Announcement forum change to IRC!?!?!?

I don't post here a lot, and I hate to be negative but I'm having a hard time believing that the same people that make unraid also made the recent changes to the forum.

The entire announcement forum really needed to be locked? Couldn't one thread have been made and been reserved for staff only to make announcements and anyone who wanted to could subscribe to that?

I can't even begin to understand how locking an entire section of the forum and suggesting IRC is somehow a replacement or is better is supposed to make sense.

you clearly have an abundance of enthusiastic users that make this community great, and the recent changes come across to me at least like an F you from limetech.

How hard could it really be to make a weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly announcement on the forum?

Please get rid of the IRC crap and make announcements on this forum instead!!

Announcements will still be made on the forum, nothing has changed. LT has locked the announcement board as a lot of users are subscribed to be notified of new posts (if LT is posting an announcement, it's usually worth a read) and don't want to be notified every time someone replies "when is version xyz going to be released /flame /hate." Myself included; many of the threads quickly go off-topic and end up moved to another board.

The IRC channel is an addition to the way LT can communicate with users and users can socialize as well as bring issues they may wish to have resolved, possibly more promptly than on the forum, depending on who is online at the time. LT have been working on improving their communication having been on the forums for several years, things are definitely getting better. The changes to the roadmap (despite dates passing, everyone knows it could be better) and the way that bugs are tracked/handled is one aspect of this.

Limetech are a small team with a big user base and a great product at a great price, we need to give them a little space and trust they know what they are doing (because they do).

I think they locked the announcement thread so that only lime tech will make announcements on it not to make the switch to IRC.  They point out that there are a few people usually on IRC and may be able to get quicker support and not that they are going to only make announcements on IRC.  I believe that there was people asking for support in the announcement thread and not starting a new thread in the correct section of the forum.

I don't know what LT's intentions were, but to me, locking the entire section of the forum after hyping updates and then delaying releasing anything or making any kind of announcement just doesn't look good. don't keep saying, maybe this weekend, wait until you have a release ready and then announce and hype it, that's why the announcement forum got the way it did.

To me locking that entire section of the forum just makes it look like LT doesn't want to hear it. I understand some people want alerted when there is an update, but what was done was overkill.

LT has locked the announcement board as a lot of users are subscribed to be notified of new posts (if LT is posting an announcement, it's usually worth a read) and don't want to be notified every time someone replies "when is version xyz going to be released /flame /hate." Myself included; many of the threads quickly go off-topic and end up moved to another board.

This is odd. I only get an email notification when a new thread is created, not when there is a new post. Maybe there is an option when choosing to subscribe to the announcement forum as to how the user is notified, i.e. new thread or new post. So the way it works for me is non-obtrusive.

Chickensoup and sgibbers17 pretty much said it.

Many members, including me, suggested the announcement forum be for limetech announcement posts to customers.

There are plenty of other forums for us to communicate in regarding roadmap, defects, release, hardware, etc.

The IRC is in addition to everything else. email, forum and now IRC if a limetech representative happens to visit.

I think many people subscribe to the announcement forum to get new announcements from limetech.

Then they will subscribe(enable notify) on individual threads.

It's the unrelated chatter in the announcement thread that people have discussed.

Chickensoup and sgibbers17 pretty much said it.

Many members, including me, suggested the announcement forum be for limetech announcement posts to customers.

 

 

There are plenty of other forums for us to communicate in regarding roadmap, defects, release, hardware, etc.

The IRC is in addition to everything else. email, forum and now IRC if a limetech representative happens to visit.

 

 

I think many people subscribe to the announcement forum to get new announcements from limetech.

Then they will subscribe(enable notify) on individual threads.

It's the unrelated chatter in the announcement thread that people have discussed.

I'm sure that was the intention, but closing all discussion of upcoming releases, without doing something like creating a new area everyone can use, kind of comes across to me as least as LT saying, "hey we don't want to hear it, and we don't want you discussing it here."

Chickensoup and sgibbers17 pretty much said it.

Many members, including me, suggested the announcement forum be for limetech announcement posts to customers.

 

There are plenty of other forums for us to communicate in regarding roadmap, defects, release, hardware, etc.

The IRC is in addition to everything else. email, forum and now IRC if a limetech representative happens to visit.

 

I think many people subscribe to the announcement forum to get new announcements from limetech.

Then they will subscribe(enable notify) on individual threads.

It's the unrelated chatter in the announcement thread that people have discussed.

 

I'm sure that was the intention, but closing all discussion of upcoming releases, without doing something like creating a new area everyone can use, kind of comes across to me as least as LT saying, "hey we don't want to hear it, and we don't want you discussing it here."

Each major release has had it's own forum area.

I.E.

unRAID OS version 6 Support

unRAID OS version 5.x Support

Within the unRAID OS version 6 Support area you can see there are subforums.

Roadmap (i.e. goals and/or feature requests)

General support

Defect Reports

The idea, at least from what I'm gathering, is to help organize Defect reports, feature requests and general support questions.

This way there aren't all of the tangents to the announcement with defects, feature questions and/or general support issues.

This is to aid in compartmentalizing and organizing issues,questions,features that need to be tackled.

What worked in the past for the responses in the announcement thread do not work as well anymore.

Limetech has never been about 'we don't want to hear it' In fact if you look here, http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34186.0 it clearly shows an avenue to attempt for issues that people just have to bring up to limetech directly.

I think it might be a good idea to create a new forum called "Firmware Release Discussion"

So for example...

Tom or Jon create a new locked thread "unRAID Server Release 7.5 beta xxx -x86_64 Available" in Announcements section

He will also create a new thread in "Firmware Release Discussion", something like: Feedback for - V7.5 - 24Dec2015 BETA

Better that unRAID itself (at the server level) sends an email to its admin to say there is an update available. unRAID users should not have to be forum users.

...I'm not so excited about this change. IRC is great, but I have no time to monitor it so you won't see me on there. The thing that sucks about it the most for the community is that there will be no record....well maybe there is but it is not as easy to search as the forum. Forum is a great resource when you are having a problem, there is a good chance that someone else has had the same problem. This usually means I can get a fix fast. Its no good if this goes away....

FYI, we reopened the announcement forum for replies again.  Users can configure to only get announcements to new posts as opposed to replies if they don't want to be pinged on each reply.

Thanks jonp, this is much appreciated!