svit Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 I would like to mention that the technical support over the helpdesk team is great, timely, and all my technical issues are being resolved almost immediately and I am vary happy about it. At this post I would like to write about me feelings I am having from the local Feedback forum. In this forum the clients are providing the IP team (for free) with their ideas based on their experience, daily use of the product and their thoughts and dreams of how the product could be made better. In my opinion this is a very valuable source of information for the IP team and should be treated with and adequate care - it is an interface between the company and the clients. I would expect each of the posts (we invested our time to formulate our ideas) is treated as a valuable and precious and would be responded by the IP team, in a way that we get the feeling of 'Thank you'. At present tis forum resembles more a museum or storage of unused or even 'unwanted' topics, never really knows they have been read (I know they were). I was personally disappointed by not receiving any response to several of my Feedback ideas and lately to my suggestion. And that's probably where I realized it's time to let you know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
• Jay • Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 I would like to mention that the technical support over the helpdesk team is great, timely, and all my technical issues are being resolved almost immediately and I am vary happy about it. At this post I would like to write about me feelings I am having from the local Feedback forum. In this forum the clients are providing the IP team (for free) with their ideas based on their experience, daily use of the product and their thoughts and dreams of how the product could be made better. In my opinion this is a very valuable source of information for the IP team and should be treated with and adequate care - it is an interface between the company and the clients. I would expect each of the posts (we invested our time to formulate our ideas) is treated as a valuable and precious and would be responded by the IP team, in a way that we get the feeling of 'Thank you'. At present tis forum resembles more a museum or storage of unused or even 'unwanted' topics, never really knows they have been read (I know they were). I was personally disappointed by not receiving any response to several of my Feedback ideas and lately to my suggestion. And that's probably where I realized it's time to let you know... Look at the sheer number of threads in this forum alone. If the IPS Team took the time to make every single thread starter feel warm and fuzzy, there'd be no time to do any actual work, like... you know... product support and development. And that's just for this forum. Now, look at all the other feedback forums and extrapolate accordingly. Edit to add: Besides, it's not like they never respond to threads in the feedback section. For example, here are bfarber's and Matt's recent posts in the feedback forums: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyF Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 Please be assured all feedback is read :) , I can see you think its being ignored but trust me its not the case. As above it would be near impossible for a developer to respond into detail into every single feedback topic, if they did they would have precious little developing time left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Charles Posted January 28, 2012 Management Share Posted January 28, 2012 We read all feedback and act in items all the time. Just look at the many blog entries on upcoming releasing of IP.Board and IP.Content for proof of that. If we replied to every single post that's all we would do all day. We would then never have time to implement feedback :) As you point out, a staff person didn't reply to your suggestion and I can see how you would focus only on your topic but that doesn't mean we are somehow neglecting client feedback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svit Posted January 28, 2012 Author Share Posted January 28, 2012 Charles, I am not that much concerned about a particular response to the one topic I have referred to, even though it was the one that has initiated my complaint. I haven't got response to my previous Feedback posts (suggestions) either. You can take a look at the posts in the Feedback forum - page by page, you will find 20% of them have 0 replies. The Feedback forum is the forum where you guys are getting something for free, sometimes ideas out of the box, which we users are sending not to the competitors but to your team to make your product better. (it doesn't mean they are always so great) In my personal life when I get something from someone I say 'thank you', or 'thank you i don't need it', and if I get it 1000 times I say it 1000x even if my mouth should be aching, as we say. I think Feedback forum is forum where you basically are asking the community for a favor, and you are getting it. Well I am not supposed to nor willing to be giving lessons from marketing. I am glad I could just express my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
• Jay • Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 I think Feedback forum is forum where you basically are asking the community for a favor, and you are getting it. This is where you are mistaken, imho. The feedback forum is an opportunity to voice our opinion in an area that is actively monitored by those who can facilitate change. An outlet for constructive criticism and feature requests for the devs, not a favor we grant the company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insectdude Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 I think more disappointing than the fact that many feedback posts are not replied to at all is that a [url=" topic can get 7 pages of replies, with feelings so strong it is closed with a promise the issue would be fixed in the next version, only for that promise to be broken without explanation or apology 3 months later when the next version finally approaches release. It makes the claims of "we listen to your feedback" seem rather hollow, and more like IPS see feedback as an annoying distraction from their own desired development path. Why should we, as paying customers, take our time to give IPS this free feedback that ultimately helps you to make a better product if we get nothing in return? Who are you building these products for, yourselves or your customers? Yes, I know this forum only represents a small fraction of the customer base, but I cannot believe that there have been more overall complaints about, say, the reputation system (which has been updated in 3.3) than the editor. Sorry svit for hijacking your topic a little but my point is related to what you were saying about customers not feeling like their feedback is valued or wanted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
• Jay • Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 I think more disappointing than the fact that many feedback posts are not replied to at all is that a feedback topic can get 7 pages of replies, with feelings so strong it is closed with a promise the issue would be fixed in the next version, only for that promise to be broken without explanation or apology 3 months later when the next version finally approaches release. It makes the claims of "we listen to your feedback" seem rather hollow, and more like IPS see feedback as an annoying distraction from their own desired development path. Why should we, as paying customers, take our time to give IPS this free feedback that ultimately helps you to make a better product if we get nothing in return? Who are you building these products for, yourselves or your customers? Yes, I know this forum only represents a small fraction of the customer base, but I cannot believe that there have been more overall complaints about, say, the reputation system (which has been updated in 3.3) than the editor. Sorry svit for hijacking your topic a little but my point is related to what you were saying about customers not feeling like their feedback is valued or wanted. Matt has made it clear that they are using CKEditor to free up development time for other aspects of the software. I can understand them not wanting to rehash this point in every topic made about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insectdude Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 Matt has made it clear that they are using CKEditor to free up development time for other aspects of the software. I can understand them not wanting to rehash this point in every topic made about it. Matt explicitly stated the issue I was referring to would be fixed in the next version, so it was not unreasonable to expect that it would be. I took him at his word and made no further posts on the subject after that topic was closed until this site was updated with 3.3 and it became clear nothing had been done. I won't go further into what I think of CKEditor, that's for another topic. The point I was making here was about how IPS treat customer feedback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svit Posted January 28, 2012 Author Share Posted January 28, 2012 This is where you are mistaken, imho. The feedback forum is an opportunity to voice our opinion in an area that is actively monitored by those who can facilitate change. An outlet for constructive criticism and feature requests for the devs, not a favor we grant the company. When we look at what types of topics are at present being collected by the Feedback forum, it is clear that the forum is extremely valuable for the developer - the experience with the products via our communities translated by us admins tests its practicality, popular features, areas to be abandoned, areas to be developed more. And If you like, it can be also expressed by profit, as I assume at least portion of the feedback (intellectual property of the posters) is implemented into the final product. From this point of view it feels illogical to see posts of admins/clients, who spent their time, and made photoshop illustration attached to their suggestion of how to make some at present weak areas of the code better - to see their posts are left without any response. I don't think, Charles, spending a few words extra, would do any harm, I think contrary, maybe if you have motivated the admins to come with ideas there would be more constructive feedback topics and at the end all parties would benefit from it. I really don't mean to make this big, I think I have expressed myself clearly, and I would like to emphasize, that I am a very satisfied customer, which is best proving the fact that I am with you for many years now running several happy niche communities. Keep doing the great work. If me 'feedback' is in some way inspiring, then it met its purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
• Jay • Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 I really don't mean to make this big, I think I have expressed myself clearly, I believe that we have both expressed ourselves clearly (and respectfully), and simply disagree. Nothing wrong with that at all. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Matt Posted January 30, 2012 Management Share Posted January 30, 2012 I think more disappointing than the fact that many feedback posts are not replied to at all is that a feedback topic can get 7 pages of replies, with feelings so strong it is closed with a promise the issue would be fixed in the next version, only for that promise to be broken without explanation or apology 3 months later when the next version finally approaches release. It makes the claims of "we listen to your feedback" seem rather hollow, and more like IPS see feedback as an annoying distraction from their own desired development path. Why should we, as paying customers, take our time to give IPS this free feedback that ultimately helps you to make a better product if we get nothing in return? Who are you building these products for, yourselves or your customers? Yes, I know this forum only represents a small fraction of the customer base, but I cannot believe that there have been more overall complaints about, say, the reputation system (which has been updated in 3.3) than the editor. Sorry svit for hijacking your topic a little but my point is related to what you were saying about customers not feeling like their feedback is valued or wanted. I think that trying to personalise decisions by calling them "promises" is a little unfair as is using emphatic language(promises, hollow, apology) to berate us for deciding to reschedule a feature. The very simple and boring truth is that we wanted to add clickable buttons to the plain text editor for 3.3. This was about a days work and probably a few weeks tweaking and debugging as it would mean effectively writing a whole new editing mode for CKEditor. Once I had investigated this, I decided that it would also be advantageous to rewrite all of our back-end to allow us to use the new BBCode plug in for CKEditor. This is what currently happens: - You made a post using the RTE editor - This is sent as HTML to IP.Board - IP.Board converts this to BBCode - IP.Board saves this as BBCode into the DB The tricky bit is converting the HTML to BBCode. CKEditor has a new BBCode source mode so that internally, it never deals