HOW Forum?

[Inspired]

Knock, knock!

Anyone home?

Most of the regular HOWie forum members have moved out of this forum. There's just a few left that have hanged on in hopes that this forum will suddenly clean up and be functional again. However, for me, I'm about to give up this waiting. This saddens me as this forum has been such a great resource in the past.

Without any real transparent feedback from HOW website team about what is happening with the forum I'll just *** that they have given up on it (I have no proof otherwise). Saying that they are working on "the problem" for months on end is unrealistic. If I treated my clients this way word would get out quickly that I'm a crappy and untrustworthy website designer and I'd be out of business.

So what say you?

[Sarah Whitman]

I wanted to check in and let you know that I've heard your complaints and I thank you for your feedback. We've recently had some meetings about the forum and looked at all of our options. We will be sticking with the phpBB platform and, while spam is inherent in all forums, we're going to be increasing our efforts to keep this one spam-free by:

• freeing up more of my time to delete spam and ban spammers
• giving moderators the ability to ban and batch-delete all messages from spammers
• adding a few more moderators to our roster

I'm going to look at consolidating some forum sections, too, just to make the process of monitoring it less unwieldy. Feel free to post your suggestions here.

Also, the private message spam from last month stemmed from a security issue that phpBB has to fix, so we're waiting on that before we can restore that function. And the captchas are here to stay.

If you're still not happy with the forum experience, I encourage you to check out some of HOW's social media groups:

Google+: http://bit.ly/GoogleHOW

Facebook:
HOWies: https://www.facebook.com/groups/179971122021860/
HOW Magazine: https://www.facebook.com/HOWmagazine
HOW Design Conference: https://www.facebook.com/HOWDesignConference

LinkedIn:
HOW Design: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4318 ... =&trk=tyah
InHOWse: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2202 ... g_ugrp_ovr
HOW Design Conference: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=9834 ... =&trk=tyah

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/HOWbrand/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/HOWbrand

While we appreciate your offers of help, we're not accepting outside *** at this time. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions or constructive feedback. And thanks for your continued support of HOW.

[Ampersand]

...while spam is inherent in all forums, we're going to be increasing our efforts to keep this one spam-free by:

• freeing up more of my time to delete spam and ban spammers
• giving moderators the ability to ban and batch-delete all messages from spammers
• adding a few more moderators to our roster

Hmmm, your post is over three months old, and spam is completely overrunning the forum. I've nearly stopped dropping by and rarely post anything because it just seems like nobody is guiding the forum, nobody is in charge and nobody is deleting the hundreds of spam posts that stretch back for weeks. Come on, it's not brain surgery to get rid of spam. The only possible reason is that the people in charge just don't care all that much, and that's too bad — this could be an important resource for designers, and it certainly doesn't speak well for HOW magazine to be *** with something where nobody running the place seems to be paying attention.

The solutions to these problems just aren't that difficult: sign up a few good volunteer moderators, give them the authority to actually moderate, set the rules, delete spam, make decisions, impose some minimum standards, set direction and actually become invested in this place and provide it with the needed personality that it deserves and could easily have. Like I said, it's not brain surgery, and there's a very good potential user base from which to begin and grow.

[phoenix]

So... as Ampersand said... what's happening with spam situation? I've hit Report on heaps of it, and yet two weeks later, that user is still spaminating around the forum.

Is this why the Lounge has been removed? Is this the death knell for the forum?

It was loved once, but you guys (admins) can easily see when the love was lost - when you changed the forum and irreparably impaired people's ability to log in, lost the history, and permitted the spammers to run unchecked. Whilst many people don't like tweaks / changes (look at the uproar everytime Facebook alters the interface), everyone gets over their gripes and continue as before. But not when some basic issues aren't resolved (1) logging in (2) spam. Plenty have given suggestions or put up their hand to help, but the forum seems to have been ignored by HOW, so of course the members stop ch

[smutek]

Why don't you guys and girls just either:

a) hire someone who knows what they are doing?
b) just pull this forum completely.

How long has this been going on now? Over a year?

[Sarah Whitman]

I'm not in a position to change anything on the technical side, but I have passed your suggestions and complaints on to those who have the power to do so, and I haven't heard any response about the things I've asked them to look into. In the meantime, all I can do is clean out spam. I will pass along your most recent comments. Thank you.

[Murofwoh]

seriously sarah your comment is "other forums have spam" (basically what you are saying)...uhmmmmm....no they don't...,not the good ones....kudos to how on totally ruining their lounge................what was once a good thing is now , well, non-existant

[k ern]

Yep. The lounge was the favorite of many HOW members. I came back here after months and saw that it's now...gone. WTH? This forum was jumping years ago, now it's dead.