4 Replies Latest reply: Jul 21, 2009 5:26 PM by MusicConductor RSS

    Dear Adobe...

    PC_Pete Community Member

      Dear Adobe,

       

      It is with great sadness at the demise of these support forums that I write this long-overdue note to express my thanks and appreciation for allowing me to participate in the pre-beta-pre-alpha-pre-proof-of-concept forums.

       

      Like so many other participants in this and other Adobe forums (although I do NOT speak on anyone else's behalf), I have watched with great interest the slow and steady decay of the online support forums into what I can reasonably accurately call a proof-of-concept trial that has failed both the users and Adobe.

       

      I'm sure you must be extremely disappointed about the complete lack of anything resembling positive feedback for the various incarnations of the forum site. I'm sure that many managers and marketing researchers involved with these long-lived (but alas, ultimately useless) forums have identified and worked around the profound lack of positive feedback, but sadly the game is over.

       

      However, all is not lost! I have been researching and participating in a very large number (more than 90) of online forums NOT using Adobe's forum software, and I have managed to identify a number of extremely stable, flexible, secure, and mature forum products that have already been debugged by users some years ago. This should free up user time enough that some users can concentrate on supporting other users instead of figuring out why the forum is busted again.

       

      What I'm sure you will be most excited about is that not only have these other forum products actually passed proof of concept, alpha, beta, and release candidate status, but (without exception) they are very widely regarded by hundreds of thousands of users and administrators worldwide!

       

      Best of all, most of these forum products are FREE for Adobe to use!

       

      I have to admit, I will miss so much about these decades-long Adobe pre-alpha-test forums. The bizarre and unstable editing functions, the unfriendly and counter-intuitive formatting tools, the brain-crippled threading, the horrendous performance and "chubby" (I wouldn't like to call it "bloated", that would be cruel and churlish) scripting overheads that drowned the most powerful and elegant browsers, and most of all, the astonishing array of non-standard controls and functions.

       

      Most of all, I will miss the wonderful simplicity of all the pre-release forum code - it's such a timesaver when users know not to bother posting or attaching useless audio, video,  troubleshooting data, references, and other "baggage" for other users to help them with. This would only have confused and bothered all other forum participants, I'm sure.

       

      You must be very proud of the many "maverick" managers who decided, all those years ago, to forego the "easy"path, the tried and tested and well-understood "foreign" forum formats, and instead boldly go where no-one had ever wanted (or needed) to go before! Or since! And even more so that those same managers and executives courageously ignored ALL the negative user feedback, and insisted on holding on to the Adobe Forum Vision despite a majority of users complaining about things we didn't even have the right to complain about.

       

      Pearls before swine, I'm sure!

       

      However, I'm sure Adobe will reap the rewards of choosing to use a known, stable, secure, flexible, safe, popular, user-friendly, powerful, helpful forum package, instead of the one you're now choking us in. Did I say choking? I'm sorry, I meant "testing".

       

      It will be difficult to go from a bleeding edge forum to a run-of-the-mill alternative, but the remaining (sadly few) staid and true users will support you through this time of change.

       

      We'll make sure you don't accidentally do the same thing AGAIN.

       

      Kind regards,

      A Sad User.

      P.S. I would have posted this three minutes ago, but I forgot that the Adobe forum software currently doesn't recognise or use cookies correctly, but I'm sure you already knew that...

        • 1. Re: Dear Adobe...
          SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

          PC_Pete wrote:

           

           

          You must be very proud of the many "maverick" managers who decided, all those years ago, to forego the "easy"path, the tried and tested and well-understood "foreign" forum formats, and instead boldly go where no-one had ever wanted (or needed) to go before! Or since! And even more so that those same managers and executives courageously ignored ALL the negative user feedback, and insisted on holding on to the Adobe Forum Vision despite a majority of users complaining about things we didn't even have the right to complain about.

           

           


           

          ROTFLMAO!

          • 2. Re: Dear Adobe...
            SuiteSpot Community Member

            It is a well known fact that the first thing they teach you at management school (after deniability) is that when you have dug your project into a hole the only way out is to dig your way out!

             

            This post was actually much longer but I forgot to lookup before typing for 5 minutes only to find that I must have been typing into that same hole :-)

            • 3. Re: Dear Adobe...
              alanofoz Community Member

              At the risk of making this an Aussie dominated thread I've just gotta say...

               

              I love it

              (the thread that is, not the forum software).

               

              And BTW I would have replied a week ago, but it's hard to get motivated here...

              • 4. Re: Dear Adobe...
                MusicConductor Community Member

                This is so choice that I thought it deserved a bump.  And a link from the more prominant "demise" thread.

                 

                Thanks for a good laugh and clever read, PC Pete!