If I was a sponsor I would DEMAND A REFUND.

If I was an Alliance Member I would DEMAND A REFUND.

This site has declined significantly in the last few months to the point of irrelevance regardless of the great content and large membership.

None of that means diddly if you can't get to it.

Mark, your old site has been destroyed.

RIP NAM.

 

I agree that the vendors/sponsors deserve some kind of refund/discount.

The site DOES NOT WORK as it should, or used to. It is hopefully only slow, but with the amount of timed out connections, it is clear the owners just don't give a fiddlers fart about either the members or the vendors.

I'm sure some kind of response about how they are aware of the issue, and are doing everything they can, is forthcoming, later rather than sooner. But this is just corporate speak for; "well we keep getting paid, and the masses keep joining".

Mark

 

......and the moderators have gone over to the dark side...

 

I hear from the people that don't like this site. I think it is very easy to use and it is "FREE" so whats the beef. If you don't like it just plain don't use it. It sure would be nice to hear from you Mini Owners out there that like this forum. Lets hear from you.
Ronnie948

 

I read this as it is not about liking the site and what is on the site, but being about not having access to the site cause it is slow and it times outs sometimes.
I had issues accessing the forums a few weeks ago, but it has been fine for me since.

 

right its free because of the paying members.... and thats what the original complaint is about here.

its fine for us free people but the ones who paid are kind of getting the shaft these days. Granted it seems to be better recently as far as speed goes

 

I put up a thread a few weeks ago about how slow and unusable the site had become, the PTB finally chimed in and said they'd been having troubles with denial of service type hackers/hacking and that they finally had it up and working again, since then it's been OK for me - not great, but usable at least.

 

Ronnie948, the gripe is not about content. It's about access. More often than not it times out. In this day and age, there is no excuse for that. And I'm suggesting that those folks who paid money to support this site speak up.

This site is one of the greatest repositories of MINI information that I know of. I still utilize it as I research information. But if folks don't start raising a ruckus over this access issue, chances are pretty good that it won't be corrected.

 

Unfortunately, like a government bureaucarcy when a corporation buys something like this, it does lose the face of the owner operator who is exposed to the successes and failures... When things go well he can bask in the sunshine, when something goes wrong all eyes look to him and he will be quick to make things right so not to look bad... With the corporation there is no one person to accept blame or success, so mediocrity thrives..

Here's to hoping things get better!

 

Server problems happen with any site. And guess what - if there are server problems here, it means IB ("the powers that be/bureaucracy/whatever") is down also.

When problems are reported, they are always passed on to IB to open a ticket. Since the big server crash a week or so ago, things have improved but I can tell they are still working on it. I believe there was a server attack situation, and that can take some time to recover from. Your patience, as always, is appreciated.

And, well, as far as moderation complaints go...you agreed to the site guidelines when you signed up. If you are unable to adhere to them, then of course issues will arise. 99.9% of our members have no problems adhering to them.

 

This site has been for a long time and still is one of my favorite sites for Mini information and chatting. All sites are occasionally having problems, those that are very large are the favorite sites for hackers to cause maximum annoyance. I still think NAM is a decent value. Not being a member of the "microwave generation" (ie I want it NOW!!), I too still find myself impatient when waiting on anything having to do with my computer, a predictable result of ever increasing speeds. To quote the famous Simon & Garfunkel "slow down, you move too fast"

 

The Mods may be left in the dark by IB, but they have to deal with this issue just like the rest of us.

Mark

 

I thought he was referring to the cut and run so many of the moderators took after the dragon.

 

Wasn't sure. I took it to also mean that the MODs here on NAM had been drawn into the corporate darkness. I don't think that's the case, the MODS here do what they can, and should be commended for putting up with the grief that being on the front lines bring.

Mark

 

and a paying vendor. The pros of the site is it's large membership and the acrued information. The cons of the site are the still "it really blows" search function that makes lots of the acrued history inaccessable and the dilution of the value of vendor fees. Since purchase, vendor fees have gone up a lot. I pay over $2k a year to be here, and that is without any banner rotations or the like. It's to post my products as a vendor and to be listed in the directory. It's a ton of sales to just pay the fees.

Not only that, but the banner rotation of Mini related vendors and products is diluted by all these cross forum bundled sales. I've seen banners for life insurance, the Chevy Malibu, Ford Mustangs and tons of other crap that I have absolutely no interest in seeing as a Mini enthusiast. All of this represents the selling of add "views" and while a relavent way to make some money on the internet, it seems that the views sold have little or no correlation with the interest of the membership.

Since IB has taken over, these fees went up a lot with the purchase. Further, the IB market strategy is to bundle discounted vendor status across lots of sites, so companies like tire rack get a lower cost to be here on NAM than I do for the same presence. I like tire rack and buy from them often, but the end result is that Mini only vendors end up subsidizing the big players! Makes sense from IBs perspective but really locks out people who want to start a hobby business and grow. You just can't afford to be here.

