I know some of you wanted me to block the other SWYM thread, but now I’m gonna start one instead.
Sometimes on one of my sites, some links crop up where people discuss certain things. Today a link came up to the SWYM. Naturally curious about stuff, I clicked the link.
They sent out a message to (hundreds? thousands?) of SWYM members that says that they are no longer members of SWYM, and then offer a cryptic message that explains that everybody is really a member so no one needs to be a member. To a site that I have to register and sign in to read. Anyway. So I’m no longer a member. Which is really great because that will free up a lot of spare time and leave a lot of open brain processing time to think about where to go next.
Can you post the equivalent CADForum statistics to what Matthew Hall has in this post for SWYM?
1700 questions for a year seems like a sharp drop off compared to the old forum. It would be interesting to see how many questions and answers have happened here for SW for the past year.
I’m sure there’s no chance of them messing up your CAD data stored on that platform. That would be a terrible business decision…oh wait…never mind.
FWIW, that Eric Beatty who seems to be the most enthusiastic user and “advocate” on there…yeah, he’s a DSS employee too. Edit: Apparently he’s not after all…but I still want to know how he got DSS under his name.
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Those are not unique questions though. Many of them were duplicates to either old questions (which nobody can find anymore) or which were answered before in the SWYM(p).
I recall seeing at least 5x a question about online licensing within a week after their announcement…
Different statistics are available from different places. phpbb isn’t big on providing a lot of information. You can get info on anyone through the profile (I believe this is restricted to registered users). For example, my stats:
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And at the bottom of the Board Index page there are a lot of stats:
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And I do get some google stats. This chart is for the number of people actively using the site since the beginning (march 8 2021).
And then there was the chart from early on that was submitted by a mysterious source:
And here’s another look:
There are a couple of things to say when you’re looking at stats. First, we started flat-footed from zero in early March 2021, so we didn’t have 15 years of momentum. Plus, this is not a commercial effort - it has been completely supported by myself and generous contributors here at the site. Also, this is a completely organic traffic. No promoted links, no SEO bullshit beyond common sense, no corporate sponsors, nothing. Just good topics, good answers, the right people, and good content, mostly thanks to you all.
I post these just to try to tamp down misinformation and hysterics. Truth is truth and fair is fair. Let’s keep it that way.
That said, I only go to that swamp to see additional information and even then only review recent posts because searching there is a horrible mess and an exercise in frustration. The pace of change is incredibly slow and the things they are implementing seem to be small increments at best. It is obvious that whole platform was put together without any input from the very people they want to use it. Some of the things they are “about to implement” I told them about over a year ago. They were so obvious then, but it seems like someone just gave them an epiphany. (Yes, that is a sort of pun-in-time.)
Do you remember when the SOLIDWORKS News & Info used to be SOLIDWORKS Connect? People were posting in SWX Connect questions that should have been posted in the Forum. That still happens in the News & Info section, but was reduced a bit when they renamed it.
(You should see the long emails I sent 'splaining that to them. It still took them a few months to reach that conclusion and then another couple to simply rename it.) I also told them that the SOLIDWORKS News & Info group should only allow people to post replies to their “official” posts. This would really reduce the mis-posting of forum questions.
And now, after an even longer period of time considering my suggestion, they are about to fix another problem that was obvious and simple to do right in the first place. In the Forum section you will not be able to post an Idea, but only post a Question (default) or a Post (Discussion). Ideas will be directed to another group for ideas to improve the forum or to the customer portal for submitting an Enhancement Request for improving the software. Believe me, I have my heartburn with the current TTL/ER systems, but at least these moves will dramatically reduce the clutter and confusion in the forum over there.
The really sad thing is that these things did not require any serious programming, just a) naming the News & Info to what it should have been all along and b) the other items are permission settings. They are basically what we used to have on the old Jive forum, but it took me and a couple of others a lot of effort to get this through their corporate skulls.
Some things have no explanation (at least not from me).
Mike, try resetting your last name in your profile there to be ALL CAPS. I am the antithesis of a fanboy so I made my first name all caps. It is a small poke in the eye I can do.
To be honest… I am not surprised anymore…
It seem like no one at DS sit down and think about whether THEY SHOULD DO THIS…
I am willing to guess that “YOU ARE NO LONGER A MEMBER BLABLABLBA” is the default wording throughout the whole platform and they dont bother to think about what happen when they do THAT FOR ALL user
(Or they dont even know until it happen )
Not a programmer nor having any knowledge in website… but a better solution will be just create a new role in the community (eg: WIKI AUTHOR) and assign those that need to be the wiki author the role. This should not impact anyone else at all.
But i guess i am asking too much eh
I’ve said it before over there and probably here…I believe there are two groups running DS. One group is responsible for making terrible decisions. The other group is responsible for cleaning up the mess.
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