... other than the poor folks that reply to the posts on this forum.

They guys that deal with user's "finger trouble" and general complaints do a good job.

However, when things get escalated or put in the pending state, nothing seems to happen.

Here is a list I culled, with the dates they were raised - some date back to the middle of last year. I haven't been through the resolved list to see if any fixes have been put in by the development team. I would bet that 99.9% are fixes provided by the forum support team and they never got escalated.

DO WE ACTUALLY HAVE ANYBODY DOING FUNCTIONAL DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT IN FREEFORUMS, AND IF WE DO - WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

It feels to me like the forum support folks have been cut free to deal with disgruntled users and the development team are off doing something else.


-------------------
[ESCALATED] Users Active over last 24 hours... Raised Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:52 am
[PENDING] Lots of issues... Raised Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:57 pm
[PENDING] "No Ads For Staff" Mod Generating Error in New Forum... Raised Sat Jul 23, 2011 4:54 am
[PENDING] Avatars Still Disappearing... Raised Sat Jul 16, 2011 3:34 am
[PENDING] Traffic stats won't create... Raised Thu Jan 05, 2012 9:41 am
[PENDING] Image Loading issue and error "Forbidden You don't have per"... Raised Wed Nov 02, 2011 10:06 pm
[PENDING] Community chest showing although disabled... Raised Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:38 pm
[PENDING] Chat room setup issues... Raised Sun Jan 01, 2012 10:23 am
[PENDING] Deleted or modified Anonymous account, how to repair/replace... Raised Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:44 pm
[PENDING] strange PMs going out to every member of my forum... Raised Wed Nov 02, 2011 12:03 am
[PENDING] Everyone has VIP status... Raised Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:45 am
[PENDING] Page cannot be Displayed... Raised Fri Dec 02, 2011 8:41 am
[PENDING] New topic button not appearing correctly... Raised Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:14 pm

Hello,
I understand there are a few issues in our bug queue but can assure you the tech team will be working on them one by one to get them fixed.

Subliminal

For my sanity, can you point me at a thread where an escalated problem, went through pending and then got fixed by somebody other than the admin/forum support staff?

Something that the development team actually bug fixed?

I can't remember the last time I actually saw a pending problem get sorted.

Hello jud,
I understand your concerns. The Tech team work mainly behind the scenes and when a fix is produced either Jackal or Division will post to let members know. I know there are a few escalated/pending topics currently, but can assure you the tech team will roll out a fix as soon as possible.

Because this isn't really a support question I'm going to move it to our Feedback and Service Suggestions forum for others to comment on.

Picking one problem, just because it looks like something that should be easy to fix...

[PENDING] Community chest showing although disabled... Raised Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:38 pm

How hard is it to check the state of a flag in the DB to ensure the page is built correctly?

I still can't find a thread that went from Pending to Fixed. Could you point one out please - it would restore some of my faith that stuff does eventually get fixed.

Hello,
There are many previous issues that were previously went through the Escalated / Pending / "Fixed" cycle. They'd simply show as "Resolved" now. I wouldn't be able to find one just like that, but do you understand what I mean?

jud,

Also keep in mind that just because a topic was not marked Resolved after it was either Pending or Escalated, does not mean it wasn't taken care of. There are many Escalated topics, and quite a few Pending topics. Not all of them are tagged as Resolved after the issue has been dealt with, simply because of their number.

I’ll add another one to the list, because this one has been personally irritating me for some time.…….

[PENDING] Today's Birthday not showing…….Raised Sat Sep 11, 2010 6:17 pm That’s over 16 months folks!!!!!

If we dare to bump the thread to ask if anything is being done, we are promptly told this is against the T&C, but we’re not given the right to have issues sorted out in an acceptable period of time. Seems everything goes FF’s way, but nothing our way.

Odd system. Problems have a lifecycle until they get fixed and then you don't close them out and inform the user base? Hmmm - surely you would want to communicate improvements back to the users...?

OK - humour me, which of the ones I listed are in the state you describe?

jud,

A lot of support is given by E-Mail as well when it comes to certain issues, it just depends on what it is.

There is simply no way for me to know that, or anyone for that matter. The amount of topics that come in is very large. We take care of them as soon as we possibly can, and then more issues come our way.

Perhaps I misunderstood the process. I thought it might work something like this:

• Folks post some issue.
• If the support folks can fix it they do so by posting some instructions, PMing or e-mailing. If this is fixed it goes straight to resolved.
• If it is escalated I assumed it was investigated by the development team who then identify if it is a real issue (bug). If it is it moves to the pending state.
• Once it is fixed by the development/bug fix team they inform you and you can update it to resolved with some post details on what has happened.

Is this not the case - don't the support team get told what is being worked on and what has been resolved so you can post an update?

If it doesn't work like this then how can you support guys ever know when something is fixed?

Hello,
As we are volunteer support staffers from all over the world we don't really need to be told exactly what is happening. We will of course be told when a fix is due to be rolled out, but the [Pending] status is all of our way of knowing that the issue is being worked on. Unfortunately the tech team can't work on more than one issue at a time, so they have to prioritize more important issues that we may not even know about above others.

I have been in IT for over 20 years. If the companies I have worked for only worked on one issue at a time they would have gone out of business...

I will bail out of this thread now. I think the responses have told me everything I need to know.

Keep up the good work as support staff - it appears you do a better job than the one man development team in the background.