Upcoming Changes To Fpn

[Icywolfe]

Just like Youtube's yearly tradition of changing everything. (Possibly to mess with everyone.) This change I dislike. But once I get used to it within 2 weeks it fine.

 

The one thing that thrown me off was "First Stop" being missing on the upper part and moved to the middle part.

 

As long you aren't like Youtube with their 5 major changes each year it should be find.

[H1N]

Your work is appreciated, good luck

[sheeptotherescue]

As a very new person to the forum, the reorganization makes a lot of sense to me. And I love chat rooms, so I can't wait to try it out! I'm excited to see all the changes. Thank you!!

[migo984]

Bit of a mess. There seems no logic or consistent criteria for determining which brands have their own sub-forum; the regional section is similarly inconsistent & looks awful - why the trite, clichéd descriptions? And why not a US regional section, or is that because every US brand, however significant or not, seems to have it's own brand section? And why on earth have a strange little section called "Pen Acoutrements"?

[Betweenthelines]

Bit of a mess. There seems no logic or consistent criteria for determining which brands have their own sub-forum; the regional section is similarly inconsistent & looks awful - why the trite, clichéd descriptions? And why not a US regional section, or is that because every US brand, however significant or not, seems to have it's own brand section? And why on earth have a strange little section called "Pen Acoutrements"?

 

I agree and have long been puzzled as to why some brands have a subsection and others do not. I suppose it should based on demand and traffic, but if that's the case, why Cross but no Pilot or Lamy? I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make any sense.

 

If we're going to be making changes to the FPN structure, we might as well do an overhaul that addresses these points.

[georges zaslavsky]

good job wim

[PatientType]

The changes sound well thought out. I'm especially impressed by the switch to a Great Britain regional forum. This is particularly apt given that Conway Stewart is no longer in production while Yard-O-Led and Onoto are in production.

The chat room will be a dramatic departure and a feature on which many members will enjoy participating.

Thanks for the time and thought invested in the new transformation.

[adyf]

Many thanks to the admin team for all their hard work with this, making FPN an even better place than it was already.

[RMN]

Bit of a mess. There seems no logic or consistent criteria for determining which brands have their own sub-forum; the regional section is similarly inconsistent & looks awful - why the trite, clichéd descriptions? And why not a US regional section, or is that because every US brand, however significant or not, seems to have it's own brand section? And why on earth have a strange little section called "Pen Acoutrements"?

 

 

 

I agree and have long been puzzled as to why some brands have a subsection and others do not. I suppose it should based on demand and traffic, but if that's the case, why Cross but no Pilot or Lamy? I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make any sense.

 

If we're going to be making changes to the FPN structure, we might as well do an overhaul that addresses these points.

The enumeration of all the brands has been on request, because many persons do not know where the lesser known brands should go, thus dumping all in the old Miscellaneous or the old First Stop, driving some members up the wall, so to say. And necessitating mod intervention to move those topics.

Discussions about which forum his own, and which regional have been conducted before. Some have historical reasons, some are extra benefiting from the specific knowledge of their moderators.

It is often a weighing of many factors. Besides, sometimes a regional forum is also difficult to choose. Waterman: USA/Canada/UK/France/Poland(future)/Italian overlays..... So where should it go?

 

AND: Wait far some time with your grumblings, as not all changes have been shown yet so we may yet surprise you all once more. In some cases we are still weighing factors. Wim has already stated that the whole process will take some time, till the end of the year possibly.

 

 

D.ick

[Betweenthelines]

 

 

The enumeration of all the brands has been on request, because many persons do not know where the lesser known brands should go, thus dumping all in the old Miscellaneous or the old First Stop, driving some members up the wall, so to say. And necessitating mod intervention to move those topics.

Discussions about which forum his own, and which regional have been conducted before. Some have historical reasons, some are extra benefiting from the specific knowledge of their moderators.

It is often a weighing of many factors. Besides, sometimes a regional forum is also difficult to choose. Waterman: USA/Canada/UK/France/Poland(future)/Italian overlays..... So where should it go?

 

AND: Wait far some time with your grumblings, as not all changes have been shown yet so we may yet surprise you all once more. In some cases we are still weighing factors. Wim has already stated that the whole process will take some time, till the end of the year possibly.

 

 

D.ick

 

 

Thanks for the info, D.ick, and please don't mistake my feedback for "grumblings". I really appreciate this forum and all the work Wim, you, and the rest of the mods put into it. I figure that, since changes are underway, now is the time for members to provide as much feedback and ideas as possible to throw into the crock pot that you and the other staff are mixing up, so the end product is something everyone can be happy with for years to come.

[migo984]

AND: Wait far some time with your grumblings......

 

 

D.ick

A rather defensive response. Since when is disagreement with something synonymous with "grumblings"? It is a bit naïve to expect the decisions made by admin and moderators to please everybody, or even to be the right ones......

