To my fellow Sketchuppers...

tomsdesk · 15 Feb 2008, 12:12

...at the end of 4 days less than 10% of our 3100+ membership have taken the 2 min required to help a few volunteers move nearly 30,000 posts for our benefit.

What the hell?!?

boofredlay · 15 Feb 2008, 12:13

Thanks for feeling our pain tom.
Realistically there will be many many people who don't register at the new board. I am seeing tons of members who have one or two posts that were made a while ago. I don't see them moving over although I sincerely hope they do.
This is a task but we are up to it and will get everything transferred. It does help however to have more people registered so the posts can be attributed to their respective owners.

Cheers and see you on the flip side

Bert · 15 Feb 2008, 12:13

Tomdesk, you ask "What the hell?!?". I ask the same thing. It's something too silly or too faulty of a procedure needed for switching. I tried several times without success. Maybe I'm not the only stupid might-be switcher in the community.

Bert

poster-…bert

fbartels · 15 Feb 2008, 12:14

A suggestion to the admins. Set a deadline- and make it soon - so this confusing period of having two boards will end as quickly as possible. With a clear and firm deadline people will make the switch... and if they don't they deal with the consequences.

Paul Russam · 15 Feb 2008, 12:14

I second that.

Edson · 15 Feb 2008, 12:15

i see people complaining about the process of registration. i frankly do not get it. it is similar to the registration process everywhere and i and many others have registered without any problems. i wonder what the problem is...

i am not worried about the number of people that will move with us. the ones who are really interested will move.

Jackson · 15 Feb 2008, 12:15

@fbartels said:

A suggestion to the admins. Set a deadline- and make it soon - so this confusing period of having two boards will end as quickly as possible. With a clear and firm deadline people will make the switch... and if they don't they deal with the consequences.

@paul russam said:

I second that.

It would certainly have been easier to do it that way, but we all agreed that if there were lessons to learn from the Google Groups fiasco they were that:

a) On the whole, folks don't like change.
b) Especially when it's thrust upon them.
c) AND especially when they're given a week to come to terms with it!
d) AND ESPECIALLY when the new forum is a terrible format.

We felt it was extremely important to allow everyone a gradual transition rather than a short sharp shock and unfortunately it is the SU community as whole which has to "deal with the consequences" of members who feel betrayed. The confusion of two active boards will not last much longer.

Gaieus · 15 Feb 2008, 12:16

@unknownuser said:

Tomdesk, you ask "What the hell?!?". I ask the same thing. It's something too silly or too faulty of a procedure needed for switching. I tried several times without success. Maybe I'm not the only stupid might-be switcher in the community.

Bert

Bert, I answered your email. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Folks, there is no activation now!
Maybe that causes the confusion but I inserted it into Coen's announcement and hoped it was clear enough.
As you registered, you can log in without needing to wait for the activation email.
Sorry if we caused a confusion.

And as for the "deadline" - I second what Jackson says.
There are some forums already that have completely been transferred. So have a look at the Plugins > Podium forum for instance: It is locked so you need to go on with discussions at the new board.
Several other forums have already been completely moved, too, but due to some posters not havingg registered yet we cannot "publish" them there.

Iwon't push the RPS forum into public without Al Hart registering or the Kerky forum without Tomasz for instance.

We need your help, guys.

SchreiberBike · 15 Feb 2008, 12:20

You guys are actually doing 30,000 posts by hand? There's got to be some way to automate at least most of it with an external macro.

I feel your pain, but hope there's a better way.

boofredlay · 15 Feb 2008, 12:20

I wish there were. Trust me we checked.

Charlie__V · 15 Feb 2008, 12:20

@unknownuser said:

I wish there were. Trust me we checked.

YIKES!!
I know I have said thank you to Coen & others involved in the past...now thank you seems not enough????
But what to say.......?? I guess best to let the Good Folks who have provided a comfortable respite to the Google fallout steer us to a better... safer home,and provide good breadth in the process.

