Look, I love this forum.  I was introduced here 6 years ago by two local friends, and I've come here daily for the last few years.  It's now 3AM, and despite my blocking software, I'm dashing to a room because I left a web browser up and all the sudden, waking my ass up is a screaming notion about cleaning my freaking toilets.

I recognize that this has been an important venture for the Home Theater Forum.  And I recognize, as Huddler points out on their website, that Huddler represents a great opportunity to monetize your site and make it profitable - which is something I most definitely believe that the owners of this forum deserve for their hard work and effort, this has become a full time job for them.

 

But this is now bs.  It's been nearly a year  HTF forum converted to Huddler and it feels like a decade, and let me explain my basic problems:

 

Despite options to customize Huddler, we were told in the beginning, every freaking Huddler site looks exactly the same.

I recognize that Adam makes a big plug in the Huddler intro video for them how good this has been to the owners.  That's great.  But it's basically been poor for us, the audience who comes here and posts.  I'm sorry, but it's true.  Major issues that have been brought up repeatedly go nowhere:

* Jump Menu took months to add, and it's still wrong, not placed at the bottom of the thread in the right place, below the reply box.. fixable?  Don't know, it's been brought up a zillion times, over the last six months, but despite the fact that it keeps getting brought up, it doesn't change.  I love the plug on Huddler's website about 24/7 support to address technical issues.  Jesus Christ.  I looked it up, if that's true, they've had almost 4,320 man hours per person who so far haven't figured out how to copy and paste the jump menu above the freaking reply box.  I'm not sure I couldn't train some chimpanzees to figure that out. 


* HTF has gone backward, not forward, not just in user friendliness but in how it looks and feels, as far as what it offers for the end user.  Yes, I've said it.  I'm sorry others will disagree but it's true.  Am I advocating a return to VB?  No, not necessarily.  But isn't it funny that damn near every other forum I participate in now supports features that users end up with?  Like direct integration of Hulu, Vimeo, etc content?  Hell, here YouTube still doesn't work for a big set of the users.  And while cheap, "ick" Vbulletin went through six upgrades in the last year and a half, it only managed to add features like:  A universal application for iPhone (in fact, 3 of them) that allow you to navigate, browse and manage from an iPhone or iPad.. meanwhile, you can't even use HTF on those formats because we still haven't figured out how to get returns right.  Responses look terrible and oh yeah, the reply to: box still doesn't work worth a damn on Mozilla and Chrome.    So, some basic cheap POS software manages to make full support for WebKit, and hell, issue out apps for android, blackberry and iPhone, and Huddler rolls out two versions in 6 months and they can't seemingly fix the basics.

* I recognize that Dan Gill is a business man.  To my understanding, the way Huddler really works is that they setup a goal, where they host HTF and whatever, and they make money by taking a cut of advertising and sponsorship revenue.  Its' a win win for both.  But this is where tonight really pisses me off.  The issue with Audio ads has been brought up repeatedly.  Now, an audio ad wakes me up in the middle of the night.  Yes, I leave my HTPC on at night.. it mostly re-compresses TV shows.  And yes, I forgot and left up a web browser.  But damn, did I really need to be woken up at 3AM with a freaking toilet bowl ad?  Really??  This to me is one of the signature problems.  Because Huddler controls the platform, it makes it far too easy for HTF mods and ownership to say "well, we turned it in, don't blame us, they are working on it" and Huddler support is seemingly nowhere to be found, I assume they are all still locked in a room somewhere trying to sort out the damn jump box.  Who cares, I'm sure the audio ad makes them money, so the fact that I really don't worry about cleaning my toilet enough to be interupted by it doesn't mean much.  And since they obviously pay very little heed to the ownership of HTF, who I believe when they say "we submitted this to be resolved" DAYS AGO, then I either assume that Huddler:  (a) Doesn't care (b) Is understaffed and can't support the four whole websites they have up on this setup (c) Are all still locked in a room trying to figure out the navigation feature (d) Can't find it because the search feature is still broken (e) Just forgot.  Or maybe all of those.

