I’m a radiologist. I work with computers and technology everyday. I’m heavily involved in the day to day IT environment for my group.
And this whole thing seems poorly thought out and executed too soon.
Why weren’t we prepped on this for weeks? Why can’t all of the old passwords be rolled into the new site? We would never have instituted such wholesale changes in our work environment without first getting the buy-in of the users and proper education.
And the whole appearance is too strange and not as user-friendly.
Clay or Dudley, you can dismiss me as a disgruntled poster, but you should hear my warnings. There are too many options out there. I’ll still come by sometimes because I am also a subscriber to the Gazette. But this site will never be as special as the old place that we have always loved.
Apathy, (and I can’t think of anything worse for a manager of this site), has already set in for this user.
I say give it some time. First, I can tell you that I personally don’t do change in web sites very well myself. I swear every time I get used to the Weather Channel’s web site, they change it. I always hate the change at first, then get used to it. I personally use “Yahoo” as my home page, and a few times over the years they have completely changed it and made me very angry. Once I get used to it, I am fine.
I would assume there are several “tech” things they will work out here. I miss the ability to “hover” over a post and read part of it. Others say can’t read this site well with I Phone, others (including me) don’t like the way the threads are done compared to the old site. Etc. Etc. Again, I expect some (but probably not all) of these issues can and will be addressed.
This is a good time of the year to do a change (as much as I hate change!). It give Matt and Clay and DD etc. over a month of “slow time” to work out the kinks.
Most mergers have non compete clauses they are dealing with. Scout isn’t going to let clay announce he’s leaving and everyone come with. It’s a process. This board could have been prepared better but I’m sure they wanted to get going months before football season to work out the kinks.
You’re a doctor and I’m a lawyer so maybe that’s why it makes more sense to me.
From a business standpoint, there is no way they could have put it out that Scout was going to be dropped and this started. I bet that Scout found out the same time we did. There is all sorts of intellectual properties and rights involved here as well as contracts. It has to be clean cut.
Change is difficult. I understand that. And change inevitably comes with some issues. We talked through several issues before the launch. We tested and tested. Anyone who says that this was not thought out is wrong. It took months of planning. Obviously there have been a few issues that we didn’t foresee, otherwise we would have put a plan in place that would have avoided them. We’re working to resolve those issues. Many can attest that I have called and walked them through their problems, and the fixes have been relatively quick and easy. I plan to do that until all of the issues are resolved.
We built this merged site to increase the value of a subscription. This is a slow time for news, but I think you’ll see the increased value in short order. SEC Media Days begin in less than two weeks, the basketball team (and Dudley) will be in Spain in a little more than a month and we’re about five weeks out from the start of football practice.
As for the technologies, we are working to see if we can make this message board resemble the old one a little more. Technologies do change, though, including the ones for forums. More than 50 percent of the people who use our site do so from a mobile device or a tablet. Those users have to be considered. What looks best on a desktop doesn’t always look best on a phone. My wife is a teacher who talks about growth mindsets in her profession. Many teachers want to do things the way they have always done and not embrace emerging trends or technologies. “Would you want your doctor ignoring 10 years of new technology and methods?” she asked. Obviously, what we’re doing is less important than that, but the principle is the same. We changed to keep up with the times and serve our readers better moving forward.
Matt - I can login via my email address and Hawg Illustrated password, but I cannot register as you say I must because of this error:
General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]
Duplicate entry ‘larryamahog’ for key ‘username_clean’ [1062]
An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.
What now?
Also how do I get setup for auto renewal?
That has been a common error and is an easy fix, but you’ll need to email me your number so I can walk you through it over the phone. My email is mojones@nwadg.com. Thanks.
I laughed about the doctor/lawyer part and what makes sense to who. I have some real off color lawyer VS doctor jokes you boys like or dislike, depending on which one I told you.
Hogbert, so you believe if you owned a job that it’s ok to just fire everyone, with no notice whatsoever, everyone shows up and bam it’s gone? Sign saying transfer, at a higher cost, or get lost? I know it’s not the same but the way it was handled was completely wrong, whether you see it or not.
I honestly don’t know how they could have handled it differently. Scout was NOT going to let them use their site to promote people leaving Scout and coming here. They decided they were better off on their own than with Scout. Agree or disagree with that. I get that. But there is no way Scout was going to let them spend a month telling people who were paying money to Scout “hey, we are leaving, come with us to our new site.” It just wasn’t going to happen. I was shocked Scout left up the info on its site (about the new board) as long as they did.
An email would’ve been nice. Maybe could’ve coordinated the timing with an announcement in the magazine? Not butt hurt, but it seems like this could’ve been planned a little better.
There were emails. Perhaps your email went to your spam folder or you didn’t have a valid email address on the Scout system.
As for notifying you ahead of the switch, as noted Scout took down the posts within one day of the time that they were posted. As soon as they found out, they banned me for making such posts. Done. Kaput. Finished.
If you are also a Arkansas Democrat Gazette online subscriber when you register for this site and you use the same email you have to use your arkansasonline password.
Either a printed letter sent with plans to migrate over here
from under the Scout umbrella or a couple e-mails outlining
what was in the process at the time would have been much
appreciated. The sudden change with a potential doubling
of yearly outlay for continued membership on Hawgs
Illustrated called for more attention to specifics and the
pricing should have been laid in stone already. Ya’ll might
think you had game planned the moves in an orderly or
acceptable level. You were wrong. A time of separation
in spirit has been forced upon us, and separations frequently
lead to a divorce. This was poor execution. I agree with
the intent and the forward thinking. Scout has been declining
just as Rivals has also. This is a bold move and I think it
will be successful. However a divide in this part of Hog Nation
has occurred. This relationship has been injured.
They could not do this kind of transition the way some are suggesting. It is clear that HI needed a new parent, but they could not carry on that negotiation in public. As soon as it was obvious that the HI team was moving on, Scout was going to shut them down. Is that really hard to understand?
If you want content from Clay and Dudley, this is where you get it. Simple as that. In my view, WholeHogSports went from interesting to essential, just like that. Brilliant business move by the WEHCO people.
