Post your tech glitches, errors, issues, etc. here.

"summergal, yes, it was tested on BCO members." My screen name is SummerAngel, not "summergal". This is pretty funny, and an example of the issue with lack of correct capitalization when the member names were ported. Okay, so it was tested on members. How many? I'd really like to know, considering how many complaints we've seen since the new site went live.

"We are pleased to see so many new people are able to join, and are getting support." This seems like an improper thing to post on a tech issues thread, and I seriously doubt we have "many" new people, as the number of posts per day has clearly declined since the launch.

"People are joining, and traffic fortunately remains high, despite the technical issues."

We are able to see the traffic on the forums. This statement is just weird.

I fear the tech team is working on this functionality live and causing further problems. The “lastest post" is not updating properly like it was less than an hour ago.

🙃

Mods, When I’m troubleshooting an issue, I often can’t correct the issue in one fell swoop. This is why dev environments are used. If I don’t have a separate dev environment, then I create one that’s not visible to users. Perhaps you can introduce your tech team to the concept of hidden threads. They can create one just for themselves. This requires a delicate touch so that testing doesn’t affect the users.

By using the Search function, it is easy to see the amount of activity on the discussion board.

Past 1 day 134 posts

Past 1 week 1003 posts, average 143 per day

Past 2 weeks 2074 posts, average 148 per day

Past 1 month 4772 posts, average 159 per day

- By subtracting the past two weeks from the past month, we can calculate that the number of posts during the first two weeks of the past month (i.e. covering mostly the period before the redesign with just a few days after the redesign), there were 2698 posts, for an average 193 per day.

Past 3 months 19312 posts, average 212 per day

Past 6 months 41879 posts, average 229 per day

The activity level seems to be moving in the wrong direction. Earlier today I got 6 or 7 "site down" messages in a row; signing in now, I just got another. I wonder if each of those attempts to enter the site or view a thread counts as a separate "visit" to the site.

threetree,

I did not participate in any testing.

That said, I do remember that maybe 3 years ago there was discussion with the Mods in one thread about BCO's vision for the future. The Mod (Melissa, I would guess) mentioned that BCO planned to change the site so as to become the primary medical source for breast cancer patients, where they could store their diagnosis and treatment data and get the information they need to make their treatment decisions, all in one place. My memory is a bit fuzzy (a side effect f endocrine therapy, and aging!) but I seem to recall that the idea was poorly received; I don't think anyone who commented thought it was a good idea, with members wondering who would trust an unknown website with all their medical data and who would come here rather than their doctor or their hospital's portal.

The forum cannot be the target audience. It wouldn't be this bad

Beesie - I think post count is a better measure of activity than anything related to traffic. Usually unique visitors are tracked. You can track page views but I’m not sure how it’s counted for errors. The error message is a different page. With the navigation issues we’ve had, traffic is inflated artificially because we get redirected to the announcement page. How many different pages do we go through just to get back to where we were?

Until the Latest Post per topic is corrected, the Active Topics won’t update. We can’t tell where any new posts are unless we receive an email notification.

Beesie - Thanks for your input about the discussions you remember from a few years ago. Your recollection is very interesting, as I have never seen anything on this site, where they seek out members' opinions, except for those posted threads, e.g. what to do to keep taking endocrine therapy as prescribed, etc. As for the focus and operation of the site itself, I just haven't seen any requests for input.

I really appreciate too, the comments you've made in the previous several pages. You've brought up some very good points that I people take heed of.

Also, I sure do hear you about the letrozole brain and aging stuff! Yikes.

Traveltext - Thanks for your comment also about being part of the small group that was at least given some sort of heads up about a coming change. I just can't believe that there was no advance announcement that they were planning to change things, along with some highlights of what those changes might be. It would have been helpful to have gotten some word that an overhaul was in the works.

Wrenn - I've gotten a lot from the many comments you've made too. Thanks for hanging in there.

Ah, the negative unread posts show up when the system doesn't correctly update to the latest post. When I just signed in, this thread showed with the last post being from SerenityStat 2 hours ago, and it showed that I had -15 unread posts. I would guess that in the past 2 hours there have been 15 posts since SerenityStat's that I have read, or maybe 17 posts and I'd read all but 2 of them.

Threetree, just to clarify, the discussion I remember wasn't in a thread that was started to talk about future changes. As I recall, the subject of the future direction of the site came up as a "by the way" mention on a thread on a different subject. Thinking back with my fuzzy memory, it could even have been this thread, or one similar, where we were discussing changes that had been made and a mention was made of future changes. So it wasn't that our input was specifically sought but just that the topic happened to come up. I'm tempted to go back 2-3 years in this thread to see if the discussion was here, but with the slow loading and all the site down messages, that would be a time-consuming major exercise that's not worth the effort, even though I'm curious to see if my recollection is correct.

It would have been kind if a heads up had been given so closely knit groups could have given out email addresses (or other means of contact) in the event of this mess. There must be a few who are just coping on their own now.