Genealogy Chat

I did not twist or interpret

What you said appeared to be boasting about the "relationship" you had with GR ................... it comes over as boasting that you are different from others.

Yet you are not ................ you are still only a member, and I do know of others where GR has "all their details", only they don't tell everyone about it.

I started by honestly trying to tell you something that you seemingly did not know, of explaining something that had gone on, just as others have done. .................

If you think that I am always having a go at you, then I can't help that.


I like to keep people in the loop about what happens, and has happened, on the site ..................... and I call a spade a spade. After all, I come from the North of England

Many assumptions are made about how things have evolved over the years ............. some wrong, some right. Surely it is better to have the more accurate story out there?

SylviaInCanada why are you always having a go at me - everything I write you seem to twist and interpret to mean something I never intended. If I wrote something about you like your above post 21 Apr 2013 22:51 I'm sure it would be suddenly whooshed.

well .....................


bully for you then!!!!!


............ not that I am in any way jealous of your apparent "special relationship" ................. because I am not.

I couldn't care less




It's just that most people do not boast about it ;-)

Gosh SylviaInCanada, nothing as formal as that. We have long gone past that stage. They have all my details.

Hope some others will write something about their meeting. Mine is Wed 1/05 -10am

:-D :-D :-D

DET

That's very interesting. I wondered how the Team members did their work!

As part of the BETA Testing, I was given a special url and password to access the Test programme from my own computer.

That meant we could do our testing when it was convenient for us .................. although, as I said earlier, there was initially no time limit in which we had to complete.

We were asked to email in comments, got feedback almost immediately, and asked to re-check this or that, or whether this change had made a difference.

As also said earlier ....... the initial impression we were given was that we were actually testing the new design of the site .............. the visual aspects. It was only after several days that I was asked had I checked this or that functioning.

But we did only have about a week to test everything, before it was released to the general membership.


Beta testing that I have done on other sites has lasted longer than that!




NS ..........

............... I doubt that the email from GR asking if you are interested in participating in the Test meeting will say much more than the usual "As a Regular Member of GR, you are invited ............." (or some similar wording).


I think they look at the number of posts you have ................ and thus people who post mainly on Genealogy Chat have just as much chance of receiving the email as someone who posts mainly on General Chat or Quizzes and Games.

You are lucky that you live so close that you can take part in such tests.

NanaSue - if it helps.....

Last year, the Team members initially asked a series of questions such as how long you had been a member, how often you used GR, whether you had an off line tree programme and if you used the site's record searches.

They provided a laptop (with a mouse) which was preloaded/connected to the server to the Beta Version. You were asked to sign in with your own password then asked for intitial opinions. You were then asked to perform various tasks. Considering the revision to the layout and depending on how observant you were, this could take a while!

Your actions and screen view were projected onto a screen on the wall so that you didn't have people hanging over your shoulder.......if you know what I mean :-)

GB and Sylvia..............

I use Google Chrome, and I get ERROR messages, so the suggestion that it makes any difference is nonsense..........

Thank you everybody - will get back to you later
I wasn't involved with the online Beta testing last year.

Actually I'm not sure why I have been invited to the office this time - age is catching me - memory moment - must be an email somewhere.

I just live 4 tube stops away from the office - have been several times.
Never thought of it before but I'm going to ask it I can take my own laptop.

It seems that this is a follow-up invitation to the members who went to a similar "meeting" at GR offices" last year.

I've heard of several who have received the same invitation ............... some are going again, some have had to decline because they already have other commitments ................ and some are trying to get a change in the date offered to them.

That explains why the rest of us have not yet been invited.

Mind you, I don't think GR would be wiling to pay travel expenses or a per diem for me :-D :-D

At least, they weren't willing last year ;-)


I think it is a good idea for all those members who went last year to be invited back for further consultation and testing.

