topic Re: Issues with this forum in Feedback

Issues with this forum

John McL — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:03:01 GMT

This posting is intended to gather comments about failings and/or desirable features in this forum. My aim is to make it a central repository for issues because I think this will help both forum users and forum developers (If a moderator wishes to move this somewhere else that's fine by me, but please provide details of how to access it.)

Let me start with a few points.

1 - I commented "What an awful sysstem [sic] this new forum is. It took me more than 5 minutes to find out how to post a message."

2 - Dennis Handly responded "Did you check the FAQ: http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/help/faqpage/faq-category-id/posting#posting"

3 - Hoff said "Um, if a sufficient number of the members of the intended audience have to find and read a FAQ to learn how to perform core functions of web forum software, then the designers of that forum software have failed at their task."

4 - Later I said "As for this forum, the most important action is to post messages but when the method should be front and center it's not simple and obvious and is a few steps down in Help and an FAQ. This makes no sense to me. "

I think we can take it that posting messages is not simple and obvious.

And another two further issues I've just discovered in the last 5 minutes

(a) After they've disappeared from the "recent postings" and "recent threads" lists, there's no easy way to find recent threads that are still open. These lists contain just 5 items each don't have scroll bars, so finding ealier messages is not simple.

(b) The date stamp is either just the name of the day or some hours and minutes ago. This is very unhelpful. Show a time - preferably GMT without any summer time adjustment - and maybe show the current time so that users can do their own calculations if necessary.

I invite your further comments ...

Re: Issues with this forum

Steven Schweda — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 02:52:47 GMT

   For a serious, technical user, the new forums are approximately
garbage. The whole system was apparently designed by "professional
gamers" who look in a mirror and think that it's a window opening onto
the real world. (Not mine, obviously.)

   There is a whole "Community Feedback & Suggestions" forum, by the
way, which has been accumulating complaints right along:

      http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/x/bd-p/community-feedback-suggestions

Not so many nowadays, as I suspect that most of us whiners have
abandoned all hope of any signifgicant improvements.

   The management appears to be happy, though, and that's what matters.

If you think that it's hard to figure out how to post a message, then
I suggest trying it using a Web browser on a VMS system. If you figure
out how to do it, then please let me know.

Re: Issues with this forum

Hein van den Heuvel — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:13:54 GMT

Hi John!

Your concerns are of course not OpenVMS specific and as such have been addressed (ad nausea, and without effect :-( ) and indeed probably should be addressed in the general feedfack forum.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Community-Feedback-Suggestions/bd-p/community-feedback-suggestions

Still, I can not fault you for seeking support/validation from friends/peers in the OpenVMS specific forum

I also miss an easy 'open topics' view.

The first list : 'RECENT POST' list is useless because of frequent topic repeats, one for every reply, instead of just the latests one.

The second/bottom list: 'RECENT TOPICS' comes close... but it is ordered by topic creation date, not the latests reply date that you, me, and many others expect. Many have requested, but the request was never understood.

One concrete answer: You _can_ get proper date/time stamp instead of 'management friendly time indicator' by selecting that in your profile and by logging in 'all the time'. An other common problem/complaint... the ridiculous need to log in all the time by THEIR choice of what 'they', the clueless ones, believe is good for you.

I know this did not help, but did it at least make you feel better knowing you are in good ( !:-) company ?!

Cheers,

Hein

Re: Issues with this forum

Dennis Handly — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:37:37 GMT

>1 - I commented "What an awful sysstem [sic] this new forum is.

(One benefit of the new forum is that you can retcon your posts and correct typos. And there is a spell check. :-)

>4 - Later I said "As for this forum, the most important action is to post messages

I assume you mean post new topics. I agree this is important for most users but as you mention later, finding new messages is also important.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/tag/New%20topic/tg-p

>(a) After they've disappeared from the "recent postings" and "recent threads" lists, there's no easy way to find recent threads that are still open. These lists contain just 5 items each don't have scroll bars, so finding earlier messages is not simple.

This also has been discussed and as Hein mentioned, we now have two Recent lists. If you want to see all of them, you can use the View All link at the bottom of each.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/tag/post%20order/tg-p/board-id/community-feedback-suggestions

You can also get them across the whole community: ;-)

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/forums/unreadpostspage/tab/thread

Unfortunately this contains the same duplicate posts but "old" ones are left off:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/forums/unreadpostspage/tab/message

Due to the drawbacks that Hein mentioned, I just look at the unread posts by board, which I get from each category.