*  Speaking of broken, people here have brought up the search feature FOREVER.  You search for something and by default it gives you a mess of data, not organized in any useful way, not by date (newest first) or within the same forum (use the search feature above "TV" and you'll get results from reviews that may be very old right at the top, and have to search back pages.. you might as well just manually flipped through the forum)  While this may be the point.. after all, flipping through the forums means we see more ads, it's really a PITA for the viewing audience... you know, the people who come here and make the ads worth any damn money.  Isn't it funny that no other forum, anywhere, on any format has this problem with search function?  I mean, even cheap crap free PHPBB can search a forum and subforum and give you results in the proper order without making you guess.

* Errors and bombs.  Can't get a reply?  Ooops.  Get a very long wait or lag while you get a blowup box on your screen that says "loading" and can take forever when you create a new thread (so long that sometimes you just give up?)  It's all super-smart design oriented toward keeping the end user happy.  oops!  I've tried to submit this post three times now.  It wouldn't take because of a Guru error.. which is a web-caching problem on the server side.  Is Huddler Bandwidth deprived?  At 4AM Central Time?  I'm so used to that one and the submit problem, that anymore before I submit a post I copy the whole thing down copy-paste into notepad just to make sure I won't get boned.  That's a real time saver for my efforts.

So, let's cover the bases:

Everyone else:  Search works.
HTF: No.

Everyone else:  universal webkit support and reading tools for iPhone/Blackberry/Android
HTF: completely unusable on those platforms for the most part.

Everyone else: No trouble using a reply box..
HTF: Check the responses.

Everyone else:  Navigation is simple.  Sites are allowed to have unique skinning.
HTF: Nope.  Still all wrong.

Everyone else:  Don't like an ad?  Administrators have control to ditch it, block it, even by type just to knock the ad network.
HTF: apparently part of the pro of the revenue stream, which is good, is that ownership now has no real effective control over ads.  So toilet bowl ads it is!

Everyone else:  A very long thread?  Fine.  You can start at the beginning or in between, so you can "catch up"
HTF:  Nope!  Start or go straight to the end, there is no inbetween.  It sometimes remember if you've been there, but that's hit and miss and never works worth a damn in Firefox.  So, the idea of jumping pages deep into a thread?  Not here.

Everyone else:  need a spell checker?  Firefox, IESpell, Chrome, Opera and Safari all offer it, right in your reply, squiggly underlines you can use easily so you don't sound like an idiot.
HTF:  Doesn't work.  You need to hold down the control key, right click, to bypass whatever layer crap that is going on here.

Look, I recognize that HTF is for Huddler their big, premiere site.  This is the website they feature on their front page, with a nice testimonial about the monetary benefits.  But I'm sorry, almost a year later and I still have no idea where we are going.   Huddler wants to promote HTF as it's "big" client, that this is the one it's staking a big part of it's reputation on.  I get that.  I mean, I can't imagine ChefTalk makes a ton of money (looking at the number of posts over there it's like a freaking ghost town in comparison).  But if this is their chance to prove to other people, then they are failing miserably, and I hope to hell that they are right and these posts shoot straight into google and other forums thinking about this keep this crap in mind.  It appears as though HTF was a guinea pig.  This has basically been acknowledged.  But damn, if it's a guinea pig - and at this point it should be a profitable one - the start trying to save the damn thing instead of pissing the crowds off.  Technical support issues for no product can drag on for months upon months with no real change.  If the problem is difficult, then Huddler needs to come here and keep a developers blog and at least tell the consumer - that's us, the peole watching the ads, etc. exactly what's being worked on and what's the hastle.

 

Because right about now, I'm missing Home Theater Forum in shades of "Simpsons" as a promotional.  I'd take that Yellow and Blue look over this at this point.

