Updates to Autodesk Discussion Groups

[wrighte]

On June 4, Autodesk is upgrading the technology behind our discussion groups. The result is a significant improvement to posting & replying, navigation, search and other features. While we launch this upgrade, the discussion groups will be unavailable from 3pm (PDT) Thursday, June 3 and Friday June 4.

As part of the upgrade, Autodesk has taken the decision to discontinue the time-honored use of the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). This was a difficult and bittersweet decision, given the company’s past investments to maintain NNTP, but one necessary to continue providing the state-of-art web experience Autodesk customers have come to expect. For active NNTP users, we know this will change your workflow when using the forums. To help transition to the web-based forums, the new updates include a simpler, more intuitive interface to post and reply, bookmarking and e-mail notification features to track favorite posts, and more powerful search tools. While not a substitute for the NNTP experience, the streamlined capabilities of our RSS feeds also provide an enhanced and alternative offline forum reading experience.

Autodesk is excited about this change, and is confident that all the valued users of our discussion groups will quickly appreciate and benefit from the improvements to this web experience.


Eric Wright
Product Manager – Support & Learning
Web & eBusiness
Autodesk, Inc.

[Anonymous]

On 5/27/2010 9:57 AM, Bob S. wrote:
> Unfortunately, autodesk does not believe in open source
> and public domain software, it seems!

Yeah, because of Autodesk, I cannot make the 100% change over to Linux.

CAD software is the only holdout, everything else I use a pc for can be
done in Linux.

[Anonymous]

We'll see.... I doubt that it will be even equal to the efficiency on
the NNTP interface.

1. You will be "uploading" any images to to the web interface. Currently
takes longer on the web side.

2. You will not a a list of the topics as in NNTP, and access will be
slower.

3. Currently on the web side, you can only upload 1 image or file per
post. NNTP allows 2, so when people are trying to do a "mini tutorial",
it will take twice as many posts to get a point across.

4. I have T3 fiber optic connection to the internet, so I essentially
have instant access and throughput. On the NNTP side, all headers are
loaded in literally a couple seconds. On the WEB side, access is
terribly slow, and often times out, even on my web connection speed.
Most users do not have the luxury of my web speeds.

5. The inability to use "cookies" to capture user names and passwords to
ease login to the website is atrocious. Almost as bad as the Autodesk
AU2010 website where I have to RESET the same password on a several
times daily basis to the SAME password I've used for years. There, I get
the message that my password is invalid. Funny, I've used passwords on
my website for years for students and subscribers login, and I've never
had to reset a password unless the person logging in requested it.

6. Five months ago, I sought help on an Adobe discussion group. (I
believe they outsource to the same provider that Autodesk uses.) I
clicked the little "thingy" to have any responses to my post emailed to
me. Not only did I never get an answer to my post that helped, but over
the past 5 months, I now receive every post to that discussion group in
my email. No way to disable this that works.I have contacted Adobe
directly on this.... no help. I've disabled the feed to all replays
without result. At this point, I'd have to kill off my email address to
stop them.

I've embraced and used new technology all of my life. However, new is
quite often not better.

Autodesk outsources so much. Maybe they need to take better control of
their destiny. I will give the new interface a fair chance, but if it
takes more time to view or respond to a post, I'll be gone.
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[Anonymous]

On 5/27/2010 10:15 AM, Dennis Jeffrey wrote:

all very valid and well stated points snipped....

> I will give the new interface a fair chance, but if it
> takes more time to view or respond to a post, I'll be gone.

Ditto.

[Anonymous]

hehe,

not that I offer any great amount of assistance here, but using a
newsreader to read text based messages without the flashy graphics is
all that is needed.

[Anonymous]

Missed one point, and a very important one.

7. NNTP and Thunderbird or other NG readers give to the ability to
bookmark or copy any post of interest into a folder for PERMANENT
reference. The web side interface does not do this.

I use this a lot. It's amazing what knowledge my folders contain.

