General forum problems-Can FS put an update on the homepage with proposed updates to these issues

Regarding your list, I am having the same problems as numbers 2,3,4 and 6. 

Hello!

While I don't use many functions you're writing about - like e-mail notifications or thread subscriptions - for many years now these forums have been buggy and it looks like nobody can be bothered about it. And knowing fsm in a short time they will switch to yet another forum software with its own set of bugs and we will have to learn to work around these, too - it's going on for years now...

Have a nice day

Paweł

I think that Pawel and M.James70 speak the truth. There have been glitches with FSM since I joined, and I imagine there always will be. We've come to expect a lot of performance from websites, which is fueled by the fact that most of them stand to profit from us. To hold this forum to that standard is to look a gift horse in the mouth; FSM is a wonderful service, whatever the flaws.

I wonder how many of us would be willing to pay to subscribe?  

mrmike

I think that Pawel and M.James70 speak the truth. There have been glitches with FSM since I joined, and I imagine there always will be. We've come to expect a lot of performance from websites, which is fueled by the fact that most of them stand to profit from us. To hold this forum to that standard is to look a gift horse in the mouth; FSM is a wonderful service, whatever the flaws.

I wonder how many of us would be willing to pay to subscribe?  

I dont remember what i paid to subscribe to the magazine, but i would think there is some money there which helps to pay for this.  I wouldnt mind making a donation from time to time, but the service would have to be up and running and not busted before i would pay.  Also, its not exactly free as i put a value on all the info the sites in general that suck info from our browsers and all the ads and all the times people click on them.  i image there is already something in it for FSM.  Clicks count and my time is worth something too.  hope not to sound too yucky about it.

this is a good resource and invaluable tool for us AND them.  It would be so much better for ALL if it just worked.  Heck, id pay, considering the above, not to see all these ads on the site.  whats the point of a site that doesnt work???

no. 8.  under edit settings, change email.  cant access setting.....

MM I agree with much that you say, and for those who care to use the "enhanced" features common to many other sites, it would be good to have them.

For the record, I don't subscribe to the magazine, preferring to buy issues that interest me. I would be willing to subscribe to the Forum for some reasonable fee, but please don't tell Kalmbach!

I find this wedsite to be very entertaining, educational and just plain fun. The people that use this website seem to be very nice people. My concern is that the poor performance of this website will drive more and more people away from it. Yes, I would agree to pay a nominal fee to insure that this website worked better and that it had better features, such as spell check and being able to save your post prior to actually posting it. 

I believe reality will be close to the opposite of what you are thinking - there will be far too few people willing to pay to support the site, especially when there are plenty of other free modeling forums out there. Most of which are fully or partially supported by outside advertisers, which Kalmbach cannot do. As general rule of the internet, paid, gated off forums are not practical, or successful. You think the current technical problems are driving people away? Quite possibly some. You’ll hear the whistling wind and tumbleweeds rolling by if there’s even a hint of a forum especially going to paid access only, though. It just doesn’t work on the 'real' internet.

In fact, in a similar industry, board & miniature gaming, manufacturers have been dropping running their own forums in favor of carving out a little space on large independents like BoardGameGeek or DakkaDakka. Why? There was too little traffic and it was too expensive to keep running and free of hacks for a passionate, but tiny fanbase. 

It's a tough life for printed media companies. Young people do not buy printed media because they go the internet to get free information which is littered with ads that are necessary to pay for the free information. FSM is a printed media company that needs a free website that they hope will attract young people to their printed media. It's difficult.

no. 9 - cant add favorites.  from the thread i select Add to Favorites, but it does not show when i go to the favorites tab.

From that screenshot, it looks like you're using Safari, Mrchntmarine?  That's a good detail to include, for the support people to know.

I have not had the other issues you listed, but I did see #1 a couple of weeks ago.

I'm running Chrome v79, on Windows 10.

I would browse to the forum index page, click to log in, get the login dialog, enter my username (email address) and password, click to submit, the dialog would close, but I wasn't logged in.

It's been stable for me for three weeks since, but there are a couple of other threads in this forum to report similar issues, so yes, others are having similar issues.

It's possible that this and other problems are browser-specific, that they occur in the way the forum's software interacts with any given browser.  If so, it's possible that it's been corrected for some browsers but not yet for others.

yep safari.  ive also tried firefox on mac and firefox on pc and MS edge on pc.  no luck.  guessing the site is still busted.  I created a second user id and tested that and got a few replies to a thread but no email alerts even though i was subscribed.  I did however get an email saying welcome new user so i know the email works. 

That's weird, then, if you can't get logged in.  That issue seemed to have been resolved.

The other ones seem to be ongoing, with new occurrences that get resolved, but then come back.

10 private messages not being sent/received

11 cannot access email update link.  server times out on finescale side(still)

Is everyone not receiving email notifications, or are just a few of us, including me, not receiving email notifications? 

Hello!

While I can't speak for everybody, I noticed that some months ago, when I got a PM, I also got an e-mail notification about it. A few days ago I got a PM again (I don't get them very often) and I didn't get any e-mail notification. Other than that I just don't use e-mail notifications, but it turns out I'm affected too, the way it looks like.

Have a nice day

Paweł

so this is a test to see if i can log in, i did, post, im trying now, and get notifications - we'll see.  I havent checked to see if all my subscriptions have are back.  Either i cold log in and not reply, not log in becaue it said account was banned, etc....  I have been in contact with tons of people trying to get the account straight.  At one point they even deleted my username and made my email my userid.  So we'll see.  I love this site and would hate to have to go.  Someone post below.  Tks.  Test Test

Can someone do me a favor and just reply here so I can test this. Tks!

This is a test.

JohnnyK

This is a test.

 

tks JohnnyK ----  Yup.  Notifications still busted for me. Rats.