[fountainbel]

Great work, thanks and congratulations to Wim and his great team !

Francis

[Anirban4u]

Maybe one day we can see an Indian forum under regional focus. For the time being it's doing all right in "Other Brands".

Thanks a bunch Wimg.

[Chrissy]

Thank you all!

 

It is always true that changes will bring some good stuff, while other aspects may be less good. It always is an act of finding a balance, where the improvements outweigh the possibly less good aspects.

 

We are also busy cleaning up the board while we are at it, so that any changes will be a lot easier later on.

 

Do note that some of the work done will bring an automatic post recount with it, which means that in many cases the post count of members may go down a little, due to removed double posts and similar things.

 

Warm regards, Wim

One of the better ways of 'cleaning up' would be to permit members to delete all of their old 'Uploads' picture files. If I could delete all of mine I would do so, but they just have to sit there taking up bandwidth because there is no user interface.

 

I have even asked that they all be deleted but either no-one can or no-one does it.

[Wolverine1]

Wiim- Many thanks to you and the Mods and Admins who assist you in making FPN the best place on the web. Thank you for the changes, and thank you for all the effort all of you make on behalf of the FPN community.

[RMN]

One of the better ways of 'cleaning up' would be to permit members to delete all of their old 'Uploads' picture files. If I could delete all of mine I would do so, but they just have to sit there taking up bandwidth because there is no user interface.

 

I have even asked that they all be deleted but either no-one can or no-one does it.

That would mean that all the old topics you posted these pictures to would be "useless". Alas we see that these days already with some old reviews, mostly with external pics. The Pics are gone, and the reviews much less interesting to even completely useless (in the case of some handwritten reviews).

 

The pics from the "old system" can be accessed by yourself in the settings, the pics via Upload can only be removed by admin.

 

But these pictures in itself are no burden as they take very little disk room. Diskspace is NOT a problem. Servertime/processor time is much more a problem.

Every time you ask for a new pages the server computes the picture send to your browser. What takes time is to compute hundreds of pics in one topic (al these quotes repeating nice pics make such a topic much more sluggish than a text-only topic.)

 

So if there is a good reason to remove certain pictures, send a request to remove them to Admin (Wimg). But if you think that is for the good of the functioning of FPN: no, it is not.

 

D.ick

[peterg]

a regional forum is also difficult to choose. Waterman: USA/Canada/UK/France/Poland(future)/Italian overlays..... So where should it go?

 

The same applies to Parker, and Mabie Todd (or Eversharp) to a lesser extent.

 

 

I picked on Cross and Eversharp because of the low volume of postings compared to the Conway Stewart forum

[Chrissy]

That would mean that all the old topics you posted these pictures to would be "useless". Alas we see that these days already with some old reviews, mostly with external pics. The Pics are gone, and the reviews much less interesting to even completely useless (in the case of some handwritten reviews).

 

The pics from the "old system" can be accessed by yourself in the settings, the pics via Upload can only be removed by admin.

 

But these pictures in itself are no burden as they take very little disk room. Diskspace is NOT a problem. Servertime/processor time is much more a problem.

Every time you ask for a new pages the server computes the picture send to your browser. What takes time is to compute hundreds of pics in one topic (al these quotes repeating nice pics make such a topic much more sluggish than a text-only topic.)

 

So if there is a good reason to remove certain pictures, send a request to remove them to Admin (Wimg). But if you think that is for the good of the functioning of FPN: no, it is not.

 

D.ick

I understand what you mean.

 

I have many multiple pics on my ID because either I couldn't tell they were uploaded so I uploaded them again, or I got an error message that it hadn't worked but it had. I would love to have a clear out of all of my duplicates and pics of pens that I have sold that I won't need again. It gets unwieldy to keep them all when they could be edited

Edited December 2, 2014 by Chrissy

[wimg]

a regional forum is also difficult to choose. Waterman: USA/Canada/UK/France/Poland(future)/Italian overlays..... So where should it go?

 

The same applies to Parker, and Mabie Todd (or Eversharp) to a lesser extent.

 

 

I picked on Cross and Eversharp because of the low volume of postings compared to the Conway Stewart forum

The reason for the current brand topics are really twofold: we either have the no. 1 expert for that particular brand as a moderator, or it is a very large section of the entire set of topics.

 

That really explains the existence of the brand topics, and they are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, not in the least because of reasons you mention .

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim

[wimg]

I understand what you mean.

 

I have many multiple pics on my ID because either I couldn't tell they were uploaded so I uploaded them again, or I got an error message that it hadn't worked but it had. I would love to have a clear out of all of my duplicates and pics of pens that I have sold that I won't need again. It gets unwieldy to keep them all when they could be edited

Please, do not worry, Chrissy.

 

Our server is big enough to cope with the load. We currently are only using about 10% of the storage resources, withotu backups, and the same is true for processor and RAM.

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim