TGIF 8-30-13

Tina - I was in the process of trying to figure out how to start a thread when i saw yours. Never could figure it out. Agree that this new forum stinks. I've gone through changes here before and remember grumbling but this change seems worse than any others.

Not sure why I woke up at 5 but figured I might as well get up. I have a lot I want to get done outside. Since it's going to be close to 100, I figured the earlier I start the better.

Tried to talk my friend into flying back out to watch the house and Shane when we go to Maui. She was flattered but not interested in flying any time soon. I wish we'd known she'd love Shane so much and we could've planned the visit to coincide with our trip.

DH tried to set up an exclusion thingy to keep the bats from going back in the attic but based on the amount of poop I still see, I think it failed. I'm going to take some pictures of the area and email them to a local company. They say they can give an estimate based on the pictures, so we'll see what they would charge.

Hope everyone is doing well and has a great 3 day weekend.

There was someone else with a bat problem recently and she had two bids done, with very different results.  One company was much, much more professional and knowledgeable so I would recommend getting multiple bids.

LM is off school today so DH is working from home with him.  I foresee lots of movies in his future today.  All my boys will have a nice day.  I'm sure LM will get bored and start playing with Morrison, which Morrison loves.  Monroe is content to watch from the landing.  :)

I've discovered both dogs sleeping outside LM's bedroom, which I find incredibly endearing.  LM is very good with the dogs and asks to pet, pets only from collar to tail and doesn't touch face, ears or tails.  His favourite dog at the dog park is a Newfie named Bear, it's kind of adorable.

My BFF, her husband and two kids (7 and 5) are descending upon us for the long weekend, yikes.  They usually don't stay with us due to her husbands dog allergy but they are this time.  I was thinking of putting the dome tent up with air mattress and sleeping bags for the kids.

Wish me luck!

Sarah, I bet the kids would love the tent and air mattress set up!  I loved to camp out in our backyard when I was a kid.  Sometimes we'd have three or four tents with neighbor kids all joining in. :)

@sharismom

This is the only forum I come to and have been doing so since 2005. It's too bad a nice community has been set up to fail with this upgrade.

I agree with you 110%, Tina.  I don't use Facebook (and it's quite likely I never will).  This is the only online community I visit, and I've been doing so for 8+ years.  It would be a shame if it just fizzled out as a result of these changes. 

I see there's still a lot of good feedback/suggestions being posted to that thread referring to the Beta status.  I wonder if anyone is fielding those comments.  It would be nice if at least every day or two someone from the forum admin team would post a sentence or two with a simple update of what's being addressed.

I can't believe it's the end of August. This summer flew by.  I don't have a ton planned for the 3-day weekend.  I need to do several errands and chores, and we've got 2 birthday parties on Sunday.  One is for a neighbor's 2-year old son, which I admit I'd rather skip, but we'll make an appearance (when you don't have young kids and you're not a family member, a kid's party isn't exactly a blast).  The other is a surprise for my good friend, and the hosts are excellent cooks, so there will be lots of good things to eat that evening!

Hello everyone. My name is Jonathan Brayshaw, and I am one of the people responsible for the development of this new community. I work for dog.com. You might have seen me posting on the community before.

First of all thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts. Your opinions really matter to us. Personally, I am a bit sad that some of you guys are not taking to the new format just yet, but I understand. It's a big change. But I want to re-assure you of a few things:

1) We are reading - and considering - all your comments. We can't promise to address every point, but we are listening and reflecting on all of your ideas and suggestions for improvements.

2) This is far from the end of the development process. We know we have improvements to make. We're calling this a 'beta site' and what this means is that we think it is worth showing to you, but we're not finished building the site and know we need to make changes, especially to make it easier to use.

3) We're meeting with the design and development team on Monday to agree how we address your key concerns.

Once we've agreed the key changes, I will post an update to let you know what we're changing and improving. Please bear with us as we improve the site and keeping the feedback coming!

Jonathan

Thank you, Jonathan, for the detailed update.  It's good to know that the feedback is being given careful consideration.  Speaking for myself, I'm generally resistant to change (especially with technology-related things), so I'm trying to be patient while my own learning curve has more time to adapt.  But after using it for a week, it seems like I should feel a bit more comfortable when looking for things and navigating around, but it's still feels rather busy, disorganized, and not-so-user-friendly.

I agree with many of the complaints and issues others have mentioned in various posts.  Question for you:  will more weight be given to certain requests and suggestions if you hear them from multiple users?  I have not added anything to the thread that asks for feedback on the Beta version because most of the things I'd want to suggest have already been mentioned there by other users.  But if something would more likely be addressed if more people requested it, then I'll post those suggestions/requests, too.

Thank you again for today's update.  I think it helps to hear from you and/or your team on a relatively regular basis.

Thank you for making us feel heard, Jonathan.

Little Man and DH just dropped by the office for lunch with me.

What a hoot my little charmer is.  When my boss left LM called out, "I'll see you soon, Mike!" even though he just learned his name.

At least he picked the right person to charm.

Wow - very happy to see your response Jonathan. I've only been on here a few times since the change and still feel very lost and confused. Hopefully some of the bugs can be worked out.