with HTML. It actually passes BBCode to IP.Board so there is much less processing and far less room for error. The situation is worse when you consider switching between RTE and STD modes: - You make a post in the RTE editor - You hit the switch button and via ajax, it passes it to IP.Board which converts it to BBCode and passes it back. The new BBCode source mode will remove the need for IP.Board to get involved with this which again removes a lot of code and issues that arise. The desire to make these changes is very strong but it's a large change which is fairly invasive that could have unintended consequences for other areas of IP.Board that will need monitoring. As such, we decided to push it back. Our goal for 3.3 was to increase stability and really focus on fixing reported issues to further polish IP.Board. Changing how IP.Board deals with data from the editor would go against that wish. Our interests are always with you, the customer. This sometimes means pushing back features individuals champion but that is normal when you're developing popular and complex software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insectdude Posted January 30, 2012 Share Posted January 30, 2012 Thank you for your detailed response Matt. The new BBCode source mode sounds like an excellent change. The conversion to/from HTML causes me, my site staff and my members no end of trouble. We have got to the point where we have resorted to composing new posts in Notepad, or copy/pasting existing posts before editing, because we do not trust the editor to preserve our posts as intended. Eliminating the HTML conversion is likely to cure many of my biggest gripes with CKEditor. I realise you have to balance the wishes of a large customer base and there will always be someone who is disappointed that their particular issue does not get addressed rapidly. Personally I feel that because the editor is so central to the software - it is impossible to be an active member of the community without using it - it should perhaps have taken higher priority, but I understand the reasons you gave for delaying it. I think it would have been valuable to have what you posted here as a company blog entry, so that customers like myself who are battling daily with the editor were aware that our complaints were not falling on deaf ears. Something to bear in mind for the future perhaps - good communication is often the only difference between a happy customer and a frustrated one. Finally, any idea on when we can expect to see the updated editor, with BBCode plugin and standard mode buttons, in IPB? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TSP Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 Thank you for your response on the matter Matt. Let's just hope you can have it finished before it's fall once more. If I could make a wish it would be that 3.4 or 3.3.5 or something is a fairly fast upgrade where the main focus is on resolving the editor issues, and nothing else. We're really worried what will happen when we some day upgrade, especially when reading Insectdudes latest post about how they use notepad... Is it plausible to upgrade, do some changes to the code and use the old 3.1editor on 3.2 or would that be too complicated? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insectdude Posted February 14, 2012 Share Posted February 14, 2012 If I could make a wish it would be that 3.4 or 3.3.5 or something is a fairly fast upgrade where the main focus is on resolving the editor issues, and nothing else. I could not agree more with this. I've just finished restoring from backup a complex post on my site that the current editor had done a spectacular job of destroying (a complete mess of HTML markup). This is far from the first time I have had to do this, and is why we try to remember to copy/paste to notepad before editing existing posts. Leaving aside the inconvenience to me as an admin, this is so frustrating for my site staff who are scared of unintentionally destroying posts. Nothing would make me happier than to see the editor problem addressed as the absolute top priority once IPB 3.3 is complete. I agree that the next release should focus on this issue and nothing else, so that it can be resolved in a matter of weeks not months. Is it plausible to upgrade, do some changes to the code and use the old 3.1editor on 3.2 or would that be too complicated? I asked about something like this in the past too, and it would still be my preferred solution. For me the 3.1 standard editor was perfect, and was a highlight of the IPB product. The move to CKEditor in 3.2, with all its issues, was therefore a huge backwards leap for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Matt Posted February 15, 2012 Management Share Posted February 15, 2012 Please add a bug report with an example of where the editor mangles the text. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insectdude Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Please add a bug report with an example of where the editor mangles the text. If I could reproduce it consistently I would do so, but I can't. That doesn't mean it does not happen though, I have seen it myself, my staff have certainly seen it frequently, and in fact I have even seen posts here by IPS staff that are filled with HTML tags. It arises because of the conversion back and forth between BBCode and HTML which as you said yourself in your previous post creates a lot of room for error. I think until that process is eliminated by the new native BBCode mode you described, there will continue to be problems of this nature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesignzShop Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 You can look through my previous topics recently and see I've made certainly a few suggestions, some get a response while others do not. It simply would be too much to reply to every request imo. As to are they looking at feedback, again, look at my topics and you will see they certainly do look at every single suggestion. Answering one and skipping another then to answer another one after one has been skipped shows they look at everything. I'm one of the ones that throw a lot out there for suggestions and personally I'm very impressed at how much they do pay attention for the amount of requests coming through. Also tbh, I do not give out praise very much because it goes to peoples heads but this is the second time I will do so, the first being when I mentioned Jason in support. All ideas are not going to make it, some are good and some don't fit the model they've created. Try and not take it personally. :) Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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