mrchad9 wrote:OMG if Montana Matt is using Josh's profile page to develop a new look and feel for SP then he is hell bent on destroying this place.

Doing nothing would have been better. Poor form Montana Matt. Goodbye SP.

Way not cool Mr. Chad. Have you seen my beta pages? Well I'll let this one slide (kinda). I may write something soon to get more public opinion. We want what's best for SP. My profile styling is custom made. I had no plans on using a lot of the styling that I have used. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "don't jump to conclusions". This is one of those cases.

@ Matt: I tested the edit on a page which it was flying fast! Wow! This deserves a round of applause. I been tired lately so I haven't been as observant as I usually am. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this.

The Chief wrote:Appears that all "I" sprayers have it... figures.

Chief, try to be good. By saying this you disrespected some of the best contributors of SummitPost. That's not very nice.

@ Larry: Thanks for creating some cheer. We could use all the cheer and positive attitudes. I could fight back with some of the craziness that has taken place in this thread. Nope. That's not my style. The way I fight back is with an explanation and maintaining a good attitude. Hostility will only create a atmosphere that will discourage other folks from using the forums. I admit I wasn't much of a fan of the chat system. I wouldn't mind it that much, but I personally didn't use it much. As I stated before, a section dedicated to a chat would work for everyone's benefit.

Diego Sahagún wrote:Perhaps you could think that the things you don't use are NOT stupid...

Diego's got a good point. I didn't use the SP chat much, but I do use gmail's chat a lot. Even though I'm not in favor for a chat system (globally anyways), I will second what Diego said. However the games on the chat are probably what fueled this.

lcarreau wrote:WHY? Why do I have to be constantly told how to think ???

He threw in the words "perhaps" and "could" which means that it's up to you to interpret his opinion. So a even better way of saying would be "Please consider the things you don't use are not stupid".

Scott wrote:Anyway, for all you complaining about Josh offering to help, Matt did say he is taking more volunteers. I thought you guys wanted improvements to SP, so it may be best not to complain about them before we see what they are.

Indeed he did! The more help and suggestions the better. As someone who is working on some ideas, feel free to contact me or critique my beta version. Thank you Scott for being very reasonable about this.

lcarreau wrote:Doesn't "annoying" mean the same thing as stupid

No Larry. The definition of Annoy: "to disturb or bother (a person) in a way that displeases, troubles, or slightly irritates".
Stupid is "characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless".

The Chief wrote:But please tell us that those improvements will NOT end up looking like Josh's Profile!!!!

Chief chief chief.... Taking me for a ride on your crazy motorcycle. 4 exclamation marks. You know what that would sound like in real life? Screaming. 3 is yelling. 2 is talking very loud. 1 is excited. Well I won't even begin to talk about all the videos on your profile. Perhaps your jealous of my unlimited power as seen on my profile.

Montana Matt wrote:Listening to all this b**** BEFORE anything has even happened is part of the reason I hesitate ever making any changes to this site. At least when no changes are made the whining remains at a very low to moderate level...

I feel for you there. Keep in mind that this favor would go beyond all the folks that are chatting away in this forum, or even who post on this site, but for the people who are wanting to find beta for their climb. Keep rocking Matt, don't let folks drag you down.

Dow Williams wrote:You cannot afford to pay a professional to do this work?

Matt already volunteers for free for this site. He has put a lot of technical thought into optimizing it, increasing it's SEO, and added more features. For him to pay out of pocket too? I'll let Matt answer this one.

mrchad9 wrote:Bulls*** Montana Matt. You and I have discussed specific needs in the past, and Bob Sihler as well. You promptly follow up by agreeing to ideas and doing exactly nothing for 10 months.

Use some criteria rather than doing something random and unproductive.

From what I understand there have been a lot of things floating around for years. Matt added some features which helped the site out a deal (I'm not even talking about the db optimization process). Nothing? You mean he didn't add the features that the community wanted. He is a busy man, one of the reasons he is making some changes is because his free time eased up. I've worked with a lot of developers with sending requests. I send out a lot of requests to many people spending hours figuring new features and the best ways to make my site. Most of the time I get a "too busy" or something of that effect. But every now and then I get lucky. Even though a lot of my work gets "wasted" it still ends up being worth while because I acquired a few new features that are very helpful in moving my site forward.

When it comes to the web world one must have a lot of patience. I've been waiting for years for certain extensions to come out. SP has only one main maintainer (and the elves of course). Some requests have been made, so we'll see what happens. Your approach of slamming Matt discourages him from doing the very things your trying to fight for. Criteria is in order. Optimization of the server was more important than a new template or new features. If it weren't for Matt, SP would be incredibly slow. This would make it's rank in Google drop like a rock. Guess where a lot of members magically came from within the past few years?

So the question that has long been in my mind arises. Are we enemies? Or are we a team? Are we not all trying to achieve the same goal of providing quality information for those going to the mountains? I know where I stand on this. I hope you feel the same way.

Josh your lengthy posts are doing nothing but prove that you don't have a clue what the hell you are talking about.

Firstly... No. Matt does not volunteer for free to help this site. He is one of the site owners. Though he likes to keep that on the down low so many can continue to assume he is volunteering rather than neglecting the site most of the time. What he does for this site is to develop his own asset, not provide time for some goodwill like all the elves and content contributors do. Matt is not volunteering.

The fact that SP has only one maintainer, and one who is rarely available or active at that, is purely a conscious (and poor) decision the owners have decided to make... Matt himself being one of those decision makers. This site needs more attention than it has beern getting, regardless of the reasons and excuses for it.

When it comes to the web one must be dynamic and responsive. The opposite of what you propose. Take the home page for example. It is stale and outdated. How many major sites do you visit where the home page is identical for seven days straight with only a single bullshit tiny photo halfway down the page changing day-to-day?

