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How about telling members

miairhead

New member
How about telling the members of what the heck is going on with site. Why it was down for days, etc.
Maybe like most IT departments you feel people that the consumers don't need to be told.
 
Tom -

I guess it seems pretty obvious to me since me and a few other people have been dealing with it! :wave Maybe not!

As you're probably aware, we've had several bouts of malicious software, viruses, whatever...this has happened several times in the past year. The first real big issue was last February when a spammer got into the forum and dropped a number of very bad posts and there was some concern about people's passwords being stolen. Everyone was required to register again with the forum. Then about a month or so ago, we had pops up with scripts being blocked, warnings, etc. The person who basically built the VB forum for us had to come in and try and close the holes. The Flea Market went away at that time, thinking they were getting in there. There were a few other minor changes. We had been slowly coming back when it went bad again about 10 days ago. We struggled to keep things going, but in the end, the forum had to go off-line. The only short term solution was to upgrade to the latest version of VBulletin to get the more enhanced security features. At this point, everything is back just with a differnt Graphic User Interface or GUI. So, things will be in different places. That's the case with any software upgrade.

The one thing that is still not back is the Flea Market. It seems that for as long as I've been on the forum, the Flea Market has always been a separate entity. VBulletin doesn't provide for a tool like this. Unless you want the Flea Market to reside directly within the forums, as other VBulletin forums have done. That was not the approach early on for MOA. The forum is for exchange of technical ideas, problems, solutions, and generally sharing our motorcycling experiences. Buying/selling is not part of that experience, so it has always been separate...that's my take on it. But we are considering moving the Flea Market back to the forum in some fashion...yet to be decided.

All this is advance of a future change to the MOA website and forum. If you read Vince's article in the September ON, a decision was made to move to a different platform in order to simplify things associated with the MOA. I can't really go into all of it because I really don't understand all of it, but I've heard that the current system is somewhat of a bandaid/bridged affair to have the MOA database and the forum database share information. It's been problematic. So, a process has been started to fully intergrate all aspects of the MOA digital information which should make things more secure, easier to access accounts, see items in the Country Store, etc., etc. When all this will happen continues to shift to the right, but things are moving in that direction.

Hope that lays out what's been happening and where things are going.
 
Keep the membership informed

A simple note on the website while it was down would have avoided the confusion we are seeing now that things are sort of back to normal. It also would not be a bad idea to put something up on the main webpage, similar to your explanation, to help members understand what's going on.
 
A simple note on the website while it was down would have avoided the confusion we are seeing now that things are sort of back to normal. It also would not be a bad idea to put something up on the main webpage, similar to your explanation, to help members understand what's going on.

I agree. Keeping the users informed would have been good.
 
Courtesy

I think most members knew it was a issue, but just to have the lack of courtesy not to at least post something more. It would of not been hard to have more information posted. I was in 'IT' for many years, and many times the server group or web group would do something and not tell the rest of the organization. That always made the 'IT' an advisory group.

Okay your busy, the information posted was not adequate in my opinion.
 
Keep in mind that this is a volunteer organization mostly even though it does have officers and by laws and since it is volunteer driven sometimes I think we the user are not seen as customers or stakeholders. And that the voice of the customer is never really heard......or for that matter asked for.
 
Keep in mind that this is a volunteer organization mostly even though it does have officers and by laws and sine it is volunteer driven sometimes I think we the user are not seen as customers or stakeholders. And that the voice of the customer is never really heard......or for that matter asked for.

I would agree with the first part, but no so much the second part! IMHO!! We know that many members rely on the forum and look forward to it and this is maybe the major touchstone for them as it relates to the MOA. So, we do care and look to do the best we can to keep things moving smoothly and provide features that the members like and can use. But we're only volunteers...
 
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