And I'm sorry this is pissy.  But christ, while I don't mind my HTPC archiving my TV shows over night that I recorded (monday is busy)  I'd be in a much better mood if audio didn't start shooting out in the dark.  

Oh yeah, just for a support add-on, this is the error I now get frequently:
 

Error 503 Service Unavailable

Service Unavailable

Guru Meditation:

XID: 879682937

Varnish


(FYI, you can follow the Varnish link, which leads you here:  http://www.varnish-cache.org/ ) so I assume this is something wrong with the cacheing server that hosts HTF.

 

EDITED:  Please note, I do not want to edit this to destroy my fury at the moment, because I feel that's a bit dishonest to do that, but the language is innappriate, and I've stewed about that, and it also didn't really say -why- I was unhappy.  So I've replaced some of the language with details or just removed, because I think it's better to just say it that way.  But no original content has been changed, even though later in this thread we discuss it in a different way that provides a better guide as to why I made the points I did, and maybe think about it differently now.

I'm not as bitchy this morning.  But my work PC doesn't even have adblock installed.  So, right now, I'm hearing an ad for "Lysol" and "Airwick" at the same time, because I clicked and opened in different tabs.  So GD annoying.  Oh, and I tried to re-edit my thread in HTPC, only to get the "Please Wait" popup for about 40 seconds.  I killed it, I'll try it again later.  I've got to go download some extensions :(

Adam-

I didn't mean to vent so big :(  I am normally pretty level headed.  Just frustrated.  And while my frustrations are real, I know you guys are working hard to correct things, and I don't want to seem like a jerk.  Just one of those nights... was up late with a kid with nightmares and get to sleep and get woken up by HTF :)

Look, hell, if HTF wants a "sponsoring member" policy and they want to say "contribute to a pond" so we can donate something to legitimately offset ads, that's fine.  I don't want HTF to go away, and I realize revenue stream is important.  It's just really, super annoying

Ron, in all seriousness, that was not a slap at Adam, you or the ownership.  It was late, I was cranky, and I wrote a pissy post.  I mean, I hold true to most of my concerns, but I hope I've been here long enough that while I can be a jerk at times, for the most part people don't expect me to be one.  I absolutely meant nothing negative toward Adam or the owners here, at all.

I was just saying that this to me, from all my reading on Huddler, seems to be their masterwork.  This is the site they should be asking people to look at to prove the value of their concept.  That's why I feel both bad and concerned when I go off on a rampage.  I realize for a lot of people, this is their living.  I don't really want to be the guy who stalls their effort at more work.

At the same time, I'm a consumer, and I really just want this to work.  I think I cooled down and in another thread that a Huddler rep started, I pointed out really what I think most of us want.  If people here just had some way to know what was going on, functions that were "approved" "dismissed" "in project" etc.  so that there would be less frustration.    This is just my idea, but at least Adam seemed to think it was good:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/299778/better-ways-for-handeling-user-feedback#post_3680787

All of us Schmoes out here are just guys with opinions.. on everything.  This isn't our living.  I respect that this is a big part of yours.  

My tone in the first post, I hope is realized, and I've said repeatedly, is not normally the way I address people, and I'm not going to go back and edit it, because it's how I felt, but it was out of line to use some of the word choices I did.  It's too easy on the internet to slap around some phrases when you're pissed because you never have to deal one-on-one with the other person.

So, yes, I do feel that way, but I should have been much more diplomatic about it.  :)  And, I definitely didn't mean to assert any wrong doing on the part of any admin here.

I have said privately and publically I do love the forum.  And as I've told the admins who've messaged me, there are elements to this I really really like.

And I worked hard in the first few months of this - and still do, to try and put in content to a place I consider one of my online homes.  I've tried to throw out reviews that I can, information that I can.

I view a lot of the people in these forums as people I'd go have a beer with if they were local, and I've had some pretty good private exchanges with a lot of them.  

