Here is my personal message to anyone from the DEVELOPMENT TEAM.https://forum.ispotnature.org/about
What we have is an appalling situation. By now you will know that CHANGES notifications is missed by anyone who has been in iSpot for more than a few weeks. Put that right and we will see that you are trying. we know there are dozens of other bugs.
What you see in these Forums is a keen enthusiasm to see things working better - we will ALL help with constructive suggestions based on our own experiences - we are the best Testing Team going!. Even if it was perfect, we would point out shortcomings, difficulties, possible errors of Coding and what improvements might be nice.
What we need is to know if we are wasting our time posting here.
We need your presence; we need you to say OK, will try, Impossible, Coming in the next update, even thanks might be nice.
Can you do that? Be present here I mean?
I would like to add my voice to yours ā please the Changes function is the only way I know of to keep track of who has commented on, agreed with or otherwise interacted with my observations or observations I have made identifications on. Iād like to know that someone from the development team is working on fixing it ā or finding an alternative if it canāt be fixedā¦
I donāt think anyone is listening. All we need is someone to say āwe realise this is missing and needed, weāre as frustrated as you are itās not there, be patient and itās coming soonā.
Completely agree. I am very disappointed with the lack of response from iSpot, other than ābear with usā - there has been no clarification of whether the Changes feature is something they are still working on, or if itās permanently dropped. Nor did we have any warning of what to expect! Very poor customer service (though a good example of how not to manage change, if there are any students looking for a case study!)
I wholly concur. Thanks for this.
It would be nice to know that the developers actually care about their users, and want to make the site useable to those of us who use it.
I agree. The lack of any acknowledgement from the administrators about the stream of posts from Ispot users about the recent changes, especially the lost ability to track changes, is nothing short of astonishing.
Was there ANY consultation with users prior to the changes?
Oh yes @Jonathan_P , in both the UK and ZA a panel of testers was created. Do you suppose we agreed to ANY of this? And might you have expected that our views would be listened to? And would you have expected us to be happy with the outcome?
No, No and No!
Iāve now been informed that the Changes function will be back, though no timescale yet. Whew!
What surprizes me is that it appears as if the page visits and sequence of visits by regularly users (not novices or bots) was not consulted. Surely that would have made it obvious what was needed!!
Glad to hear that someone is listening and or watching. A timescale would be most appreciated!!!
SOMETHING GOOD
The whole site took a lurch for the better today - speed is good, images are fast to load and the Carousels are showing well. Whoever did it and however it was done - great! Thanks.
Glad to find a way to communicate with you Tony. .
Remember this ? https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa/view/observation/713415/lecidella-northern-cape-2012
Well, I think that this is just one of many links which seem to have been lost.
See: āIāve included a cropped view of the other dark apothecia to show the difference.ā - Where is it now???
THEN: The original image went missing - fortunately there was an Interaction for me to see what I had loaded - so Iāve reloaded it,. Guess what?? NO longer an interaction.
IS ALL THIS LOST?
Wonder if you will see this Tony, and how will I know if you reply?
OK I need a cup of tea now! I feel completely out of my depth on this site, I donāt enjoy forums much in any context. This is my 4th post in just a few minutes having just got back on to iSpot but I am unsure if any of them have been/are in the correct place to get any feedback/response from iSpot team. I went to the contact/about us bit and thought Iād send that group a message, but didnāt seem to work for me.
I just want the learning value to continue - the exchange of knowledge that enriches all of us and the site - without which itās stamp-collecting.
I want My iSpot and Changes (updates to observations) to be restored and easy to reach as they were my first stops on logging in in the past. Surely there is data about what pages regular users actually used which would have been used in the renovation job i.e. accepted as having value? (rhetorical question)
I see a user above has been told these are being restored? I read Janiceās message and find I need that spelled out more clearly for me, if indeed it is the case.
Maggie
I am here and listening!
Please complain and make your point. Otherwise it will not be heard and not be fixed!
Thanks for responding, appreciated. It is quite mystifying! In addition to the above, I can no longer see the contributions of others as a list, nor my own with agreements and comments listed. Iād rather not repeat posts but had relied on the site to keep the records for me - and I have only a few compared to some. Being considerate of others is important too - you canāt thank others and continue a āconversationā about an observation unless you know someone has commented.
Letās hope it is sorted as contributors wish. Maggie
and soon! ā¦
Hi - having read various posts about the āupdateā to iSpot on these forums & noted the lack of response to pretty much all of the salient points, (with which I wholeheartedly agree), that have been raised by numerous frustrated contributors, this seems to be the best site to vent a couple of basic problems which hopfully someone might address.
Since the āupdateā I have tried uploading a couple of simple bird sightings - on each occasion, having navigated the laborious route to find my previous posts, I have found several errors - despite āunpublishingā them & then re-posting these errors remain.
- In the ālocationā section - it seems that autofil no-longer recognises any of my previous locations - is this a permanent feature or will all of my previous locations be restored ? Having entered a new location, it also seems that this said new location will also no-longer be recognised by the autolfil - again will this be permanent ?
- In the āidentificationā section - although this section seems to accept details as it previously did; following posting, the āidentificationā, although accepting the particular species, it still shows the identification as ā0ā - I assume this is a ābugā ? - if not can someone please explain !
- Previously, (in the good-old-days), prior to posting there was a āpreviewā page where you could check that the related details were correct - this page apparently no-longer exists - is this an oversight or is this yet another permanent āimprovementā to the site ?
These may be considered minor matters to those in the know, but perhaps others users are experiencing these same annoying problems - just a short reply to let me/us know that these are being addressed would be very much appreciated.
https://forum.ispotnature.org/about
Just another reminder - this is your ADMIN team (above). Click on their Icon (twice but not a Double click)
and see their commitment in Summary Stats.
I still believe we are wasting our time asking anything of them here.
A. DO not unpublish!!! All the work by other people will be lost. That is most inconsiderate. Rather write to the curator at https://www.ispotnature.org/contact-us and explain the issue and get the programming team to look at it and fix it. (please include the url - another hideous contraption - so that the programmers can see exactly what your mean) Otherwise what are you achieving? the problem will not go away and may even get worse! The bottom line: dont try and fix problems that you did not cause: they must be fixed by the causer and you may be making matters worse.
- This is a bug (I think the programmers were not aware of this feature, despite it being mentioned in all the pages about loading observations). It is on the list of VERY SERIOUS bugs for attention: let us see how long it takes to be fixed.
- Yes a very simple bug that must be fixed. When? We have no idea of timelines!
3 Another bug: the preview page opens but there is no preview!! Utterly ridiculous. Another on the list of VERY SERIOUS bugs for attention (unfortunately our list has over 400 bugs, 20% of which are Extremely serious to iSpot functioning).
They are on our bug list at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XihfQSBIHnU9E55bPzkiewxphOMZYDVBeemes4XhRgk/edit#gid=0 and I am watching for any new ones! But no one listens to me or tells me anything. I know as much as you!
Hi Tony - thanks for your input & response to the points I raised - it would have been nice to have some response to from someone at iSpot but I suppose that is wishful thinking.
There is just one matter that I think I should take issue with you over and your apparent direction ānot to unpublishā !
Surely I must be entitled to āunpublish/delateā any of my own posts whenever I wish irrespective of whether anyone has added to it or not - it is after all āmy postā. On the occasion to which I refered, when I did āunpublishā it was in a futile attempt to have my related re-post appear correctly - it is not something that I am in a habbit of doing, but I certainly reserve the right to do so in the future.