>(b) The date stamp is either just the name of the day or some hours and minutes ago.

As Hein mentions, you can configure that in your profile > Preferences > Display Settings:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/user-preferences:display
Date display format
Use relative dates (three hours ago) [ ] # uncheck

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/help/faqpage/faq-category-id/personalization#preferences

>Many have requested, but the request was never understood.

I think that Kevin_Paul understood and said it wasn't supported by Lithium and the two lists were the closest he could do by a simple reconfiguration.

>'management friendly time indicator'

Perhaps you mean, by the decision of management to set the default for the clueless non-technical users.

After all, there are N Lithium communities that all use this software at HP.

Re: Issues with this forum

TomSmith — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:49:20 GMT

"Not so many nowadays, as I suspect that most of us whiners have
abandoned all hope of any significant improvements."

I am afraid I fall into this category, I have given up on any chance that feedback here will cause any significant change. I am sure there is some middle manager in HP who got a pat on the back (and a bonus) for getting this done on time customer satisfaction be damned.

A quote from a great SciFi series seems appropriate "The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote".

In my opinion the only meaningful way to vote in this situation is with your buying decisions, take your business elsewhere. HP might listen to that but I am not even sure about that. I think the great ship has struck an iceberg and it's fate is already decided.

Re: Issues with this forum

John McL — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:19:02 GMT

And now we can add ... moving messages without any notification

And I can also add - a login system that unhelpfully posts a blank screen, which requires a "refresh" to have anything displayed. (Might be characteristic of Microsoft's Internet Explorer v7.0

Re: Issues with this forum

Warren_Admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:29:55 GMT

Here is some more information about the date format. If you hover your mouse for about a half second over the words "an hour ago" or "last week" the actual time stamp will appear as a tool tip.

The relative dates are helpful if one is scanning a long list of replies to a post, but as has been mentioned, you can change over to absolute dates in your user profile.

Thank you for your contributions to the Community.

Warren_Admin, HP Enterprise Community Managing Administrator
Any opinions expressed are mine alone and do not represent HP

Re: Issues with this forum

Randy Stevenson_1 — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:08:18 GMT

I just posted my "rant" as a separate thread (primarily because I had grown impatient trying to figure out how to navigate this "Community"). My beef has LONG been this:

I don't care about all of the HP Product Line. All I care about is LoadRunner and SiteScope. I don't even care about QTP because our Functional Testing User base gave up on the tool in favor of "easier to use" products. I could care about Quality Center, but, since I waste so much time trying to figure how best to use LoadRunner and SiteScope, I don't have time to learn another over-engineered tool.

Why can't HP "get" that all I want is a place to go to find info, advice and techniques to use LoadRunner? I know that I am not alone in my gripes because in my "community" of over 20 performance testing "technicians" across three major corporations and the Federal Government, none of them EVER use the HP site.

I used to complain about IBM and the "Redbook Overload". HP is trying to put them to shame.

Re: Issues with this forum

Dennis Handly — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:23:46 GMT

>moving messages without any notification

It appears a breadcrumb is optional. In most cases this is probably not all that useful.

But the old URL will point to the new topic.

>I can also add - a login system that unhelpfully posts a blank screen, which requires a "refresh" to have anything displayed. (Might be characteristic of Microsoft's Internet Explorer v7.0

No, this hits browsers equally. :-(

Though today I had no problems with firefox 6.02.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Announcements/Problem-Logging-In-quot-Page-Can-t-Be-Displayed-quot-Error/m-p/5296819

Re: Issues with this forum (finding boards)

Dennis Handly — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:27:01 GMT

>I just posted my "rant" as a separate thread

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Community-Feedback-Suggestions/No-Patience-for-Information-Overload/m-p/5330505

>All I care about is LoadRunner and SiteScope.

Have you tried a forum search with those terms, setting the scope to Community?

Re: Issues with this forum

Dennis Handly — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 08:17:34 GMT

> It appears a breadcrumb is optional.

This has been fully restored in the Software forum:

https://community.saas.hpe.com/t5/Software-Solutions/Community-Update-8-9-2017/ba-p/1605633