--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[Anonymous]

I've actually just recently started using that to save useful
code snippets.

On 2010/05/27 11:25 AM, Dennis Jeffrey wrote:
> Missed one point, and a very important one.
>
> 7. NNTP and Thunderbird or other NG readers give to the ability to
> bookmark or copy any post of interest into a folder for PERMANENT
> reference. The web side interface does not do this.
>
> I use this a lot. It's amazing what knowledge my folders contain.
>

[Anonymous]

Sorry Dennis but I can't resist....

Do you have sufficient training?

Did you have AVG running when you used these features?

All these features work fine on my machine. Can you provide us with your system specs?

Other than that, I fully agree with your observations.

[Anonymous]

... sigh... here we go again... the marketers at AutoDesk have taken over the Discussion Group Forum again... as with all "up"grades from AutoDesk, the upgrade phase will take two days, while the "regretting having upgraded" phase will last for months... we will get bells, whistles AND flashing lights with the new system, but no improvement in functionality, and at least some of us will be unable to make it work at all. I'm seeing some familiar names telling us "adios" due to this fiasco (Dennis, NOOOOO!!!!! DON'T GO!!!!!), so I can already see that the usefulness of the forum will be lessened. But, look at the bright side, we will get... uhhh.. we will get... um, what exactly WILL we get? And all this because... uhhh... because... um, why are you doing this? Sure, YOU get a "state of the art web experience", but what do WE get?? This isn't the latest version of an iPod you're hosting here, it's a DISCUSSION GROUP!!! All we need is the ability to enter text and attach the occasional screenshot. We don't need anything technologically more advanced than what was common 10 years ago. You're not trying to market toys to 13-year olds, here. I really, really hope to be able to log on next month and thank you for nothing, but I'm not very optimistic that I'll even be able to log on. This is a "new and improved" bad idea, on the same level as the dropping of VBA from AutoCAD... and how did that work out for ya.

[Anonymous]

this is a bummer. I use the news reader - it's FAST and EASY!

Ugh.


"zma1013" wrote in message news:6398531@discussion.autodesk.com...
There are things on other message boards that make conversing with other
people alot easier and make it alot easier to track what threads you are
interested in and keep posts in order and whatnot. It's an interface, and
if the interface isn't easy to use, then it becomes a problem.

Obviously though, it all depends on how well they do this update. Could be
bad, could be good. Hoepfully it's good. Also, I really hope they don't
make passwords and logins more strict. I already hate, with a passion, HATE
that this message board logs you out automatically after 30 minutes or
whatever. And sometimes it just randomly decides to reset my password.
It's stupid.

[Anonymous]

Oh! I forgot that...! 🙂 You know,we could blame that on Al Gore. After
all, he "invented" the Internet...

Have a great weekend everyone!
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[Anonymous]

Just wondering.... Is this the NEW face or our discussion groups?
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[Anonymous]

"Jim" wrote in message news:6398736@discussion.autodesk.com...
this is a bummer. I use the news reader - it's FAST and EASY!

Ugh.


Yep. I have yet to see a web-based forum yet that could match it. Buncha
fluff and window dressing, clogged up with ads....which come to think of it,
is probably one of the factors driving all this. The folks on the nntp side
of things are missing out on the wonderful opportunity to get bombarded and
annoyed and tracked and profiled by the brilliant folks who brought us the
AutoCAD=Viagra advertising campaign.

Given Autodesk's track record with stuff like this (*cough* AU *cough*), I
predict a train wreck, and subsequent withering death of the groups as the
folks who really know what's what give up in disgust. It may not happen
that way, but based on past experience that's clearly where the odds are
pointing.

[msklein]

Walt, we can't afford to lose any more of the good no great people, like we lost on the last upgrade of this usergroup and have not been back sense.
msk

[Anonymous]

There's autodesk.inventor.support on the public usenet. Last post was a year
ago and was spam so it should be available for use (with appropriate kill
filters).


"Jim" wrote in message news:6398736@discussion.autodesk.com...
this is a bummer. I use the news reader - it's FAST and EASY!

