POLL: What parts of RCU are important to you?
 

Hi all,

We have some serious issues with the software that runs the "old" parts of RCU -- namely the parts that are not the forums, the Marketplace, or the home page articles.

We want to know from you which parts of the old site still patter to you, so we can better decide what to try to save, and what has to go.

Please select as many of these answers as apply to you.

Thanks for your help!

Paul

Needs a "None of the above" option....

Exactly....

+1

Here we go again just a different way to tell you that they intend to do an update which means the site is in for another major screw up. LOL just wait this should be funny but sad. Anyone want to guess on the number of "It don't work right why can't we have the old site back" complaints. Its like watching the Keystone Cops LOL.

It has one -- don't vote for any of them.

We certainly hear you. While the initial Marketplace rollouot did not go as smoothly as we'd hoped, we have also tried to message everyone about the necessity of these changes. We have been maintaining very old, very custom code for a long time, and the code is at an end. Our options are to shut those parts of the site down, or to do our best to recreate them with compliant, maintainable new code. That's what we've chosen to do. If we had the option to just leave it, we would have. Alas!

A gallery is a story; it must always remain ...

I agree with None of The above option as well. The most important parts for me is Buy / Sell and Forums.

looks like a lot of none of the above so far.

24+hours and 164 votes out of all the registered folk here...

Nota!

I don't see the point in keeping the "clubs" listing. I looked in the boating listing for Washington State and found many of the clubs are not listed. I don't know if this is due to the club information not being given by said club or if it was and the forum wasn't updated. Either way, it's probably not practical to try to keep it up to date as this is a very fluid topic

Where do you get 164? I only see 84 votes when looking at the poll results...which is even more sad.

There is NO need to change a thing with RCUNIVERSE. Whatever the problem is, we, meaning members of RCUniverse are quite proud of this forum. We ALL love it.

counted total votes, to put the best possible spin on it...

I see... so 164 votes from 84 voters. :eek:

It won't let you select none of them...

he is telling us that every member who does not vote is casting a none of the above vote.

Oh, so what he really meant was "don't vote."

that is the meaning i drew from his statement.

Yes, because the question wasn't "which parts of RCU do you NOT care about," it was "Here are 6 sections -- which of them ARE important?"

Not voting = "I don't think any of these are important."

We appreciate the effort and your giving us a say.

I just picked 1 to get the request satisfied............. None is my feeling.

Old RCU
 

This site used to be awesome. All the changes screwed it up and many long time posters have moved on. Classic pattern used to be extremely active. It is essentially dead.

RC Universe is all the younger crowd. Buy new & RTF no repairs needed. Where are the D I Y guys hanging out today ?

Dude, did you read post #8? They have no choice but to update the site. Change is the one constant in life, name a site or forum which is exactly the same as it was in 2005. If you don’t like it, do what they suggested about the poll - don’t participate.


.

Vote Here
 

How about just giving us the old site back. Not happy with this one......

Obviously there's many problems. I contend more then they can disclose in any thread. I haven't looked at this site in probably over 3 months, and probably all total just a few times in the last few years. So I'm going with "none of the above". I registered with this site probably a week or two after it was launched in 2001, and was a moderator for a few years or more. It really rocked, I remember when it hit 100,000 users. It was a party, with new users registering every day, and using it frequently. Sponsors were flocking to it, advertisers couldn't sign up fast enough...

Every change since about 2006-2008 has it slipping down a slope though from what I can tell. At some point it was taken over by an entity that really made it tough to use. It seems like it's just treaded water for the last 10yrs.

The Market Place is ridiculous and hard to use, there's no origin dates on any threads so you can't see when anything was originally posted without hitting on it, and the list goes on. I'm not wanting to bash here, but these are just a few of the issues I as a user have to deal with.

I certainly wish it could remain and evolve to a better site, but now today I finally log in, and there's a prompt to vote on what we think is "more important". Those kind of polls create more division then anything else you could do. I cringe when I see/hear those kind of polls. I've seen those things split clubs, churches, and organizations right down the middle, and nothing gets resolved...

How about this... You guys think about it, come up with a site plan, and if I/we like it, we'll be back. Get rid of the politics of what your users think, and be creative, do your jobs, make it work, make changes where needed, and if it doesn't work, you do it again.
If you can't keep up with it, maybe you're in the wrong business. Know though there's almost 19yrs of history(not to mention this site apparently took on the older RCOnline at some point early on also if I'm not mistaken).

