Shareholder

I am most offended by the language Dan is using here, and suggest that employees do not treat their clients, particularly loyal ones, in this fashion.

True, this is a free service. But it is only as good as the contributions freely made by the members of this community who visit it. And hundreds of us contribute many hours to Flyer Talk, and were we paid our normal professional fees, our "subscriptions" would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars collectively.

I can understand how Dan feels being under the gun with this change not working out well. But I do suggest he refrain from shooting the messengers or we may well leave FlyerTalk...

I simply made a statement about the poor performance experienced. For reference, I contextualized it with previous slowdowns we have experienced over the years.

When changes are made, they are done for a reason. If a salesman or techie persuaded Randy that this was a better route to take, then that implied a promise of improvement and a rationale for taking the decision to move servers. All I have posted was a question as to whether you at FT were mislead, and might have recourse.

Remember, very little has been explained to us, except that you were doing something with your servers last weekend to improve things. Well, they have not been improved. Perhaps if you were to better explain what occured, and why there is this problem, we would be a bit more understanding.

I won't ask for an apology for Dan's remark to me, but do hope he realizes a community is only as strong as those who participate in it. If he is asking those of us who contribute to leave, that community is certain to fall into decline and perish. I am sure that is not what Randy wants to see happen, but if this attitude around certain quarters at The House of Miles does not change, that may well be the consequence.

[This message has been edited by Shareholder (edited 12-06-2001).]

cactuspete

I agree with Shareholder. I only post to this forum, and to this thread, because I assume that the FT staff wants to know when things are not operating smoothly.

MatthewClement

For what it's worth, I've not really been affected by speed problems with FT, either over a modem connection or the T1 at work. Don't know if being based in Europe has anything to do with it...

dan at WebFlyer

House of Cards... cute. How quickly we resort to name calling...

Share, I do you an apology, based on my choice of words, although not on my intention. As I said earlier, we made a decision to move servers, thought it would be a performance increase, based on results from another server move, and as it turned out, things aren't nearly as smooth as we would have expected. As John posted earlier in this thread, we're aware of the slowdowns, and he's been on the phone with our hosting company for the last two days, in addition to performing his other duties around the company. I'm sorry if my post came out too rough; I'm not a diplomat, just a member of the team that's trying to keep FT usable and growing.

When we do find out what happened, as with problems in the past, we usually do post it in tech support.

Cactus, we do want to know when things aren't working correctly. But it wears thin when we're told about the problem, have replied in acknowledgement, and still the conga line grows and gets more colorful. There is nothing productive in being the 20th post to tell us it's slow, after we've already posted that we're looking into it. And there is nothing productive in making assumptions on the promises made here; If you have a tech issue, please post it, but leave the conspiracy theories to The Buzz, or send us an email.

As we've mentioned numerous times in the past; we're a very small team, working under a tight budget, and trying to provide good service to a product that no one here has paid for, while balancing our time on other products that people ARE paying for. For those of you that have been here for a while, and have experienced the slowdowns like we're going through now, you also remember that we've overcome those problems eventually. We'll get this worked out, hopefully soon, since we can't work very well on the sites if they're slow, just as you can't browse them when they're slow.

Of course a good community is based on user support and input, and we all understand there wouldn't be nearly as large a FlyerTalk without the amount we've received over the years. And we appreciate it. That's why we've supported FT events, brought in guest speakers and great promotions, given out seats for Freddie Awards and other appreciative items we've done over the years. All at no cost to any FlyerTalker. So, like I've said earlier, if you'll stick around a little longer, you'll see that we'll get FT back up to a comfortable speed.

Dorian

Wow...do I ever echo Shareholder's comments!

Free? Big deal. FT's choice, not ours.

No need to come out swinging Dan. Would have been better to just post "Working on it."

Dorian

ALW

Well, there's free and there's no-fee. Certainly we can come and participate for no fee.

But we get to read banner ads, both for FT products which presumably produce a profit, and for others, which presumably produce revenue of some kind.

And while you provide the platform, almost all the content is provided by us!

andrew

FewMiles

FlyerTalk also represents a unique viewpoint into the frequent traveller market. Don't underestimate the value of that resource.

FewMiles..

------------------
[ FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web ]
[ Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage ] [ Unofficial oneworld Info Desk ]

dan at WebFlyer

We did; actually John did... apparently that wasn't clear enough though.