Sarah - LOL and yay for LM charming the boss :)

Aw, LM sounds so cute!

I really like the NP at Aaron's dr's office.  He is quite the character.  And actually takes the time to talk to us and seems to enjoy hearing about all the stuff going on.  I don't feel rushed and dismissed like I do w/ some of the actual drs there.  Got his latest stats and he is 29 3/4" tall and 23lbs 2oz.  And we were surprised to see that a tooth has finally come through, we figure it must have just happened the day before b/c we had been checking pretty regularly.

Jonathan -- thanks for stopping by.  I have to say I'm really no slouch when it comes to internet stuff-- I do a lot of posting (and have done so on various boards over the last 17 years) ... I jumped on here pretty darned fast and honestly?  I still can't figure out how to see what's "posted" beyond that worthless daily digest thing -- yep, I'm going to be harsh on that.  If you frequent a message board *enough* to CARE what's been posted?  A "digest" is old old old news from yesterday.  

If you post regularly on one of these boards you are looking at pretty much everything in your chosen areas **as** it gets posted.  You may watch certain threads carefully -- but generally when I have a break or lunch .. and certainly when I get home ... I'm checking to see if anyone has responded to a thread I posted on.  **because they may have further questions +or+ there may actually be something of an emergency going on**.

You get a post from someone new that says 'My dog just swallowed a _____________ -- what can I do??" -- by tomorrow's "digest" -- either the dog didn't make it or folks are facing many hundreds of dollars of surgery -- where if someone could have gotten to them *quickly* it might have been easy to tell them how to six something easily **or** to urge people to get to a vet right away.  

It's not just the regulars -- when Joe Average is looking for an answer to some training problem he's having -- he may not know how to look for help -- and yet his landlord has given him a deadline .. or maybe there is a difficult situation there and then.  

Lots of times we simply say "go find a vet ... NOW" ... or "you really need to find a behaviorist to help you on that who can realistically evaluate the situation" ... but invariably that person who posted?  They want an answer right away ... and to wait for a digest to come out and then for someone to maybe have time to walk through the whole thing -- when it's nearly 24 hours later??   That digest is honestly just not nearly sufficient when other boards readily have a list to click on that shows you in a list what you've not read ....

It should be pretty clear when there are as many "recurring" threads as well as how many huge many-paged threads that some posts generate huge interest.

There is a digest?

I'll be honest and tell you that I click on my old link which brings me to a page that has "site root" written all over it.  I click on the forums link in the upper, right corner just below my name.  I scroll down until I see general chat and come straight here.

Without the preview line on any other section nothing catches my interest.

@VanMorrison

There is a digest?

I'll be honest and tell you that I click on my old link which brings me to a page that has "site root" written all over it.  I click on the forums link in the upper, right corner just below my name.  I scroll down until I see general chat and come straight here.

Without the preview line on any other section nothing catches my interest.

Exactly! ^^

As Callie pointed out, many people post looking for advice and help.  With the old format I could look at active and unanswered threads and see the subject.  Now it's a pain to click here and there trying to find new threads and who started them and who has responded. 

If the purpose of the forum is to attract people, who may shop in the store, making it easier for them to post and receive answers to questions would be good for the company. :) 

Many of us, who are regular posters in this General Chat section (on these daily mindless chat threads),  are the same members who respond to the newbies.  I'm going to assume that you want the public to come to the forum section and to feel welcome and find info beyond what is offered in your new section, Dogpedia.  I haven't even looked at any of those, btw.  They just clutter things up for me.  The entire site looks cluttered to me starting from the home page if I log on to dog.com.  I have the site saved so it opens at the page that says site root and that there's nothing to display, etc.  Either way it's not the least attractive to the eye. 

I assume you share what you read here with everyone working on this beta.  I do love this forum and especially the friends I've made here.  I do like to help people when I feel I have knowledge to share.  I hate the thought of drifting away from here but I see that happening if this is the basic format going forward.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.  I know not everyone has a long weekend off work and boo hiss to that.  I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing. :) 

You're welcome. It's your community; we're just the custodians, and we know it's important we get this right. But like all good things, it'll take us a bit of time. We've tried to bake a tasty cake by throwing all the ingredients in and thinking it will knead itself, bake itself and ice itself. Guess what? It doesn't. So we're going to give more thought to how we tie up all the new bits and float to the top all the bits that made using the old forum easy. To use and maybe abuse my cake analogy, we are now going to take all the ingredients, portion them out, and bake the cake we should have baked at the beginning. Does that make sense or is my hunger for something sweet taking over my brain this Friday?

One thing I am just working on right now is a splash page that enables you to do all the major things on the site in one place. Would this be any use?

Will more weight be given if more people ask for things? Actually, if it makes sense, if it is executable and we think your ideas will add to the overall experience we'll give them serious consideration even if only one person asks. But clearly, if many people are asking for a particular thing, it will get to the top of our list PDQ.

Also, while we would love to make every single change, it would be mad of me to make unlimited promises. But we're at the stage where this is definitely a work in progress, so now is exactly the time to tell us what you want. We look at everything.

That answer your question? J

You're welcome VanMorrison. We are learning as we go.