Forum Outages

[Lingchih]

Hold on Edi. Don't blow your stack. This has been a fairly civil discussion so far. I agree with you totally, but let's keep it civil.

[Edi]

Lingchih said:
Hold on Edi. Don't blow your stack. This has been a fairly civil discussion so far. I agree with you totally, but let's keep it civil.

Not going to do so now, since everything ahas been settled. As I said, if I'd seen it earlier, I probably would have. Now I've no problem with it.

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
How can you possibly provide a more accurate assessment than "we think it will be soon" on any project they havent done before?

Please read my previous post #622020 - 07/08/08 12:05 PM

No need for me to repeat myself.

JimMorrison said:
You see, this website does NOT have customers. This website, does NOT provide a paid service to anyone. The literature provided with your software, and the purchasing agreement does NOT entitle you to 24 hour services of a professionally run and operated website. While they do a great job of actually presenting one to you, it is in fact a courtesy that this website is provided - ultimately no matter how well meaning your griping is, the tone comes off only as ungrateful and demanding.

Actually this website does have customers because we provide traffic to their website. The more we visit the website the more we are exposed to their advertising of products and the more likely we are to recommend them to friends. There are many categories of customers, not just those who purchase service A. Everyone visiting the forums are potential future customers.

I'm not demanding anything I'm providing advice to make the website more customer friendly during outages. Providing a more accurate timeline is an improvement compared to a generic measurement which can be misleading since some will intrepret "short time" as being 1 hour.


Again I'm providing advice so messages are not misleading and intrepreted as dishonest by some during forum outages.

[Edi]

NTJedi:
There is no way to say this nicely, so I won't even try to sugarcoat it. You are practically the only one who has his panties in a bunch over this and right now your posts are sounding like nothing more than a continuous whine. They come across as sanctimonious lecturing and touting your personal opinions as fact. Here's a hint: They are not.

As has been said previously, "short" is a relative term and the outages we have experienced here have been short given all the factors that are relevant. This website is not a time-critical application where entire businesses are hanging in the balance and if it's down a few hours a few times ahead of a major upgrade, that's short, end of story.

I get to deal with customers complaining about subscription services not working or having problems every day and there's a certain difference in the way paying customers and non-paying customers are handled. If a customer has purchased a service that has a 2-hour response time come Armageddon or Apocalypse, then he by damn gets that response, but he's also paying through the nose for it. If it's a normal DSL customer, time to fix the problem is 2-5 days with best effort delivered. If they don't like it, they can take their complaints and shove them, though I'm not allowed to say that to their face.

This forum here falls into the goddamn services-provided-for-free category, so the users really do not have any right to expect that their complaints about "short" downtime equating to 1-2 hours be accepted as a matter of course. Every reasonable effort to minimize aggravation to Shrapnel users has been made, so what's the problem?

[Tifone]

wow, mister edi says things in da face

[lch]

Yadda yadda yah, you guys have way too much free time on hand to post on the forums that much. I have read the first page and only skim-read the rest because I think that everything that can be communicated is already in there.

I think that the criticism voiced by the users modulo form/notation should be just be acknowledged and accepted without getting emotional. Just write "forums should be back within XX hours" next time, because whatever you do with them, you'll probably stop working on them when you get to bed. If you give a very cautious, long ETA, there's no problem if you don't take as long as you estimated before. But if you say "in a short time" and then it actually takes a lot of time, then of course people can object to that. I was under the impression that the users didn't criticize the actual downtime at all, just the insecurity when they should come back and look again. If they do it every couple of minutes and are being stopped at barred doors repeatedly, they could get angry.

Another thing which will curb the criticism: Give a notice of the Server downtime in advance, if possible. And at best, work on a copy of the site on another machine at all times for all developmental/testing purposes and only apply the changes that you have done on the real, live site when you're done experimenting.

So in short: I can sympathize a bit with the disapproval that has been voiced, at least consider it and don't get worked up on posts of individuals who offend you.

Ahhh, I need more tea...

[NTJedi]

Edi said:
You are practically the only one who has his panties in a bunch over this and right now your posts are sounding like nothing more than a continuous whine. They come across as sanctimonious lecturing and touting your personal opinions as fact. Here's a hint: They are not.

I'm only providing advice to ShrapnelGames so some of their customers are not mislead during future forum outages. I'm providing this advice because as a common visitor the current outage message can be intrepreted as misleading.

Edi said:
As has been said previously, "short" is a relative term and the outages we have experienced here have been short given all the factors that are relevant.

I'm only advising the term "short" and "check back soon" be updated/changed to provide more accurate timeframes for the customers. Otherwise given a possible future scenario why not use "short" and "check back soon" even if the server was to be down for 2 days; 2 weeks; 2 months?? Since 2 months is short based on the lifespan of the average human.

Edi said:
This website is not a time-critical application where entire businesses are hanging in the balance and if it's down a few hours a few times ahead of a major upgrade, that's short, end of story.

A few hours is short, unfortunately the forums were down for at least 12 hours.

Edi said:
I get to deal with customers complaining about subscription services not working or having problems every day and there's a certain difference in the way paying customers and non-paying customers are handled. If a customer has purchased a service that has a 2-hour response time come Armageddon or Apocalypse, then he by damn gets that response, but he's also paying through the nose for it. If it's a normal DSL customer, time to fix the problem is 2-5 days with best effort delivered. If they don't like it, they can take their complaints and shove them, though I'm not allowed to say that to their face.

I'm not demanding anything, I'm only advising ShrapnelGames provide a more accurate outage message so it's less misleading to daily visitors.

Edi said:
This forum here falls into the goddamn services-provided-for-free category, so the users really do not have any right to expect that their complaints about "short" downtime equating to 1-2 hours be accepted as a matter of course. Every reasonable effort to minimize aggravation to Shrapnel users has been made, so what's the problem?

I don't have any expectations for a change, I'm only advising the outage message is more accurate. As I posted earlier the term "short" and "check back soon" can be intrepreted as either 1 hour OR 2 weeks depending on who reads the message.

Whether or not ShrapnelGames chooses to provide more accurate outage messages is their decision, but as a customer it's my advice. I'm not expecting or demanding anything... just my advice.

[Bwaha]

Okay guys, Play nice now. no need for profanity. Man you guys are so serious about a game. Edi, i agree with your sentiments, but disagree with the way you express them. If I find someone who I can't communicate with, I call in a coworker to deal with them. This de-escalates the whole situation. Most of the time this works rather well. Other times, well there's one rotten grape in every bunch. The trick is not to lose your temper, I feel if someone makes me loose my cool, they won and I lost. So in closing, don't let them get to you. Take the higher road and enjoy the pleasure of being in the minority of the rational beings. Bwaha
ps. if you want to give me a paid job to deal with rotten grapes, I'm all for it. I can do it for cheap. Bwaha