As I said before, sorry for being hotheaded, but my point is still the same; we're working on the problem with the resources we have available.

svpii

Dan, in my last role as VP Operations of a dotcom, I used to joke that "if it weren't for these **** customers, we could get something done." But gosh, I never said that to them!

I realize you don't know me and don't give a rat's ... what I think, but since this is a free venue, I'm gonna talk anyway

FewMiles touched on the right way to look at this "free service". Because of the high volume of users, and the quality of information they provide, FT is really akin to your cost of goods sold for the other revenue generating divisions. Precisely because of the traffic and content we provide, your other operations have both more credibility and muscle.

If you resent the fact that you have to maintain a free service, then change that. But FT set the bar. FT provided the service, FT made the decision to make it free, FT made the decision to suggest that performance was going to be better. So FT can hardly get defensive because the users it asked to come are complaining about performance.

There are a lot of us here with experience in web-based ventures, databases, middleware, hardware, etc. We are curious because we will understand what you tell us. And when we get answers like "it's not working like we thought it would", it's in our professional nature to ask more questions.

So I'm sorry if you had a bad day or week. But don't look at us as less than valued customers because we follow FT's established policies. You want we should send you a check??

edited to correct typo..

[This message has been edited by svpii (edited 12-06-2001).]

fscher

This credibility is why this site will even be stronger and more "valuable" in the future. There is a reservations tab at the top.....we all know how lucrative a GOOD travel site can be. And once a certain number of REGISTERED members are on the books and a certain number of guaranteed VISITORS come to the site, advertising costs to sponsors go up and the site can even be sold for lots of money. Word of mouth and publicity keeps this site number one and negative things can make a company slide faster than good ones making a company go up.

Dorian

Dan,

Thanks for pointing out it wasn't clear enough for us d*mb a*sses out here in stupid land.

I don't know what is going on over there in FT but I'd print out svpii's reply a couple posts above this and distribute it internally.

Dorian

Dorian

Give a copy to Randy while you are at it.

Dorian

Shareholder

Actually, I did not mean offence, Dan, when using the term "House of Cards". What I meant to say was the actual name of FT headquarters, the "House of Miles". But this morning my mind could only come up with the word "cards" as related to all those gold and platinum coloured elite cards we carry in our Filofaxes and Daytimers.

dan at WebFlyer

svpii, we do give a rat's hindquarters what you and the other FTers think; that's why we have these feedback forums and monitor them.

No no no no... I'm realizing that my original post is being taken entirely in the wrong direction. We don't resent maintaining a free service; we know the price (or lack of) is entirely up to us. What I meant in my posts was for people to put things into perspective, and realize that we're working on the system, putting in the extra hours/days, and playing phone tag with vendors, but that some things take time, and in the order of priorities, sometimes FT has to wait. That actually isn't the case this week, as we have been putting a good amount of time in speeding FT back up, or at least establishing why the drastic slowdown occurred.

I know that I went off (came out swinging, although that phrase always reminds me of There's Something About Mary and Warren) in my first post, but I didn't realize that it would be extrapolated to this extent.

Definitely understood; we do the same things here. But realize that we are in the same group, and while we're asking our own questions among ourselves, and especially with our tech providers, and dealing with the frustration that brings, it doesn't help any to be bombarded with the same questions over and over. I think we're pretty good about posting the resolution of problems in the tech forum, when we find out the answers, and we do post "working on it" when we've been notified.

No one likes criticism, and we're just as human as the rest. If the intention of the posts was purely benign, then I do apologize. But, as has occurred more times than can be counted, sometimes a person's thoughts aren't conveyed the way they're intended to (as seems to be the case with mine). I took a few of the posts to be cracks on our work, and those, coupled with the amount of repeated "postings" after the problem had been acknowledged, was a few straws too many. As developers, you understand that your work becomes personal, and when something breaks or is executed wrong, we're frustrated enough at ourselves, without the extra comments.

I don't believe I referred to you as less than valued customers. Obviously you're valuable, since users are what make a board live. And, as I said before, please continue to use the forums to alert us of tech problems. Just understand when we tell you we're working on it, that we don't need to keep being told about it...

I doubt I need to, as I I emailed him as soon as the first post was set; Besides, I'm sure he's received plenty of messages already. I'm sure I'll have some explaining to do, and I may walk with a limp for a week, or worse, but I knew that when I posted.

MatthewClement

If he's really mad at you, he'll make you fly coach.