Hopefully, we will get feedback from more of the invitees




sylvia

I am still not able to print a full tree.I only have 32 names on it. I have emailed GR many times but all replies virtually say they are working on the problem.This problem has been going on for at least six months. We pay our money but I feel that we are not getting what we paid for. Thankyou

GB ................



very true


I have no problems at all on any other sites, including on GR's sister site, Friends Reunited



IF it was my browser or server, I would get the Error message and slow reactive times on every site .............. some of which are far busier than GR is these days.


I refuse to get another browser, ie, Google Chrome, just for GR, when the one I have works just fine on every other site.

I also got fed up with error messages. I asked the Team just how many times does the error message have to be logged before they investigate. Never got an answer to that question.

At the moment getting a bit fed up with the suggestion to change to Google Chrome.

But as most members do not have the problems on other sites we can all draw our own conclusions

Hi Ken,

You and I disagreeing on something, I don't believe it.. :-S

Seriously the error messages that I refer to have been plaguing me since about the beginning of this year. To begin with I believed what the error message said. I.E. That the error had been logged and the cause investigated. Eventually my patience ran out so I emailed GR Customer Support on 18/3/2013 to give them details and express my frustration. Thus started the chain of emails asking me to describe the circumstances that appeared to create the problem, details about my computer, its operating system, which browser I use ect and finally one asking me to describe in step by step details what I was doing/clicking on when the problem usually occurred.

I received emails from Alex Brett, Anne-Marie and Lisa. The last of these is below. Since receiving it I have not had any further contact from GR but I still keep getting the error message:


Thank you for taking the time to report this problem.

I have passed the details of this specific issue to our technical team to look at and investigate.

Your patience while we work to resolve this is much appreciated.

Kind Regards,


Lisa
Genes Reunited Support Team

I am not a computer expert or a computer programmer so maybe my assumption that there is a serious bug in the GR system/program could be over simplistic but to me it seems to be the most likely cause. As far as it being down to system capacity, that I suppose could be correct. If so it is certainly not down to increased member activity as that today is far less than it was when I joined the site in 2008. It may I suppose be due to memory consumptive programming as things such as a fancy tree layout, Keepsafe and flashy adverts must take up memory space and slow things down. My computing history goes back to the days when the entire ledgers and payroll of a multi million pound turnover company could be run on a computer with a 20mb hard disk. Today if your home computer doesn't have at least a 1 terabyte hard drive it is considered obsolete. Such is the power of programmers.

Similarly I doubt that time of day has any bearing as I find that the error can appear at any time during the day or night.

Any road up Ken as they say in this part of the world, neither you or I can solve the problem. That is GR's job which I for one would be very grateful if they did sooner rather than later.

Roy .................


you are quite correct about the Beta Testing ....................... I was part of it.

My initial reading of my "invitation" to take part was that GR wanted feedback on the LOOK of the newly designed site ................. which, just incidentally, was absolutely terrible at first!

I also gained the impression that we had time in which to do the testing.

It was only in the third GR reply to my reporting on aspects of the test that I was asked questions re the OPERATING aspect of the new design "because you have not mentioned that" ................... that was on about the 5th day that I had access.

It was 2 days later that I was informed that the test was over, and the Beta was opened to the whole site ......................... when masses of problems became apparent.


I'm not sure what NS can achieve ................... I know several members who have had similar "personal meetings" in the offices of GR, who have taken in comments collected from other members, who have discussed them with GR staff, and got nowhere!

I hope she can achieve something ..................... but let's say, that I am far from hopeful.

After all, ALL the suggestions made on the Suggestions Board, and on threads on other Boards, have apparently been ignored .................. GR SAYS they read the threads on that Board, but there is no evidence that they do.

"Evidence" to me would be a) postings from GR on that Board, and b) improvement or implementation of a suggestion.



What I do see is GR being folded into FMP, sooner rather than later ............

......... as I am convinced that that was the plan when BS bought GR and the other associated companies, regardless of what they told the Competitions Board.

Ken ......................

you are extremely lucky if you have not seen the Error message

I get it 85 - 90% of the time when I got to submit a post.

