I'm leaving WP indefinitely

Post Reply New Topic

Perhaps, though, this is another sign of the times that message boards are going the way of the dinosaur in favour of social media. Wrong Planet and sites like it have functioned well as support forums in the past decade or so; but perhaps these days, newly diagnosed autistics are finding support on different venues.

I hope not! I don't use social media much at all, and I'm not open on them, and they would absolutely not cover my needs at all. Forums do. I find forums to be the perfect way to talk and discuss and play games etc.
This is disturbing!

well then, IMHO us aspies are gonna have to make this thing last! as long as possible!

See here, and note the date of the post: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4243880.html#4243880

Post dated December 15, 2011

The promised site upgrade has been promised several times and has been dragging on for years and so far nada, zero, zilch.The update is now three years late and counting. I see it was promised again for "this week" but that was last week. Maybe the new site will become live sometime, but I've given up waiting. I have no confidence in anything Alex says.

A month or so ago Alex asked the mods to test the new version of the site and several of us spent time going through it and compiled a list of bugs and problems with it for Alex in the moderator forum. He never came back or acknowledged the points we'd raised. He couldn't even be bothered to tell us he'd read the list or to thank us for our time / input, but that is nothing unusual.

Several factors have contributed to my decision to leave WP. First and foremost lately has been all the trouble I've been getting from CloudFlare which has effectively been periodically banning me from the site. I appreciate that this problem affects a minority of members but to me it is a big problem if I'm blocked from the site, based upon my IP address. CloudFlare insists I solve a captcha but it doesn't actually show me one to solve!! !! This makes the site totally inaccessible. The only way I've found around this is to wait, sometimes several hours or even days before CloudFlare lets me onto WP again, or to reboot my router to generate a new IP address to get around the IP ban - but this isn't always convenient to do depending on whatever else I'm doing on the internet.

The ongoing bugs with the site software haven't helped either, not only is it irritating for us as members but also as mods as we have to go around the site cleaning up multiple posts and threads which have been created by members confused as to whether their post has been accepted or not, so they click back and submit again sometimes several times.

I've noticed a number of the long term members of the site have drifted away over the last year or so. As to whether or not the site problems have contributed to this loss I don't know. However, I have noticed that the PPR forum in particular has become very stale as it no longer has as many active posters and many of the threads are just repeats of topics that have already been done to death. There is no longer the critical mass of posters there to keep that forum vibrant and interesting and I have less reason to be here.

Speaking for myself and also repeating what other (long term) moderators (including former mods) have said: Alex has appalling communication skills. I appreciate he has Asperger's but I cannot reconcile his apparent communication abilities to advise media / TV and to talk at conventions with his inability to communicate with his moderators or admins. Our PMs or emails often go unread for several weeks or even months. Sometimes they are never read. Alex just turns up now and then and disappears for another six months. When Alex does respond to our queries it is with the fewest words possible, often failing to answer our questions and just leaves us trying to guess what his cryptic responses mean.

One example: After yet another fault developed in the site software we were left without the ability to ban anyone from the site! This problem went on for several months before Alex finally turned up and said he'd been away on holiday (around Europe as I recall). We were in the silly situation for several months of just removing posts of trolls and spammers as they posted, much to the amusement of some trolls who called us out on our inability to ban them. When Alex finally did respond to our pleas for help, he was unable to fix the ban tool and ended up giving me Admin access - the only way the ban tool would now work.

The mods have had various other problems with (lack of) site management too, but it wouldn't be appropriate to go into detail and air WP's dirty laundry in public. I think folks probably get the general idea of the problems we have faced.

Another problem we've had is getting and keeping new moderators. 99% of all the work has been done by me, Cornflake and GGPViper. The load has been too much for us at times, especially when dealing with complex social and personal issues between various members. Finding new mods to help out has been difficult and also frustrating as they tend to just disappear or not help out very much. The active moderators (me, Cornflake, GGPViper) have put in a colossal amount of time and effort in keeping the site ticking over smoothly, whacking spammers and trolls, diffusing flame wars and member conflicts, helping members with their queries and problems, moving threads, fixing broken quotes and so on. We never get any thanks or acknowledgement from Alex for our work. Instead we have to put up with offensive behaviour and foul language and even threats from trolls and others who we keep off the site. This all takes a personal toll on us. I've been moderating for four years and put up with a lot of s**t coming from all directions and I've had enough. Being a moderator on WP is a thankless task, made all the worse by a lack of support from Alex.

I received a short acknowledgement PM from Alex a few days ago but I gather Cornflake hasn't even received any communication from Alex to thank him for the several years of work and dedication he's put in, helping to keep the site going. It is the way Alex takes his "staff" for granted that is most hurtful. We weren't expecting a gold watch or anything; merely an acknowledgement and a "thank you" for the many thousands of hours of work we've put in would have been nice.

If Alex had bothered to keep people in the loop, I might have hung around a while longer to see the new site go live - which was apparently last week, though the site doesn't look much different today. Apparently Alex thinks it is my fault that I'm not psychic and can't read his mind.

Sorry, but I've just had enough. I've put up with all this crap on multiple levels for long enough and I'm out of here.

It will be interesting to see if this post disappears too, like the one I made several days ago, responding to someone's question. Removing that post was very petty and childish.

I think TallyMan deserves a big thank you and Cornflake as well, for the work they put in keeping the site alive.
.

They do deserve thanks and I hope that even if they decide to not come back as moderators that they consider sticking around as posters.

I do agree that a lot of what I've had to do has been overwhelming for me and I apologize for not always being communicative.

Well, this week is almost over too. I guess that this forum has a lot of stuff on it to migrate.