The most important thing you can do is come up with something that works and appeals to your users. Don't ask users what they think, do your job and get creative. Entice us, make users(like me) want to read your site. I don't want to see 19yrs of information go up in smoke, but it's inevitable if you guys don't get with it.

Geeze dude, speak coherently much? Do you believe in punctuation? Pass English in school? You seem to like jokes, so good luck with that. Sorry to be the one who teaches you this, but change is inevitable in life, learn to deal with it or consider another site....


.

I thank you for this thoughtful reply! I would like to address some of it.

I can't speak to changes as far back as 2006-2008. Way before my time, and even before IB bought the site. But I can speak, again, to the reasons for some of the changes we have made, including the marketplace.

The current RCU Marketplace is the best RC classifieds marketplace on the Internet. I know this because I've looked at the other guys, and all they are is a bunch of forum threads. They split off a subforum, called it a marketplace, and walked away. Our marketplace is a separate product, within the forum software, with features specifically for RC sales. I do get that we lost some features when we moved from the old RCU marketplace to the new one; but at this point, we are not comparing old RCU to new RCU -- we are comparing RCU to everyone else. And we're the most feature-rich, RC-specific marketplace around, period.

Now, let's talk about why we changed from the old RCU marketplace to the new. It's the same reason we are running this current poll: the site we purchased 10-ish years ago was custom-coded in Coldfusion, and is not as compliant with modern security standards, nor is it upgradeable. It's got to be rewritten from the ground up. So we did that with the forums. Then we did it with the most important part of RCU (outside of the forums) -- the marketplace. Now, we are running this poll to determine what parts to work on next... and to some extent, what parts we can just let go.

As such, we don't see asking our members to help us determine our technical priorities as a "political" act. We see it as necessity. We only have so many resources, and rather than spend them rebuilding something nobody actually cares about, we want to spend them on things that matter to this community.

Forums are hard. This isn't 2011 anymore, and people have other ways of getting their RC info. But we are sticking with this, and dedicating ourselves to making RCU the best RC site on the Internet, just as we have with the Marketplace. If you'd like to consider returning as a mod and helping directly with that, please talk to Ken. If not, I hope you'll consider continuing to give feedback -- believe it or not, nobody ever suggested that including in the search results page the original post date of a Marketplace listing was even desired until your note here. We could do that. We can do other things too; but not if they don't occur to us, and not if nobody says, "hey -- this would be cool."

Yes, this is a challenge. Stay with us for the ride.

-Paul

My sentiments exactly.

timbro21
 

The new site has no confidential section to share information with the buyer or seller. Every reply seems to be posted to the public as would all negotiating by the buyer or seller. That will not work.

If you have to start from scratch, you should have anticipated the issues and written the correct code. I have purchased one item in the last year and it was a hassle.
The market place attracted me to the site, which in turn attracted me to the forums, which had me look at the adds of your sponsors.. Now, I don't look at the adds or read the forums because I come on the site once per month to look at what's new and leave. A site is a total experience not just buying items. When one of the legs are gone, the rest suffers.

We all understand change and the need for it. I understand that your code was obsolete and believe you. What I don't understand is trying to make your customers get force fed these new changes. If I did that with my customers I wouldn't have any.

Most all of the members liked the old market place. If that is so, copy the old marketplace and write it in new code. If it is too expensive, then you should consider selling the site to a better financially heeled crowd.

The old tenant of business is you don't screw your old customers in the hope of getting new ones. Few business that try to rebrand to a different demographic succeed. I wish you all the best.

Respectfully

ChemE,

Agreed. Get rid of them all.

Agreed. One of the things driving this sight was the ease of posting pictures and the Buy&Sell. Both of these were messed with the new format.

The OLD RCU was great, it was easy to use, easier to buy stuff, easier in almost every way, with quick responses to questions and offers, I for one used to be a regular buyer & seller on the OLD RCU but now I rarely buy on the NEW RCU FORMAT because it just isn't easy to use anymore, I for one would absolutely love it if you went back to the OLD RCU!!! Jimmy

Make no mistake there doesn't need to be so many problems as occur here when they make changes. I think its just plane lazy on their part. Most of the other forums I belong to when they make changes will put up a beta version of the new site for you to try. If things don't work you can still revert to the old site and post your issues. They address those issues and when everything is worked out the beta site becomes the new site and the old ceases to exist. Kind of simple when you consider your members are like your customers eh!!!!!!

Dennis