So who is officially done with HCGJ?

Done with HCGJ?

  • Yes

    Votes: 23 38.3%

  • No

    Votes: 9 15.0%

  • When is lunch?

    Votes: 28 46.7%
  • Total voters
    60
Frank Prince said:
Other than my little spitfights with SadNav and Uma, the biggest draw for me on HC that I don't find here or TGP is their huge and well organized review database.
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I just tried to use the review system on the "upgraded" site.

Holy sweet mother of shit fuck.
 
Yeah it's really clunky. You have to go through umpteen different drop-down menus, to get to the review you want to read.
 
ellengtrgrl said:
Yeah it's really clunky. You have to go through umpteen different drop-down menus, to get to the review you want to read.
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It goes beyond that. Try to find a review for a Fender Pro Tube Twin. You put "Fender" for the filter, use the dropdowns to get to amps, then click "Next" about 12 times because there's no way to search by model. You can't even jump three pages ahead because the damn interface lies to you. Page 1 of 2, whoops, no, page 2 or 3. Whoops, no, page 3 of 4.

Terrible. I write websites for a living and I would fake my own death if I came up with this shit.
 
Uh huh. I found that out the hard way on Friday, when I was at work. I wanted some info on clean boost pedals. After all of the trouble I went to, I discovered that most of the old entries were gone!
 
It's really disappointing. I wanted to give the site a chance. But most of the people I liked have moved over here. And I'm seeing that I have little to no use for HC anymore.

I miss the gear reviews. I used them all the time. Hopefully they will be recovered. But I'm not holding my breath.

I voted for lunch. Just because I'm still hopig that they can pull it together.
 
PunkKitty said:
It's really disappointing. I wanted to give the site a chance. But most of the people I liked have moved over here. And I'm seeing that I have little to no use for HC anymore.

I miss the gear reviews. I used them all the time. Hopefully they will be recovered. But I'm not holding my breath.

I voted for lunch. Just because I'm still hopig that they can pull it together.
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WHo were you over there>
 
mattburnside said:
It goes beyond that. Try to find a review for a Fender Pro Tube Twin. You put "Fender" for the filter, use the dropdowns to get to amps, then click "Next" about 12 times because there's no way to search by model. You can't even jump three pages ahead because the damn interface lies to you. Page 1 of 2, whoops, no, page 2 or 3. Whoops, no, page 3 of 4.

Terrible. I write websites for a living and I would fake my own death if I came up with this shit.
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Yeah, I have no comprehension of anyone in "business" who decides to jack up an admittedly boring but basically functional interface in favor of something that "looks better" but doesn't work right and even gives professional coders and geeks problems.

I spent the last couple of years writing Windows Installers for various products, so I got a little bit of experience with direct user feedback. The first rule is make it easy for the user, and the second rule is that everything has to work! No complicated menus or weird shit that geeks love, and NO BROKEN OR DEADEND LINKS OR MENU CHOICES.

I'm REALLY curious now as to the experience and credentials of whoever decided the new forum software and layout.
 
Frank Prince said:
I'm REALLY curious now as to the experience and credentials of whoever decided the new forum software and layout.
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It's like this, Feeplestone. I went to Microsoft's TechEd conference in Orlando two years ago. One of the most enlightening talks I went to was by a guy named David Platt, who wrote a book called Why Software Sucks. His main point was that, as you say, intuitive is better. This is greatly hindered by the fact that nerdhammers who write software (like, say, you and I) are not, by and large, the people that USE the software. As an example, he asked for a show of hands as to who in the room drove a stick. Out of 200 attendees, probably 140 hands went up. Statistically, if we were average Americans, the total should have been below 40 people. "How many of you immediately click 'custom install' when installing software?" Me. Shit, yes. I do.

Ever since I have made it a priority to get and work with direct user feedback, in many cases by watching them interact with the old and new systems. That didn't happen here. This was people who either didn't receive user feedback, or ignored it because they felt they knew better.
 
Having dealt with Corporate America for a while now, I'm gonna make a guess that specifically what it was was some people in charge who are non-technical enough to have gotten sold a bill of goods by a third party company (Jive?) and then hoped that their "technical guys" and the Jive people could bring it the rest of the way home. Most likely if they did talk to any technical guys they were told not to do it.

I have seen that quite a few times in my jobs. The attraction always is that the people at the selling company are similar enough to the suits at the buying company to make the sale, and the suits at the buying company are used to being able to tell their own nerds to go finish the 20% of the project that still needs work, which usually amounts to 80% of the work.

The problem with this model is that once the 3rd party company has made the sale, they aren't allocating anyone for the last 20% (80%) unless it's some sort of paid support package, so the buyers are fucked.

My company has had much better luck lately with 3rd party Open Source stuff than anything that someone tries to sell us. If nothing else, we can open it up and fix it or mod it for our own use, but since Open Source is mostly created by nerds anyway, the work is much more conscienciously done than for-sale stuff that someone is trying to get out the door, and there are no salespeople trying to sell you something that might not work.

P.S. I drove stick in the 80's and went to automatic as soon as I could afford my next car. :thu: That manual shit is too hard. :tongue:
 
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Frank Prince said:
Having dealt with Corporate America for a while now, I'm gonna make a guess that specifically what it was was some people in charge who are non-technical enough to have gotten sold a bill of goods by a third party company (Jive?) and then hoped that their "technical guys" and the Jive people could bring it the rest of the way home. Most likely if they did talk to any technical guys they were told not to do it.
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This happened to me. I was sent to a two-day training course on an intranet portal we were considering buying ($60k a year) to evaluate whether it would meet our needs. My response, upon return, was "Not only 'No,' but 'Fuck no.'" I was told "Too bad, we already bought it." How unusual that I found out later that our internal champion for this product was banging the director of networking services on the side.

Or, in funnier hands, the story goes like this.
 
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mattburnside said:
This happened to me. I was sent to a two-day training course on an intranet portal we were considering buying ($60k a year) to evaluate whether it would meet our needs. My response, upon return, was "Not only 'No,' but 'Fuck no.'" I was told "Too bad, we already bought it." How unusual that I found out later that our internal champion for this product was banging the director of networking services on the side.

Or, in funnier hands, the story goes like this.
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I can't tell you how many times I've seen this happen in corporate America. I've been out of the corporate world for a year and I haven't missed it one bit.
 
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