SummitPost.org

Josh Lewis wrote:
Anyways in the great words of Ronald Reagan "Mr. Miller, tear down these ads."

Ronnie was a great actor. He was particularly famous in "Bedtime for Bonzo." My point being, "If you snooze, you lose."

Scott wrote:Matt, did it ever happen?

I don't see any difference.

Matt, your silence is deafening!!! it's been eight days since Scott sent you his question. If I waited that many days to respond to my customers I wouldn't have any!

Considering the serious contributers that have responded to this thread I would think that a response to Scott by now would have been in order...let me see, Scott, Bob, Matt (Lemke), Josh, chugach, Kiefer, amongst others. If those people alone took their submissions and bolted SP would be a fraction of what it currently is...

I just spent 2 hours creating a couple of pages only to find the format ruined by these annoying adds. I thought they were supposed to go away by January 1.

Why are you not answering?? How much longer are we supposed to wait?

With the right partners, I would consider putting significant startup funds into a nonprofit alternative platform, to which the copyright holders could move their content. Some contributors would stay with SP regardless, of course, and that's fine.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather invest in converting SP to a sustainable, self-perpetuating nonprofit with responsive leadership and adequate tech support. But It seems to me that while Matt does his best, his passions and focus are elsewhere, and the owners are unreachable and uninterested. This makes change from within unlikely. Starting over may be the only way to get it right.

So where are all the SP powers-that-be? I have wondered if they are all off to some tropical island putting those ad funds to some enjoyable use. Nothing seems to be happening at SP these days. Not only do we have the constant problem of ads that distort well laid-out pages, but no updates on Feature Photos anymore. The ones that are there are really nice, but I have seen many other great photos posted that would also be worthy, if only some one was not asleep at the wheel.

While it makes me sad to see SP going down the tubes, I would also migrate to a site like Chugach has suggested. I suspect that while most people would stay at SP (largely inactive), it would be the active members who would bolt and take all the life of the site with it. Just an opinion obviously, but still that's my gut feeling.

I love SP and I believe we have created the greatest online mountain database in the world. I have done a lot to help build the site with local hikes wherever I have lived. As for the ads, I haven't seen a response about whether donations could be made to the site to reduce the ads. I'd be willing to contribute $50 and I am sure many others would too.

hgrapid wrote:As for the ads, I haven't seen a response about whether donations could be made to the site to reduce the ads. I'd be willing to contribute $50 and I am sure many others would too.

Just for clarity, in my previous post I wasn't talking about $50, by several orders of magnitude. But I would not make an unrestricted donation, of even $50, to SP as it is currently run. There would have to be some accountability to the values of the content contributors, ideally through a nonprofit board.

I, too, have put several planned pages on hold. Some of these places have pages on Mountain Project already, but the information there is poor, and the pages I will make will be much better.

For some of the others, you will not find information anywhere else online.

As an elf and a forum moderator, it's not my practice to be publicly critical of this site and its policies and direction, but I want to share some thoughts with everyone.

Like many others, I was appalled by what I saw when I turned off my ad blocker. Were I a non-member having come across this site through a search, I might have closed the page and gone elsewhere.

Yes, the front page is pretty stagnant as someone has mentioned. Let me offer a theory as to why, as I am one of those partially responsible for the stagnation, and because I think it relates to this current issue.

A few years back, we "admins" had a lengthy behind-the-scenes discussion about changes and improvements to the site. No one was completely happy with the final versions of the implementations, but we were excited to see some freshness on the site. There were several changes we believed would be imminent, and when those changes never went through, despite assurances they would, I noticed a drop in elf activity. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe not. I think not. Myself, I was disappointed and became disillusioned, and I'm not very active as an elf anymore; I'll delete spammers and garbage content, but it's been a very long time since I've featured a page or a photo.

Now, I see the same thing. We were told about all these big changes about to happen, but it's already way past the "at latest" date we got. Based on the other example, I'm not surprised and never had much faith in those promises in the first place.

Unlike some others, and I do not mean to mock or demean their views, I do not see this as about greed. Rather, I agree with those who think Matt has good intentions but is too busy and/or has other priorities. And the two principal owners of the site have been absent for a very long time, though the word is always that they have no interest in selling.

The pages of mine that mean the most to me, I've backed up. All of you should do the same if you haven't already. That's not because I think SP is about to disappear but because I increasingly wonder why our collective lifetimes of work we have volunteered to this site have become vehicles for obnoxious ads.

When those and other changes never went through, despite assurances they would, I noticed a drop in elf activity.

There's that, but there's also the hacking of elves' accounts, people blaming the elves for problems on SP even though we don't have access to the coding, dealing with the trolls and garbage (which has dropped off now, but so has the rest of SP), and the loss of elf privileges due to security. I haven't been able to get on since October 2017.

Scott wrote:

There's that, but there's also the hacking of elves' accounts, people blaming the elves for problems on SP even though we don't have access to the coding, dealing with the trolls and garbage (which has dropped off now, but so has the rest of SP), and the loss of elf privileges due to security. I haven't been able to get on since October 2017.

Same problem for me. I also haven't been able to get on since October 2017!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. The developer helping with the project has been offline much of the last 5 weeks, hence the delay. And for some reason I'm not getting notifications of updates to this thread and haven't checked back until today (I have a lot going on right now).

Also, due to some changes made on the development server and my home workstation, I can't access the forums right now other than on my phone so I've not been checking the forums.

Plan right now is to go live with the responsive design on Friday. There will be plenty of bugs to address after that so I'll be online as much as I can to squash bugs after we go live.

Only major thing left to finish is the new editor. Been working on it but it's not quite ready yet. I considered leaving the old one in place and upgrading after going live with the new responsive design but thought it wouldn't take as long as it has. Again, the developer hired to help hasn't been online much the last few days. I've been working my ass off and am making progress but still have a bit of work to do before it will be ready for production.

Everything else is ready to go with a few minor exceptions that will be addressed after going live with the responsive design. In short, it will happen any day now.

To keep the front page fresh I think you are going to have to make an algorithm or some automated process handle it at this point... same as how Facebook does the news feed or whatever you call it. They don't have people sitting in Facebook offices manually deciding what you see.

Either something random, or some automated process based on what is new, or getting votes, or getting views, or length, or hits, or some combination of these or something else.

The last time I looked @ SP's front page, I FELL quickly into a deep sleep without having to take any kind of sedative.