOTH Kalmbach and Kalmbach customers.
Do you really believe Kalmbach cares about these forums? Oh, right, here comes Santa Claus.
This has been discussed on quite a few other threads. Kalmbach knows of the issues and is working on an upgrade to come in 2020.
In the America I grew up in, if functionality went down the code would be restored from backup. If there were ‘new and improved’ features they would’ve been tested, and sandboxed, before inplementing them as the only dysfunctional option. If pages or functions were unavailable at least you’d get a ‘we’re working on this’ landing page instead of cryptic failure messages.
Not sure I understand this new post-Yahoo paradigm.
The last year I was in CCSI - the mantra was, it goes in on the scheduled date - ready or not. When it doesn’t work, we will bill them separately for what is necessary to make it work - IF we don’t have another ‘priority’ project.
Of course that was 1990 - almost 30 years ago.
Depends on how long it has been between when the code was updated and the error was reported. That “backup” copy might have been renewed multiple times and the old “good” code no longer exists…
OR…
To put the old “good” code back in place might violate some mandatory change that had to be made and cannot contracturally be undone.
Then there are things that are out of the control of the software producer. Microsoft (et al) often decide some function of the operating system needs to be changed and that change breaks code that nobody has touched in many years.
additionally, most browser-interpreted-code is written in HTML, which most programmers consider a “write only” language… i.e.: it is understood whilst being written, but nobody, not even the original programmer, can understand it a week later. Easy to write, impossible to modify without breaking something else.
So, you mean that users running searches were competing for bandwidth with the ad servers?
The last paragraph looks the most plausible to me, the hosting provider may have updated the OS and Webserver software, which can break old code. Much the same way that Apple removed some of the functionality from MacOS that was used by the Trains DVD.
I kept running Office 2003 until this year when I “upgraded” to Office 19. Found that WORD 19 no longer contains the envelope barcode feature, so I reinstalled WORD 03. I may be wrong but I choose to barcode the snailmail I send. I also find the “NEW” controls (formating, alignment, etc.) in the software are not as intuitive as what the old software had. I find that if I click on a icon in the new menu, I can get the old tools. Just not as clean. One new manager comes in and reorganizes the operating departments into REGIONS. Next new manager comes in and changes the organization to DIVISIONS. Anything to justify their big salery. Does it save money or improve the flow of traffic. Very hard to tell.
Which is why I say that they look for features people actually use and delete them…
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic!
It seems to me that the envelope barcoding is no longer used by the Post Office because their character OCR got good enough to recognize any print accurately enough.
There was another fairly brief time that addresses were supposed to be formatted in some weird way that made for fewer errors in automatic sorting. Here too the need for such a thing went away with technical advances…
Credit where credit is due: the PM access was working as of 10:00 Thursday morning.
I have the same problem with the grocery store… if I find something I really like, they stop carrying it. If I call the producer to find out where else they sell it, they stop making it.
My only point was that I feel some of the criticism of Kalmbach is not needed. They are a magazine publishing company that provides a forum for subscribers.
They know the issues – they have said as much. They know things need to be fixed – they are working on it.
In several postings they have indicated they are as frustrated as the users are.
H’mmmmm, perhaps they could teach the magazine how to build a search function that works?
Hell, get me a round-trip ticket to Milwaukee, a rental car and cheap motel for a week and I could probably teach them that. Don’t forget, not only did they have it working on several of the original platforms, they had it working – albeit hokily – on the present one, not too long ago.
I think this is involved with the back-end changes to accommodate their new ‘joint venture provider’ in exploiting the resource that Kalmbach management said the various enthusiast communities reading and subscribing to their magazines represented. You may have noticed, as I have, a relatively large increase in e-mail offers from Classic Trains (the ‘twelve days of discounts’ or whatever it was being particularly annoying) and the return of the full-page modal popups (whether or not popup blocking is enabled on your browser) when loading the site. If the press reports over the last year and a half or so were correct, we’re in for far more of this kind of ‘relationship management’ (or perhaps a bit unkindly, ‘monetization’ of the communities that still support active forums.
Absolute termination of American Snowmobiler (instead of, say, trying some way to keep its community alive in some Internet-based or online community, like a better version of what Verizon/Oath is about to cripple with Yahoo Groups) seemed to me like a strange action. The avowed sled community just in the group connected with ARTA and the trail conversion plan for the Lake Placid end of the Adirondack Scenic has enough money, and enough technical connection, to keep a fairly-well-featured online version of AS running happily – they might even have resources to keep the magazlne in production as White River did with a ‘certain other publication I cannot name here’.
We already got an answer a co
If this were a one time issue, I would agree with you. Having been a member of this forum for 16 years - it is a continuingly recurring happenstance.
Among the number of the forums I participate in - some have been created by the forums user community in contracting with existing forum software providing companies - and those forums, from my user vantage point, have little if any operational issues. I also participate in a forum where a ‘major’ company as taken that ‘solid’ software and made it virtually unusable. I don’t have the answers - I just report the problems as I see them.
Well I personally do not get around to all the other Kalmbach forums, so I really have no way of knowing what the editors or other moderators are promising over in model railroader, or whatever they call them.
My most recent experience was to read a thread that was locked after only one post with a quip from the moderator dismissing the problem as a “non-issue”.
So, I felt it might be worth my (as well as everyone else involved) time to produce a screen shot to document this particular malfunction, thus avoiding any confusion as to whether the complaint pertains to a tangible issue, or simply the product of user ineptness.
Quite to the contrary of the opinion some users seem to have about Kalmbach, I have always found them to strive to produce a quality product, and to welcome constructive feedback geared towards helping them maintain that standard.
That was the purpose of my post…anyway.
BALT and All: Consider this a low-key announcement — We’re working on a new website. I cannot offer specifics, but I can say that our current fora and websites are not long for this world.
We’re sorry for breakdowns and malfunctions and the harm this causes to your experiences here. We feel bad because we know how much you guys enjoy discussing on the forums, but also because the breakdowns reflect badly on us.
When there’s more I can share with readers and customers, you will be among the first to know. -Steve
Thanks Steve! [tup]