C

guite · 15 Feb 2008, 12:22

@gaieus said:

I won't push the RPS forum into public without Al Hart registering or the Kerky forum without Tomasz for instance.

My opinion to this is also in relation to the "Not yet registered" announcement in the new forum. Isn't it possible to retain/attribute a poster's name to a post even if that person has not registered? A dummy name, not a member, but identical to a username in the old forum?

Maybe I am dumb to all this, just voicing my opinion. The reason being, if waiting for some user registration is going to hold back full migration, the confusion over duplicate forums will be prolonged. Right now, I am confused where the latest happenings are. I come to the old forum here, activity is restrained; but it hasn't picked up in the new forum either.

I don't mean to overstress the moderators and volunteers. I fervently wish for them that the migration work could be automated.

Cheers,
Guite

Edson · 15 Feb 2008, 12:22

guite,

it did not feel right to us to register people without them knowing it. what if they decide not to register there?

so our best solution was to create the "non registered yet" account to cover for the non registered members. please notice that all posts attributed to "non registered yet" have the name of the original poster at the bottom between brackets.

what is holding back the full working of the new board is not the fact that many have not registered yet but simply that not all threads have been moved yet.

in a few days everything will be running smoothly again, we hope.

regards.

Gaieus · 15 Feb 2008, 12:23

Guite,

While I fully understand that there will be some members who will never return and that "not registered yet" account will always be there, what we would like to avoid now is to attribute posts those users who have hundreds of posts here to this account just to re-attribute them later.

Not a big deal but still a couple of clicks with each post. Until we have other things to do as well, the order of the new subforums being moved (and "published" there does not really count.

We will certainly do what yoi are suggesting after a while - so the transfer will not stop just because of some people not having yet registered.

BTW: Tomasz is already there...

And thank you all for your support, I really hope that after a couple of weeks you won't even remember this.

Phil Rader AIA · 15 Feb 2008, 12:24

Umm I was completly unaware of the need to "move" previous posts other than a general awareness that the operators of this site were "moving" to another site. My fathers motto was if I cant fix it with a hammer than I need to get a bigger hammer...so for folks like me you need to get a bigger hammer and make us aware of our responsibility to help.

so where do I go to help and what do I need to do to help out.

Gaieus · 15 Feb 2008, 12:24

Phil,

You are already there. That's the only thing you can help with at the moment - this way we can "re-attribute" your old posts already transferred to your account.

The problem is with some regulars or "power posters" in the past who haven't visited for a while and may not be aware of the whole transfer at all. Then there are some members who visit but don't read the announcements and just keep posting in their "regular" forums.

Now as I have already posted a board PM about the transfer already, I suspect they don't even read their PMs either. That's just double work for us; first assinging this "non registered yet" account to all their posts and then when they finally show up, doing it again with their real accounts.

What you "old regulars" could help with however is that if you know some of these people personally (or even just virtually), try to get them to devote 10 seconds to register at the new board.

Well, and thanks everybody for the support.

Masta Squidge · 15 Feb 2008, 12:25

@unknownuser said:

i see people complaining about the process of registration. i frankly do not get it. it is similar to the registration process everywhere and i and many others have registered without any problems. i wonder what the problem is...

i am not worried about the number of people that will move with us. the ones who are really interested will move.

And I second that. It didnt seem any more complicated than registering here. In fact, it from what I can remember it is easier.

Phil Rader AIA · 15 Feb 2008, 12:25

Have you sent out an email to all users or is that possible. Sometimes I check email but I don't go online to web forums for a while.

Well maybe you could also post a user list of users that have not migrated yet. That's probably too much work.

Or the age old adage will apply...you snooze you lose.

regards

Phil

Gaieus · 15 Feb 2008, 12:26

I actually sent out a board email (and by accident, three times) but there was this issue with email notifications in general so it may have got(ten) stuck somewhere in the air.

As for the non yet registered members; there are about six time more here than at the new board. This means of course a lot of newly registered ones and the number of those having posted a considerable amount but not registered yet is not too high. So maybe we can "collect" them.

Shaun Tennant for instance.