In typical Newtek fashion. No acknowledgement of a problem, no indication as to when it will be fixed, just the usual no communication, bury your head in the sand stance.
You keep thinking they are on the way to getting better and being professional and these stupid things crop up to prove the contrary.
Agreed, this is simply not the way these kinds of things should be handled or communicated.
I hear lots of comments about how much things have changed, but honestly, in terms of the actions taken and results, I just don’t see the quantity of actual change others are claiming to have occurred. I hope I’m wrong, either way time will tell in marketshare and progress.
As far as Lightwave goes; I think giving Rob and Team total anonymity over the whole pie, including separate LW Forums is the way to go.
The forum disruption notification in the forums (when you can get to them) is set to expire 22nd September, although the body of the text only talks about a few days disruption starting on the 7th.
There was a notification of expected disruption on Sunday due to a service provider :
‘Also, our local network service provider has notified us of their intention to perform a fiber splice on Sunday, September 16, 2012. This is expected to affect service for up to 3-4 hours in the period between 8am and 5pm (C.S.T) on that day.’
That said, the IT infrastructure at NT seems to be largely immune to learning lessons. Hopefully, the carve-out of the LW group will address that in future - having their own support systems won’t hurt at all.
I do wonder how the other departments (e.g. Tricaster) feel - their support forums are tied in to the main forums and will be experiencing the same reliability problems.
Is there any reason to think such a carving out is occurring or will occur in the future? It sounds a bit like wishful thinking (and a bit like a nightmare too, since presumably that’d mean LW would need to be profitable quickly as well).
The carve-out has already happened in the form of the new LightWave group - announced in early August. It’s a wholly owned division of NT - I take that to mean that it is freed from competing with the likes of Tricaster for internal resources, allowing them to have their own supporting infrastructure (sales/support) and, I would hope, their own forum as well.
When the forum turbulence started, I assumed that this was due to the LW Group freezing their sections of the forum to start fresh on the new lightwave3d.com site. I’m surprised that hasn’t happened, but I think it’s likely. There’s no point having a separate product/resource site and then asking customers to go to a second site for the discussion forums.
That separation is a real double-edged sword, though. I knew of the “separate division” bit, but got the impression it wasn’t quite so thorough an actual separation, perhaps incorrectly. I’m actually more concerned if they’re totally separated, as I see that as also meaning they can’t be quite so reliant on Tricaster sales’ funding anymore. I just don’t get the impression LW sales have improved by any tremendous amount, and that could be a problem if they’re expected to function more as a separate entity from Newtek’s other product divisions.
OTOH, many, many companies have all their product forums lumped together even with rather disparate product lines.
I can’t see why they couldn’t decide on the look and feel of the forum before subjecting us to this erratic scenario - very unprofessional. As you’ve already pointed out, to have so much useful information which is invaluable to the smaller studio, on an inaccessible forum, is a royal pain in the arse. I do rely on those forums for quite important day-to-day decisions, and there is no other way to access that information as easily.
Based on their highly successful SIGGRAPH event, where they even opted to tear up their schedule because of the interest in specific aspects of the LW11 package (although perhaps it was Lino’s singing), I am not so sure. Very few (if any) companies release sales figures, so it’s just an inference drawn from the level of interest being shown and the reporting from the event around the LW group and LW 11.
When I originally read about the separation, my initial thought was that this was preparation for spinning it off. The rest of NT’s product line is all hardware (SpeedEdit is not even listed on the main site under Products), and missteps like CORE (as a product) must have impacted the wider company. As such, I wonder if the separation is setting the ground for this, with NT acting like a VC in owning the division until the circumstances are right. It worked for Luxology and they have a vibrant community, a well respected product and a focused team.
We’ll see what happens. I’m feeling quite positive about LW’s future, largely based on the enthusiasm and energy of the team.
We’ll see what happens. I’m feeling quite positive about LW’s future, largely based on the enthusiasm and energy of the team.
Agree with that. Not sure if I’ll sign on with 11.5 or wait till 12 though.
I think you should sign on to LW11.0.3 or wait to 12. Whatever was shown regarding 11.5, it is much better to look at the latest current version and make a desicion. If 11.5 turns out to add functionality that you really need, then upgrade when you know if it does.
Here in Sweden, we havn’t had any issues in many days now. One of the users has now confirmed that he doesn’t need to use a proxy to access the forums. This user could access the forums without problems from work, but from home it was a different matter (needing the proxy). He also mentioned that, appart from the proxy thing, he has not had any issues with connecting to the forums. In my case, I only had problems a couple of days when the transition happened, but I never needed to use a proxy even… I havn’t experienced any downtimes of the forum.
I had an old account there that I haven’t used in quite a while but have since lost my password and my old email is no longer valid, so a few hours ago I created a new account there, but I have yet to be approved and have my approval email sent.
Is it done manually or automatically and how long should I expect to wait?
Hello everyone,
just thought I´d share my experience, too: I connect to the forums from germany and haven´t had any problems whatsoever recently.
I was trying different times of day and the forum was always reachable…
just my 2ct…
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