This Forum is Becoming Unuseable

The difficulties in using the forum have reasserted themselves. I know that Topaz have expressed a preference for Facebook for general discussion, but they don’t want Beta testing discussed there. Catch 22.

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couple of thoughts
1 when we have an “issue” it often gets dealt with quickly and efficiently and not totally in the public domain but in Facebook it’s REAL public domain wherein “belly up” can result in real belly up.
2 for those of us who have been the object of really nasty behaviour in Facebook - we don’t use it — Sorry TopazLabs if you go to Facebook solely for contact you lose my support - period

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I can only agree with this sentiment. Come on, Joe, fight for us.

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Ditto!

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Ditto for me too.
I visited the Topaz Facebook page and felt this forum was way better… because of the more thoughtful communicating between the members, feedback and in getting help and sharing tips with one another… a real community!

They may have higher numbers at Facebook, but it’'s about quality and not quantity for me!

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Could you explain what difficulties you mean?

@cre8art that’s the main issue - hits and likes earn cash whereas this forum costs money to run. Posting on FB always gets an instant return because bad publicity isn’t the name of the game - but any publicity is good publicity or so they say - always feel sorry for the guy/gal who has to sit and mind-numbingly monitor the FB postings - feel sorry for employers who allow their staff to use FB during working hours because it’s too difficult to monitor and control - but loss of 40 minutes per day is a substantial loss of productivity - pity that employment laws are so lax in the western world. Have said before that FB is for folk with more time than talent.

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I’m not sure where the idea that we’ve abandoned the forum has come from?

The problems that we’re aware of in the forum are minor. Calm down, we’re not going anywhere. If you want more people active in the forums, than on social media, invite them here! Only the community can grow itself.

There are substantial tools for managing an online social presence on FB, Twitter, IG, Google+, and a few others. It’s not just FB. Managing your online presence is an absolute necessity in today’s market. We don’t have a choice but to attend to them, or we relinquish control over our online image to the masses.


Social media does take a lot of time. We’re a small team. We have to prioritize work, and for now, the problems on the forum are very low priority because they do not impact usability for the majority of users. That doesn’t mean beta testing has changed any. That doesn’t mean one location is better than the other. It doesn’t mean anything except we have to spend time on social, and the forum will be addressed when it rises high enough in my priority queue. That’s the truth. As an admin and owner of several business systems for Topaz Labs, I must pick and choose the tasks that impact the most users.

For what it’s worth, I do not use FB and I have had ZERO issues with this forum. As a past network administrator, I understand the difficulties in balancing priorities with available resources. I find the community here respectful and passionate. Keep up the good work!

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mmmm
define “lot” - one of my ex-bosses would have wanted that quantified and costed against time. She was NEVER wrong in my eyes and learned much from her. As for FB etc – I’ll need more than convincing based on the evidence I currently hold

Nothing has changed in the way that we handle beta testing. For some reason, that was assumed to be the case, and I corrected that. I have lowered the priority of fixing minor problems on the forum, because it does not need our attention like social does. I mean, you can choose to not believe that, but it’s true. We’re doing all that we can to stay in contact with as many of our customers and users that we can. The forum is primarily my responsibility, and I acknowledge there are some problems here and there, but most folks don’t see them.

Social media presences are immense, and the entire team is exerting a concerted effort to be available in ALL our channels. While you may only visit the forum, it is quite obviously not our only presence to manage.

I still don’t understand what the contention or problem is, here. I’ve already acknowledged there are a small handful of minor problems. If there’s nothing new to discuss here, I’ll go ahead and close the thread.

Joe, for the last two or three weeks, always over the weekend, the discussion forum has become very awkward to use. Posts hang on 100% upload without rendering and retries are required to post successfully. Viewing posts are also affected. I like to view ‘New’ posts together and work through them, using the back button to return to the list which then removes the post I have just viewed. During bad times the back and forward buttons and the personal notification button (top right) no longer work. It requires a reset of the url to bring up the home page again. No other site I use during this time displays this problem.

I fully understand that you want to concentrate on the content of FB but there are no apparent problems on its operational side, indeed I would be surprised if FB allowed you into the nuts and bolts of its operational side.

The problems experienced on the Discussion forum disappear sometime after midday on Monday which suggests that someone on US time has woken up and pushed a reset. Most users are active over the weekend so I thought it might be in your interests to ensure the forums run smoothly.

FB is a social media forum, it’s full of mundane trivia and uninformed opinion, and seen by many as something to take with a pinch of salt. We were very firmly slapped for discussing beta issues on there. Topaz Discussion is a specialist forum that elicits specialist response, yes it’s smaller, but the quality of response is so much richer.

I request that you reconsider priorities where forum maintenance is concerned.

And yes, go ahead and close the thread. It’s getting late here.

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The beta agreement includes not publicizing our development. Breaking that agreement results in being removed from the testing program. Being reminded of that is not unreasonable.

The problems you’re describing here are the first reports I’ve seen of it. Others don’t seem to echo this experience, and I haven’t seen the behavior you’re describing.

If anyone is able to confirm similar experiences, I’ll take note of it and investigate appropriately. One thing I can think of is a polling interval setting for Discourse, which I just modified a bit. If you see a change for the better, let me know.

Social media presences are immense and so are the privacy issues that FB has recently displayed that they cannot be trusted to keep private.

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Ok…?

We don’t force any connection to any other site. Have a nice day!

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Can someone close this thread. It’s seven months out of date and things have moved on. Thanks.

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