It does not seem to matter whether I am posting on a thread with hundreds of pages, or on one with only the OP showing

It also does not matter whether I am posting at 10 am, 4 pm, 8 pm, or 4 am UK time ..................... busy time of day or the quietest time, whether servers are overloaded by members attempting to use the site, or when the traffic is mainly UK or from overseas.

It is always happening.


Strangely, it rarely happens for me when trying to open My Threads, a Board, a thread, or Messages ................. it is only when I go to Submit a post

Possibly associated, is that the fact that I can only open 1 message in my Inbox at a time ................... to open subsequent messages, I have to leave Inbox and then re-enter.


As GR always asks what Browser are you using ................... I use Mozilla Firefox, which was updated last week.


However, it boggles my mind that GR can still always blame "my" browser or server ..................... members all use very different ones, members sign in from all around the world. Yet many of us have the same problems.

It has to be GR's problem



My suggestion to NS would be tell them that long time members are sick and tired of the problems in accessing and working within the site, and suggest that they solve these general access problems before trying anything new.

Sorry Jonesey but I can't quite agree with you about the error message. It is simply a catch all indication that something has gone wrong. When this thread started I think most of us got error indications, now I haven't seen one of those message for some time (apart from when I deliberately caused one to happen a few minutes ago).

What I am saying is that the current problem that causes the error message is not necessarily the same problem as was reported over a year ago. It may not even be software bugs but simply a lack of system capacity to deal with peak overloads.
As more and more message get posted the chances of overloads increase unless extra capacity can be added.

It is certainly true that the wording of the error message does not seem to be correct, otherwise the team would know how often it is ocurring.

Thanks for clarifying Det :)

Can you ask them why I can't change my avatar!

I have contacted support three times.......not one reply :-|

You may call me a Luddite if you wish but my feelings are that very often changes are made purely for changes sake. This does not only apply to GR but to many sites that I have visited regularly over a long period of time. Very often I get the feeling that a site has been "Prettied up" or modified more as a result of a programmer or a programming department needing to justify their existence rather than the need to make the site more efficient or easier to use.

There is I know, a natural resistance to change particularly amongst the "Older" generation (Of which I am one.) many of whom make up GR's membership. Many of those will routinely object to any change whether it be good or bad, simply because things work slightly differently today than they did yesterday.

As far as specific problems are concerned in my own case it is the "Error message" which I and many others seem to see numerous times a day. It tells us that the error has been logged and its cause is being investigated. By the length of time that it has been appearing and the frequency with which it is still appearing it is fairly obvious that there is a major bug present somewhere in the system. It is also fairly obvious that if indeed someone at GR has been looking into the error's cause for so long without yet finding it or correcting it then that someone needs some help.

The meeting that NS is to attend may not be the appropriate place to raise the matter but given the opportunity I think that GR should give serious consideration to these simple suggestions:

A) Give full consideration to the abilities and possible limitations of your members when considering any changes to the site

B) Only make changes where they are absolutely necessary.

C) Fully test all changes offline and prove 100% that no side issues will be caused by them before going live.

.

Renes, The problem with the Beta testing was that it was only done for a very short period of time so members taking part had limited time to fully test,

Most of the problems where Highlighted/reported at the time but GR appeared to be only consantrating on how the site looked,? In fact If memory serves me correct members taking part where under the impression that the Site "Makeover" and how it looked was what GR wanted feedback on although I and others did give feedback on functions within the site that did not work like the tree dashboard that people could only see the top half of the box without altering the zoom level of your browser plus many more problems some have been resolved and some have not

Roy

Call me stupid...but the main response from GR on any problems seems always to be 'we can't replicate the problem' or "you need to update browser' etc.... unless, NanaSue you are taking in your own PC to demonstrate,I am not sure that telling them what's not working is going to be any more productive than members sending emails to say the same?

Still, you can tell them from me that when I try and load 'My threads' ( started by me) I get, 2 out of every 3 times, the Error message. Maybe because there are so many of them ;-)