So, I don't feel anything bad directly here.  I just felt very frustrated.  I've had time to talk to a few different people privately and publically here, and I think they know where I'm coming from and that it's not out of any malice or ill will.  

What makes HTF great product has nothing to do with Huddler or VB or anything.  It has everything to do with the fact this is a much more laid back fun environment then almost anywhere else on the subject. 

 

There are places I visit frequently that I would say offer a ton of "information" and are great for that, but I don't have any relationship with them because they are so focused on information exchange you never have the good moments that make you stick around.  I mean, come on, is there anything like TerryRL's Box Office reports anywhere else?  Or Hanson's Idol breakdown?  Or the Reviews?  We discuss here not just the nuts and bolts of HT - something other places do in great detail with solid impact - but we really look at this the other way: why is it that we want HT?  It's about making the entertainment value good for us.  And so this forum is just fun to be in, always has been.
 

That's part of what made my first post.  For the first time, the last few months haven't been as much fun because a lot of us felt we were fighting the forum software.  So, I laid it out there.

 

But I wanted to make clear sometimes that was too harsh.  I just wanted to say: glarg i'm damn frustrated.  And that's all.  BTW, I'm using a PC at a country club that has no ad blocking software and not a single audio ad.  So big thumbs up there.

I've now been asked four times privately to explain what I mean by the search kind of issue.  And I understand the response of the desire to keep tabs.  So, just so it's easier to explain so all can discuss, here's what I mean.  

Today, a few minutes ago, I was browsing the "TV" forum.  Above it, while browsing it, in the search box I typed "LOST" and hit "Search"  This is what I received for results:



"LOST" Season 6/5/4 was not present in the first page of results.  Or the second.  Lost Season 6 was found on the fifth page of results.  Despite being the second entry in the TV forum.  So, normally I wouldn't need to search for it.  The threads presented started with one from 2002, then one from 2005, then one from 2006.  Until page 3, all the threads presented were from prior to 2008.  

This makes the search results useless, as far as I can tell, and dangerous on the other end.  We continuously have threads dredged up that are archaic - and meanwhile people double up on threads that may be three or four pages back because they don't see them and the search doesn't tell them any difference.

The response I've received has been two different basic answers:  The Huddler answer has been that there are three ways to sort, weighted by date, or relevence, or keyword density, which is what this forum uses.

I would argue that in a forum where single tags will be used frequently and repeated (for example, a show may be searched by 1 word, but have multiple seasons and releases) density will have a much higher propensity for bad results then good ones.

The response I've received from those HTF'ers is that outside of allowing for tabs, it's tricky to do date weighted or other methods while providing easy search access to the reviews and other areas, which is important.

I grasp these issues.  I also understand from all that implementing a Google Search option wasn't a great one because it didn't allow for the tabs.  But I admit, I've been using Google to search HTF and find it incredibly efffective, though it doesn't provide me the "push" that I'm sure HTF wants.  

This is a real race to make something fly.  I think maybe a middle solution, one I've suggested is to at least not have the first tab as "all" and instead have it as the results that happen within the forum you currently reside (ie, it shows you the results inside of "MOVIES" if that's where you hit the search button first, and then in the other tabs all the other options).  I think that would significantly decrease the signal-to-noise ratio.  

But as it sits, I can't come up with a way that does anything but make the search on this website a fairly broken tool.

I started writing up responses to people, and I did respond once, but it's easier to say it once.  And not in a mean-spirited way!  :)

FYI, this is how google looks at it:



No flags or sorted by time/track/etc.  just keyterms  Lost site:hometheaterforum.com    I've actually found that having a mapper (right click mouse on a term to auto search via "term":hometheaterforum.com works like a charm.

Yeah, that's why I apologized.  I felt really bad about that, I can't think of ever really swearing in a thread.  That was not meant in that spirit, and I am sorry about that.  :(  I edited the original post to remove those, and noted it.   I tried hard even in that original post to never attack anyone as a person, and I pointed out that I thought most were working in what they thought was the right direction.