To Active Media Interest
MALCOLM TAYLOR
| Posted in General Questions on
You have bought a company with along tradition of excellence in its coverage of build related topics. It has been evident for a while now your commitment to technically supporting the GBA website appears to be one of indifference at best. The site is currently unusable due to the spam attacks that are constant feature now.
It would be nice to see a member of your management team come to GBA and address the users as to what your plans are going forward, so we can decide whether we want to continue supporting the site.
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Replies
The robots are winning.
DC,
The may be a good reason they are having such a hard time keeping the site functional. I'd like to hear what it is.
And to be clear: This has nothing to do With Kiley's work as editor. This is all on the tech support the site has available.
You may also have noticed that when my membership renewed in November my Expert Member tag disappeared. Over four months later there has been no progress getting it restored.
Bump
Hey Malcolm,
Frankly, all I can say right now is that the edit team is as frustrated as you are. As you know, we're just building journalists; we rely on developers for all of the technical work. And I guess that right now, they're stumped.
We appreciate everyone who supports GBA, our contributors, and what the conversation that is happening on this site brings to the industry. When I get out in the world, I hear over and over again how valuable it is.
I hope that our development team can solve this soon. I appreciate your patience, but also totally understand your frustration. I would feel exactly the same as a customer.
Brian, while I'm not a web developer, my work in the telecom world has gotten me a number of contacts that handle high level issues like this, one was project manager for a very well known mortgage website everyone has heard of. I'd be happy to put anyone there in touch with these people if it would help. Presumably you have my email address on file to be able to reach out if needed. Note that I don't get any commission or anything, just brownie points and possibly helping out the community here who has helped me many times in the past.
Bill
Brian,
Thanks for the reply.
I spend a lot of time on GBA because the content is excellent - and have nothing but praise for the editor, builders and building scientists we rely on to write the blogs that make this site so valuable.
However, GBA has always been a pretty basic website, with very poor search functions, and few updates over all the years Martin so ably grew it. It's hard not to feel there has been and is a lack of commitment to technical support when we see the evidence of it.
Fixing this is of course out of your remit, but in the face of what are persistent problems with the site, it would be nice if someone regularly kept us informed, and reassured us the new owners are taking the site seriously.
Agree with Malcom's sentiments. Appreciate Brian's reply. However, this seems like a solvable issue since it is somehow solved by other websites.
And I'm really sorry we live in a world where you need to solve this issue - I can't imagine what these spam posts possibly think they are accomplishing. But this is where we are, and GBA is a very valuable resource...