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This forum. So what just happened?

Arise

There’s been a new release of the forum server. Because we’ve all had to do password resets I’m guessing it’s a fresh database behind the scenes with a different hashing algorithm - so possibly better security and other general plumbing improvements. But little else seems to have changed. The theme is a bit different, but not much else. Presumably there was a cost to this but whatever that cost was it doesn’t seem to have paid for much. 

My biggest gripe: the default font is too small and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change it. And the editing font that I see now whilst typing in this post is minuscule. 

  • I've no idea where to put this but please could someone send me a PM? Yesterday I got a notification for a message I had sent in a chat 3 months ago. Then the actual message came through later, but had been sent the previous day.  So before I email the mods I would like to see if this is still a problem. 

    Thank you in advance.

  • in reply to Iain

    '(It) was such an amateur error with a big impact for a vulnerable user base that the project team behind this should have lost their jobs in the private business world.'

    I'm sad to say that I agree. I do hope lessons have been learned, but I wonder if it's too late for all the people who came here looking for support but gave up because of the automated messages telling them their comments were abusive when they weren't.

  • in reply to Iain

    Completely agree with your assessment. Given the debacle I can only assume that those in charge will be quite reticent to attempt another upgrade soon and that’s a shame because there is so much that needs improvement. It’s really not a complicated site. I could build a better one myself. Sounds like you could, too. 

  • in reply to Iain
    Iain said:
    I can only think that it was an inexperienced management team tasking inexperienced techies and having no contingency plan that led to what happened.

    The 6P rule.

  • Arise said:
    Presumably there was a cost to this but whatever that cost was it doesn’t seem to have paid for much.

    As NAS are a charity then the money came from the donors, which I think is mostly the government if memory serves me.

    I've seen enough publically funded charities through the years doing IT projects where the results are not really good value at all becuase there is no real accountability such as you have with private companies and their shareholders.

    Looking at the site as an IT specialist I notice it is much faster to use but otherwise I see few changes of consequence so it does look like the upgrades are mostly down to the engine processing the databases and the policing that goes with it.

    If it were not for the user accounts glitch that took so long to resolve then it would have been a fairly successful upgrade, but that one thing (it should have been tested in dev long before release was approved) was such an amateur error with a big impact for a vulnerable user base that the project team behind this should have lost their jobs in the private business world.

    As for how long it took to resolve - that goes beyond the pale.

    I can only think that it was an inexperienced management team tasking inexperienced techies and having no contingency plan that led to what happened.

    In project planning terms they need to review what happended, learn the lessons and improve all future responses, starting with training the management in Project Planning methodology.