Most members know little or nothing about how the system works, they just show up to participate in the community. Good for them, but the downside of this passive support for the system is that little companies are effectively locked out, and the greater membership knows nothing about it, so can't regret the loss of market growth cause they're just unaware of the mechanisms at play.

Further, it seems that moderation is OK, but a bit more re-active than pro-active. As a vendor, I get to go to a vendor only area, and some of us find that there are those that often cross the line on abusing vendor status. Sure IB will do something if it's reported. But since moderators are on the boards as well, they could do something proactively. Because of the size of the site, and the structure of moderation, the vendors become the police force.

The site is free for people to come and post and to learn. From the owners perspective, the critical mass of members represents buying power that allows them to sell add space and generate vendor fees. From the vendors perspective, it represents an aggregate of bying power that justifies the expense.

This is how the internet business models work. Like it or not, it's a fact of life. But there is a reason why some past mods walked away from NAM to do other things, some Mini related (just look at Motoring Alliance, and things like totalMINI that was started by those that walked away from MINI2).

IBs investment return is maximized by doing just enough to keep the site growing by adding new members and vendors. But lets be real. The goal is not maximizing the value to the membership. It's really about delivering the minimum increase in membership increase that keeps growth in place and continued revenue.

From the point of view of a casual member, this is all fine and they can still get a good membership experience without knowing "how the sausage is made" so to speak. But then again, this is harvesting the critical mass that has been created over time. Another way to go is to actively participate in the growth of the new grass roots efforts that have not been converted to mostly profit engines for larger internet forum aggregators.

I've been here for a very, very long time. I've seen the evolution of the site, and the ebb and flow of expert enthusiasts and those that push the envelope. From where I sit NAMs better days were in the past. That's not to say that they can't be in the future, but I don't see tons of indications that it will be that way. I'm hopefull though.

So to those defenders of what NAM is, realize that there is some validity to the perspecitve that NAM could be, and has been a better place. That's not to say that it's a waste of time, or is swirling down the bowl leaving skid marks.

Matt

 

The search function is not really the fault of Internet Brands. The underlying software that runs this and 10's of 1000's of other forums is flawed. There is a 3rd party fix but the cost is over 10x the cost of the basic forum software.

That said there may be something that Internet Brands can do but not in the very sort time. IB purchased the company that created the software, Jelsoft. They have moved the company to the US from the UK and renamed it vBulletin Solutions. Currently there is a new version in public beta release. vBulletin 4.0 Beta 4. The migration of vBulletin from 3.x to 4.x is a rewrite of the product and is to have new features released in stages as it moves from 4.0 to 4.1, 4.2 etc. One of these is a more robust search function.

For a view of the new 4.0 Beta version see http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/

As this site is still on an older version, 3.6.2 if I remember and the current Gold or Stable version is 3.8.4 PL1 I'd imagine this site may be one of the early ones that could stand for an update once 4.0 goes Gold.

 

if the search is $2k, that's one years fees (a bit less) for one vendor. Instead I get to look at stuff like this:

What does this have to do with Minis? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! This is a perfect example of how increasing site revenue via blanket advertizing dilutes the value to both the paying vendors who actually make Mini products, and those that come here for information about Minis....

Matt

 

I'm not going to get into the advertising practices. I think, Matt, that you know my thoughts on this.

My point is that since another division of the same company is supposedly working on a search solution why go and purchase one from a 3rd party. Also trying to give some perspective of the boat all forum owners that use vBulletin are in when it comes the search issues.

 

And in the meantime when an advanced vBulletin search doesn't do the trick in locating answers there's also the google "site:https://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/site-feedback/" search conditions you can apply as well.

 

And now we're getting pop-ups to take surveys I seldom visit NAM anymore but tonight decided to visit our Club forum & first thing out of the box is a pop-up to take a survey. One more reason not to hang out here anymore

 

Well, I gotta say ... the last week or so this site seems be be loading much more smoothly than a few weeks ago.

I've never gotten a pop-up here for anything ... could have something to do with the browser you're using? I'm using the latest version of Firefox, and very, very rarely do I get a window open that I didn't specifically click to.

As for the ads, it seems they're a necessary evil if we want forums like this and other content on the web to remain free. It takes a good bit of work to admin these things (I know, I've done it, albeit in a much smaller scale). I sure wouldn't want to be keeping something this big up and running out of the goodness of my heart.

We b!tch plenty when things aren't going up to snuff; so thanks to the sponsors and admins for improving the experience.

 

Using Safari and Firefox, I don't see pop-ups either...I thought pretty much every good browser now had pop-up blocker/control (?).

 

I'm using the latest version of Firefox also. My eyes were not deceiving me. It was a pop-up! Have NEVER got one before on NAM!

 

it's more and more insideous every day and may be the source of the problem.

Matt

 

Yeah...I'm not saying it's not possible but I think it's weird that one person gets them and no one else does. You can download SpyBot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware for free and check for spyware/malware.