Disgusted with this forum

[Pogle]

I had a problem.
I came here for help.
You were no help whatsoever.

I paid extra on my hardware for this software. I'm appalled to be treated like this. I wrote out the problem to the best of my understanding. If further details were required the correct course of action is to ask for them. Not just shut me up by 'disapproving'.

This is the only forum I've ever been on that requires approval of queries. The rest of the world has embraced the openness of the internet and understand how peer to peer support can alleviate a company's burden of service. You could easily have published the post and asked, or let another member ask, a few pertinent questions. What's the worst that could happen?

I was pleased to have received my upgrade to version 8 but now I'm simply disgusted.

For what it's worth, I resolved the problem myself but not before trying lots of things and even uninstalling and reinstalling the software. It took time that could have been saved for me and for anyone else with the same problem looking at old threads for answers.


On 11/11/2011 07:55, noreply@silverfast.de wrote:
> Hello Pogle,
>
> You are receiving this notification because your topic "Everything's coming
> out positive" at "LaserSoft Imaging" was disapproved by a moderator or
> administrator.
>
> The following reason was given for the disapproval:
>
> The reported message does not fit into any other category, please use the
> further information field.
>
> This is a repeated message, this copy has been deleted.
>
>

[LSI_Morales]

Hi there

Not just shut me up by 'disapproving'.

Have you bothered to read why your message was disapproved?
It turns out you posted two copies of the same message, one of them was deleted and we informed you about it.

This is the only forum I've ever been on that requires approval of queries. The rest of the world has embraced the openness of the internet and understand how peer to peer support can alleviate a company's burden of service.

There is a set of rules for participating in this forum (which are hardly followed). This has lead to an overflow of irrelevant threads and other messages which do not belong to this place. Hence we had to implement the approval mechanism.

For what it's worth, I resolved the problem myself but not before trying lots of things and even uninstalling and reinstalling the software. It took time that could have been saved for me and for anyone else with the same problem looking at old threads for answers.

I am glad you could solve the problem.

Actually that is the right procedure (and one of the recommendations of this forum), first look up for old threads, with possible answers to my problem, 99% of the daily questions we received on the forum have been previously answered in other threads.
After checking your message, I could confirm, it has been answered many times in other forum threads.

Please do not misinterpret my words. As you can see, if the recommendations and forum rules were followed, the action of this forum would be much less complicated, unfortunately experience has shown us the opposite.

I am sorry for your frustration and hope you can now better understand the reasons and procedures in this forum.

Kind regards

[Pogle]

OK, at least I understand what happened now. It's unfortunate (1) that the disapproval came in nearly five hours before approval and (2) that they both came on Friday when I posted my query on Tuesday evening, much too late to be of any use to me.

I can also assure you that I did search the forum before posting but when one doesn't know what the problem is one doesn't always know which keywords to search. Positive and negative just came back as 'too common' to search on.

I posted this in anger, not expecting it to be approved but as a way to communicate with the moderaters directly. So I would be happy for this thread to be deleted. However I'd still suggest removing the moderation on posts in order to allow speedy peer to peer communication. I think this is a registered user forum so it should be well behaved.

[Pogle]

[I don't know if this post is a duplicate post or not. I posted once but nothing happened. Didn't see anything about it awaiting approval.]

OK, at least I understand what happened now. It's unfortunate (1) that the disapproval came in nearly five hours before approval and (2) that they both came on Friday when I posted my query on Tuesday evening, much too late to be of any use to me.

I can also assure you that I did search the forum before posting but when one doesn't know what the problem is one doesn't always know which keywords to search. Positive and negative just came back as 'too common' to search on.

I posted this in anger, not expecting it to be approved but as a way to communicate with the moderaters directly. So I would be happy for this thread to be deleted. However I'd still suggest removing the moderation on posts in order to allow speedy peer to peer communication. I think this is a registered user forum so it should be well behaved.

[LSI_Morales]

Hi Poggle,

as you can see, messages come twice and three times easily (check above). We believe we should inform our users when their post has not been approved and the reason why.

OK, at least I understand what happened now. It's unfortunate (1) that the disapproval came in nearly five hours before approval and (2) that they both came on Friday when I posted my query on Tuesday evening, much too late to be of any use to me.

Sorry, we have hundreds of posts on a daily basis + our team also deals with hundreds of support tickets daily. We are aware that people need a solution as quick as possible but we have to prioritize according to certain criteria, hence it might take some time until a forum post or a support ticket is answered.

I posted this in anger, not expecting it to be approved but as a way to communicate with the moderaters directly.

I have the feeling this post will serve as an answer to similar cases. I would like to keep it posted for people to understand both sides of the coin, however if you insist we can delete this thread.

However I'd still suggest removing the moderation on posts in order to allow speedy peer to peer communication. I think this is a registered user forum so it should be well behaved.

Not possible for the reasons exposed above!

Thanks for your understanding

Cheers

[Loikkanen]

Sorry, we have hundreds of posts on a daily basis + our team also deals with hundreds of support tickets daily. We are aware that people need a solution as quick as possible but we have to prioritize according to certain criteria, hence it might take some time until a forum post or a support ticket is answered.

If so, you (and we) are losing a lot of knowledge. I think you should seriousley re-think the policy of your discussion forum. There are many good examples of discussion forums where the users discuss and give hints and information how to use the software. So it is no wonder that the number of users of the forum is very small. Users learn your policy very quickly and probably start using other software.

Or maybe you consider changing the name from forum to something else? Forum means a place were users can really discuss.

As now, it is more like question and answer site.

with warmth and friendship
Loikkanen

[Martyn_T]

I have to agree with Loikkanen.

This is not a "forum" as I understand it, the English dictionary defines it as "a meeting place for the discussion of questions of public interest". This seems to be a website where only Lasersoft moderators are able to offer advice and where any serious point referring to a (possible) shortcoming in the software is turned into a private "ticket". My recent (first and only as I am a new user) post of this nature was handled this way and although I have now received a response to the ticket informing me that the behaviour is known to the developers and will be resolved in a future update, nobody else who also has seen the same behaviour is aware of this (unless they have also created a private ticket like me). Part of my original "post" was also commenting on the fact that threads are closed by the moderators putting an end to any possible discussion between users. I purposely say "users" as I don't consider us to be forum "members", members are trusted. I don't doubt that Lasersoft people ultimately want to help but this method of stifling free discussion is imho not the way to achieve this. Another grievance I have is the sometimes arrogant attitude of the moderators in answering questions from "users", in the sense of "you are wrong, this is my meaning, discussion closed".

I doubt if I shall be making much use of the forum in the future, what a pity.

Regards,
Martyn Thompson
Netherlands.

[LSI_Morales]

Hi Martyn

This is not a "forum" as I understand it, the English dictionary defines it as "a meeting place for the discussion of questions of public interest".

We should add to your definition "with specific rules to be followed".

I believe to have mentioned before: "We have different reasons to reject a post" (I will not mention them again, they are explicit in our forum rules). If your post has not been approved most likely its because any of the forum rules have not been followed.

Kind regards