There it was, gone….gone

Come on Key: yet another spam. This time in your own “Service update” section. Not impressed by your vigilance.

Laurence

Don’t hold your breath … you’ll turn a funny blue color.

Does the new forum have a “Mark Site/Forum As Read” feature?

I’ve asked for such a feature for months, soon years I guess but nothing happens!

Does the new forum have a “Mark Site/Forum As Read” feature? It gets a little tiresome having to click on every thread to “clear” the unread messages, regardless of one’s interest in said thread.

Just had another look to be certain. It is back and in the correct date order too.   Either it’s egg on the face of the thread is reinstated!

What happened to the thread ‘Spotted 2020’ ? I only ask out of self interest as I made an entry and the whole thread seems to have vanished – or have I overlooked it? It’s odd as the post still exits in my profile. Or do we have another nail in the forum coffin. 

• SPOTTED 2020

  1 week 4 days ago

  17.00 June 26th at least 15 minutes.   Two Spitfires having a great tail chase knocking holes in the sky with plenty of Merlin in front of the South Downs west of Arundel West Sussex. I/D’s anyone?

  And was one, by any chance, a Griffon engined mark?  Wonderful sounds and great sight. Boultbee’s hard at work maybe????

Stratofreighter can have mine.

Laurence

I admire your perseverance, Stratofreighter. Someone ought to give you a brick wall as a reward for it! 

…bumping this thread into the month of July 2020…

….. or use an ad-blocker!

So this is when the paying starts.
Stump up the cash, or have your screen endlessly bombarded by a blizzard of infuriating adverts.

This has to be the most user-unfriendly forum I have ever seen.

PLAAF wumao

QUE?

Despite the loss of posters, Historic Aviation is the one bright spot because it has a small amount of traffic. Contrast the Modern Military forum which is essentially dead and its most prolific poster is a PLAAF wumao.

For what it’s worth I have completed the survey and let Key know what I think, and that enthusiast value substance over style, whereas this new format seems to be the reverse, and that they are deluding themselves if they really believe the forum is thriving in this new format.

After some ten or fifteen years of daily (if not twice daily) checking in,  and occasionally contributing (but mostly simply in awe of the knowledge and dedication to the field of historic aviation that was on display) I now look in here maybe once or twice a month.

The loss of so many valued, and highly knowledgeable, contributors and moderators following the poorly managed, and poorly thought through revamp, has ripped the heart out of this forum.

I agree with Avion Ancien (above) when he suggests many former regulars may well be struggling to find anything quite like this forum in it’s former, thriving, knowledgeable, good natured (well, most of the time) format.

I am not sure what Key was trying to achieve, I accept that a simple face-lift was probably long-overdue, but the end product is simply not attractive to many former regulars, who clearly, and visibly, voted with their feet. 

I hang on in the vain hope that the oft-mentioned concerns are addressed, and that the forum may drag itself back into rude helath, but I fear it is in its’ death throes.

I did email Flypast’s editor, expressing my concerns, and he responded quickly, saying he only looked after the magazine, not the forum, but he kindly advised me to contact Key’s chief exec with my concerns. I duly did so, offering constructive criticism, not simply a moan, and got no response whatsoever, not even a simple one-line ‘Thank you for taking the time to email me, I have passed it on to the relevant person’  response.   Seems to sum up Key’s attitude, i.e. they are right, and will accept no criticism whatsoever about what they believe is a truly wonderful ‘new look’ forum.

There are two very different spheres of interest that are served by forums such as this was. The first is the operation of vintage aircraft today. The second is aviation history. Whilst the former can, I suspect, easily be served by social media, such as facebook, that is less the case with the latter (which thrives on debate and exchange of knowledge between individuals). This forum used to serve both spheres well. Sadly I doubt that it now serves either sphere well. Whilst those in the first sphere may have departed to facebook and its ilk, and probably feel reasonably well served thereby, those in the latter sphere have, I fear, looked for, but not found, another medium to serve their interest. However I suspect that those people are not seen by Key Publishing as its target audience.

I noticed a lot less people visiting the Meteor page after the first shambles, then the square root of bugger-all people were visiting after this latest abortion of a forum was fielded. Hence I “took my custom elsewhere”, very reluctantly. What’s the point in spending my time writing a post for a forum where nobody is going to see it? At least over on UKAR it still gets a decent footfall and, along with running a Facebook page as rightly mentioned by SMS88, is for that reason worthwhile putting the effort in for. The footfall on here, or rather lack of, made it no longer a good use of my time and effort quite frankly.

A once thriving hub of the aviation community has been killed off. Do the decent thing and bury its bones.

The reality seems to be that almost all the news is shared on individual facebook pages these days by owners/operators/restorers or places like flickr by photographers  and we can engage directly with them there – aviation journalists no longer have much or any advantage in timeliness of information and organizations that once were secretive are now actively promoting themselves on FB so a lot less digging needed and little need to wait for a once per month update

With that attitude from Key, and incidentally they don’t specify whether the growth has been negative or positive, I now see no point in ever returning to this forum. 

The effective loss of this forum (in all but presence) has done immeasurable damage, both to Key’s reputation and also to the world of historic aviation, especially at a time when physical access to facilities has been stopped as a result of the Coronavirus.

I agree with avion ancien. Could we not have the number of views of each thread displayed as in the past? This was one of the issues pointed out in earlier communications and which I mentioned in my response to the survey. Those who are posting can then see the amount of interest generated. It would, hopefully, be one obvious sign of progress.

No, you guys are missing the point.
The only one you have to be able to fool is yourself!