DailyStrength Members Community Support Group
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I have to start by giving some personal background about what is going to follow. I started with computers back in the early to mid eighties. I needed a better way to handle our rapidly increasing payroll load. I started with Lotus 123 (long before MS Excel) and then later switched to Quattro, which I could run with the lotus menu tree, as it allowed me to add conditional formatting to certain cells that would show me negative numbers in red etc. I set up huge automated and linked spreadsheets that had Macros that branched to several locations because of the 128-character per cell limit. They took me a couple of years to tweak and prefect. I custom build spreadsheets for several local businesses. And then came the time when companies changed hands and Lotus and Quattro where no longer supported. Microsoft took a proprietary stance (that is getting worse daily) and wouldn’t allow anything but Excel to run on Windows beginning with &$%#Vista. So I had to switch to Excel and literally rebuild my spreadsheets. It a lot of took time, but now I have them looking virtually like my original spreadsheets with of course some hidden benefits.
After all the above, what I’m trying to convey is that I can see no reason that the old format look could not have been kept. If changes had to be made, the technology is certainly available to make whatever upgrades or underlying programing changes necessary, without changing the overall basic look and functionality of the original site. It is my opinion that so much damage to existing and potential future membership has been with this format that if it stays this way, it will probably be irreversible.
Just an opinion from an old guy that’s been around the block a few too many times regarding computer programing and the pitfalls of making major changes.
George.
PS, I wonder if DS really reads what is posted here?
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
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I was recently separated from my wife of 33 years and it's complicated. Anyway I rented a room about 15 minutes away and I see my kids about once a week. I see the people who own the house I live in once in a while but other than that I stay in my room where I do my cooking, wash dishes in the shower, read, color, and sleep. I get out at least once a day. I grocery shop and I attend 2 meetings...
But I'm sure that it could have been possible with newer software to provide something much more like the old DS. From people I know that have worked in this space there are tons of options and making changes are as easy as just choosing another option in a drop down within the platform software. For example, and members were spared this, in the original beta the threads were organised by original post date, not by last reply date. That would mean those much loved long running threads would have simply disappeared. Only after jumping up and down did the developers change that.
And that is a telling issue. DS is now being rebuild along a social media model, we've lost tratments, we've lost goals, the ability to hug/ message someone not on our friends list and therefore "crowd hug" someone in need.
It's true forums all over the net are getting smaller as more and more people move onto facebook. DS has lost alot of traffic to facebook. But by trying to make DS more like a social media site means it loses it's unique value. And because it's badly designed and implemented as a social media site then people will just migrate elsewhere. And a number (even the ones that can get in) have already done so.
Now it is nothing more than an extremely poor copycat version of social media. Everyone loses. "share(NOT)care(NOT)" loses current & future members. (When new members come here because they're read old articles about the old DS, they will be in for a huge disappointment.) Members lose what they came here for - to give and receive support. "share(NOT)care(NOT)" loses because people will NOT go to their site. (I suspect that the ONLY reason(s) DS still exists is to drive 'business' to the "sharecare" site and/or as a tax write-off.) And, now, as nothing more than a social media site, DS isn't even one tenth as well designed as facebook. Heck MySpace was better than DS is now.
I highly doubt the developers, programmers, etc. intend to do much to make this site workable or bring it back to what it once was because it all boils down to $$$$$$$.
They've been promising to fix things for years and THIS is what we finally get. :-((
Over time, I would occasionally take a peek at the other support sites and realize how well I had it with DS. But now DS is just like them.....one of many, confusing support sites that are not very user friendly.
I also have a background in coding and computer programming. Although it would take a group of really good programmers, there is no reason why the coding cannot be updated to give us the same format we are use to. IMHO.
Bob, I joined 9 yrs ago for the very same reason you mentioned. There were all kinds of great write-ups about the site by various media. But nothing about DS now is like it was then.
I agree with Fish and MTC and BobinMaine and the others and then sadly, part of me feels like chitown with a ' whatever'. I don't know if anyone is being heard or not, but if this place continues to be the ghost town that it is, I won't have any reason to come here after being on DS for 9 years. What a shame that this has happened to a site that I have spent so much time on and have made lifelong friends and been able to give and get support and a loving and kind environment that felt like 'home'. This feels like a different country.
"Change is good" is not always the case.
I do not wonder about ds reading and acting upon emails, messages, etc. to them at all. They ignored months of my attempts to update my email and password. I had to start from the beginning losing everything prior to their "new updated website."
NO, I do NOT think that ds read nor currently reads ds members' inputs at all.
What else can WE do to deal with this? I'll be willing to change what I can do to keep going here.
Thanks for YOUR input here. It helps to talk about these things!
I repeat, the damage to the membership is rapidly becoming irreversible. The WW site and the people I got to know and interact with, got me through a very difficult time in my life. The battle is not over and maybe one that I will never win. Thankfully the ones that I have been the closest to have given me their email addresses and I can stay in contact with them as dear friends bound by a common denominator. I reiterate, there is no plausible reason for the drastic change to our old site. There has to be a hidden agenda for the change. Maybe a hostile takeover and a planned desolation and assets transferred elsewhere or a gradual winding down of a no longer profitable venture for the real people behind DS. We know who some of them are, but the motive still eludes us.
George.
This discussion is giving me hope for our groups.
I really don't think so. DS never made much money and it's now part of the ShareCare portfolio after the take over many years ago. They want closer ties between the associated sites, Dr Oz, Sharecare, DS etc, They wanted to modernise because the old system was constantly falling over, to make it more mobile friendly and to stem the tide of people going over to social media sites (because over the years the activity has decreased) and to deal with their massive spam problem (something like a million plus spam accounts).
However some of the ideas they used in the design are wrong. The developers were inept. The project management was poor.
So not so much conspiracy more a cock up of monumental proportions.