Skoolies's dashboard

Thanks a bunch Burka for the honest answer, even if you can't directly confirm everything. – Ash Laws, on July 06, 2008 08:39

Thank you! – Michael Schade, on June 17, 2008 17:05

Thank you Daniel for you response ;) – Bastien, on June 17, 2008 16:37

Thanks for the response, Daniel. – Carolyn S., on June 17, 2008 14:43

Thank you for your honest and direct answer. It is much appreciated. – Skoolies, on June 17, 2008 12:42

Hi everyone. I totally hear your frustration. It's been a very stressful time for us trying to deal with these performance issues and I'm afraid the honest answer is that we can't give you a specific time when they'll be fixed. Right now, improving performance is top priority for us, which is a vague answer but an honest one. I'll try to address the questions in the parent post directly:

1. We would like a timeline stating when the outages will stop. How long do we have to wait for this error to get taken care of?

A1) If I could give you an accurate timeline, I'd give you one. However, it'd be disingenuous for me to give you one right now. We're tackling performance from several different angles (database, expensive queries, managing the API, etc) and trying to hit the most effective ones first. However, we've got a small team and some of the issues take longer than others. This won't be fixed overnight, as you've seen. We're trying to do a mixture of short-timeframe fixes that have some effect in tandem with longer-timeframe fixes that will have better effects over the long term. Yeah, I know that's kind of vague, but I don't think it'll be terribly constructive to go into each and every thing we're doing to handle performance.

2. When can we expect better communication. I see pownce has been working on it, but still things remain the same with no end in sight.

A2) Yes, we've been a bit behind on the communication. It's difficult to know what to say when we can't give you concrete answers to your concerns and questions. The best we've done so far is to lament the problems and try to explain that we share your frustrations - and we really do. We really are working on it and we really do take this seriously, but we don't want to give you more substantive answers unless we know we can back them up. At the moment, I can promise you that we're working hard on performance and we'll let you know more when we can give you a real answer that'll mean something to you.

3. For Pro users, will suppliment them for the month or two that pownce has been unstable.

3A) We'll definitely make sure we treat our community right. This is a pretty good idea that we'll discuss as a team. We really do appreciate everyones' patience and we'll do our best to reflect that in real ways.

4. When can we expect to see timelines for new features that would make those who are now put off about buying a pro account, want to buy one?

4A) At the moment, performance is our top priority, not creating 'pro' features. When we shift our focus back to feature development, we'll try to let you know about future plans for pros... however, I think $20 is still pretty good considering the benefits you receive, especially the much larger file size limits we've implemented -- when the site is working as it should!

I cannot recommend a service that is broken at best.

I also agree with all the above statements. I want to keep using and promoting Pownce, but at this rate it's not looking good.

Yep,i echo everyone's complaint here.I've been experiencing major suckage in service for a couple of weeks now.Pownce has potential,i love all the features...when they work :(

I worry that people will start leaving for services that are more reliable, which is a shame because there is a good community on Pownce. I'll be the glad to celebrate Pownce's stability with paying for a "Pro" account but until then, I'm holding out to see how things shake out.

I echo Libby's concerns.