This site needs more attention than it has beern getting, regardless of the reasons and excuses for it.

When it comes to the web one must be dynamic and responsive. The opposite of what you propose. Take the home page for example. It is stale and outdated. How many major sites do you visit where the home page is identical for seven days straight with only a single bullshit tiny photo halfway down the page changing day-to-day?

Didn't Matt just say that he was trying to make changes? Someone is finally looking into improvements and it seems that you want to run them off.

Wouldn't a chat feature or moving this thread to a chatroom make it better?

mrchad9 wrote:.

When it comes to the web one must be dynamic and responsive.

+1 --- AND, a member must have very TOUGH skin when posting comments in the Forum.

Humor, does anybody understand what it is anymore ?

I was commenting on what the OP wrote. The CHAT FEATURE ... YES or NO I give a definite NO ... WHY do we need it ?

Here's the original post, by the way ...

Diego Sahagún wrote:Where is the chat now Can't see it.

Gracias

mrchad9 wrote:When it comes to the web one must be dynamic and responsive. The opposite of what you propose.

Now we can both agree that this site needs to be more dynamic. A frontpage that is changing more would be nice. But how was my post the opposite of this? I don't want SP to have a stale look. That is the main reason I volunteered for this. We've even talked in private about this (well we touched on it in private).

The Chief wrote:No.. just want to know who your Meth hookup is. Cus they most certainly must be mixing it up with some good old Acid.

This post is toxic on so many different levels. C'mon Chief, stay focused. I was using humor. Lets get back to constructive thinking. So with the given circumstances what do you propose?

I'd answer the few other points Chad made, but I don't want to steal away from the thread. If anything I'm trying to make things ease up.

Dow Williams wrote:You cannot afford to pay a professional to do this work?

I take it that is a no?

Bring the chat back and take those games away please

"Traffic to the site has increased 50% in each of the last two years."

Assuming the increased ad revenue can't cover it, I am more than willing to donate money to hire a professional "legitimate" concern to make design changes for SP. You know my email.

Josh your pages demonstrate a lot of programming knowledge, but hijacking the look and feel of the site, or changing it at all, is not what is needed. More substantive changes, that would be easy to implement, that would improve access to content and usability of the site are more productive. The color schemes are fine as is. If your girlfriend has gotten lazy and boring and does nothing all day but sit on the couch watching TV and eating Cheetos, dying her hair is not the solution.

Matt you seem to be wanting props for keeping the site running, but in reality I think most would agree that is the bare minimum of what should be done. How do you and the other owners reconcile spending less hours on the site you own than many of the members here spend for free adding content every year? And with all this extra traffic you can't get a real programmer? How do the ad revenues now compare to two years ago?

Matt, thanks for keeping the site running. It does seem to be faster lately.

Anyway, most of the changes actually needed (at least in my opinion) are pretty minor. For example, the email system doesn't work and needs to go. You can't respond to an email, so it doesn't do any good to recieve them.

If some FAQ's or intructions could be displayed right when you add a new page, it would really help new members.

Other than minor details, the site is perfectly functional (assuming it doesn't crash or get bogged down-which it sounds like you have been keeping up on), which is fine by me. Most people come here to share and recieve climbing beta I think, so in that sense most things are fine the way they are.

I like chat.

Scott you don't have much basis for saying most members don't want chat. The number of members who post in such threads on the topic is not representative of the membership as a whole. I'd bet any amount you like that the majority of members are completely indifferent. Heck most probably never even knew about it.

Not sure why anyone feels the need to be against it. If you don't use it, be indifferent. If some folks find it useful it doesn't stop you from avoiding it.

Take a look at Mountain Project...they are way ahead of you. They don't have "elves" constantly plastering their own bodies of work on the front page and ignoring those for who they have a hard-on for. Take a leap of faith and make the site more dynamic. Be more objective, don't just listen to people who kiss your ass. Listen to those of us who challenge you to do better as well. Invest in the adventure community, real people who do interesting things, that is your market. The current elf population has a hard-on for climbers, both rock and ice. How many of those do you have left? who contribute to the site? That is a big part of the market for the internet site you bought into with your time. Allow the viewers at large (not select members or even the member body) to determine what is interesting, or not, in terms of promoting the site. That is how successful internet enterprises function.

From this perspective (dynamic/interesting) SP is practically dead. It is worth many times less then what its potential was in 2007, not just because of the economy, but because of nothing interesting to offer in terms of growth or new "contributing" members. Your visitations are up due to solid beta on the site that have gained traction in Google order...because it is worthy. That part has always been well done on SP...the format for encouraging and improving detailed beta pages, etc.

If you want to do it right, but can't afford to as you state and don't have enough ad revenue to cover it, I am more than willing to DONATE money to hire a true third party designer to perform the makeovers you want versus handing it over to someone who has shown a propensity for manipulation. You really need to start steering the site away from that kind of conduct if you want it to ever earn its keep and pay you for your time.

Scott wrote:Matt, thanks for keeping the site running. It does seem to be faster lately.

Anyway, most of the changes actually needed (at least in my opinion) are pretty minor. For example, the email system doesn't work and needs to go. You can't respond to an email, so it doesn't do any good to recieve them.

If some FAQ's or intructions could be displayed right when you add a new page, it would really help new members.

Other than minor details, the site is perfectly functional (assuming it doesn't crash or get bogged down-which it sounds like you have been keeping up on), which is fine by me. Most people come here to share and recieve climbing beta I think, so in that sense most things are fine the way they are.

Bring the chat back

Diego, you seem to be missing the point that by far and away most SP members do not want this feature.

Do you have any statistics about that