Ugh.


"zma1013" wrote in message news:6398531@discussion.autodesk.com...
There are things on other message boards that make conversing with other
people alot easier and make it alot easier to track what threads you are
interested in and keep posts in order and whatnot. It's an interface, and
if the interface isn't easy to use, then it becomes a problem.

Obviously though, it all depends on how well they do this update. Could be
bad, could be good. Hoepfully it's good. Also, I really hope they don't
make passwords and logins more strict. I already hate, with a passion, HATE
that this message board logs you out automatically after 30 minutes or
whatever. And sometimes it just randomly decides to reset my password.
It's stupid.

[Anonymous]

Oh this sucks.
I suppose now we won't be able to view screenshots without downloading them
first. With NNTP we can view jpg right in the context of a post. So far I
have not been able to do that on the web version.

It's difficult to see anywhere near as many headers on the web version (15
at a time only) & it's slower than the NNTP to access them.

You can't see the hierarchy at a glance like you can in the NNTP

You have to scroll forever on the web to see all the posts in a search. Most
of us don’t care for or need to see relevance% & 3-4 lines of text under
every header.
On the NNTP it all right there, each header on one line with all necessary
info & no more - simple & efficient & fast.

The web version shows too much information in the posts that we don't need-
it's clutter.

I'd like to know what the improvements are going to be that relate to
solving the above issues.
Who cares about state of the art if it's more time consuming & gives us less
than we need & more of what we don't.
Pop-ups/advertisements & more unwanted clutter?, no thanks.

Why can't the NNTP be kept until the new web version is voted a better
choice by the us, the customers, the people who pay for the software &
depend on the NG for most of our support. The NG is the single most
important tool for notifications & to trouble shoot our methods & software &
it's mostly all done by the user base, us, for basically free.

The only good side of this I can see is that I could now read my email while
I have the NG web site up, but that's about it. Woopty do.....

I'll give it a try but I'm going to miss terribly those who say they are
leaving...don't go Dennis!

My $.02

Gary

[robmatthews]

Heaven help us if it is...

[Anonymous]

Great response and opinion! It IS possible to require a login and
password to access NNTP groups, just like web based, so that's not the
reason they are abandoning NNTP.

Time for Autodesk ( not a third party vendors to take a second look at
this decision. I'm for both avenues of access and usernames/passwords
for the NNTP side to eliminate and block spammers.
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[Anonymous]

I concur, I have yet to find a web based newsgroup, forum, email etc. that I
like. If this implementation is as cheezy as the rest of the junk out
there, I'll be out of here - not just the newsgroup but the subscription as
well.

Richard

[Anonymous]

Eric,

Boo! NNTP is a lightweight, fast and powerful interface. I ask that you
guys reconsider this decision. I know I will not be coming back near as
much if forced to use the web interface.

--
Sean Dotson, PE
www.mcadforums.com
www.ipropwiz.com

"wrighte" wrote in message news:6398187@discussion.autodesk.com...
> On June 4, Autodesk is upgrading the technology behind our discussion
> groups. The result is a significant improvement to posting & replying,
> navigation, search and other features. While we launch this upgrade, the
> discussion groups will be unavailable from 3pm (PDT) Thursday, June 3 and
> Friday June 4.
>
> As part of the upgrade, Autodesk has taken the decision to discontinue the
> time-honored use of the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). This was a
> difficult and bittersweet decision, given the company’s past investments
> to maintain NNTP, but one necessary to continue providing the state-of-art
> web experience Autodesk customers have come to expect. For active NNTP
> users, we know this will change your workflow when using the forums. To
> help transition to the web-based forums, the new updates include a
> simpler, more intuitive interface to post and reply, bookmarking and
> e-mail notification features to track favorite posts, and more powerful
> search tools. While not a substitute for the NNTP experience, the
> streamlined capabilities of our RSS feeds also provide an enhanced and
> alternative offline forum reading experience.
>
> Autodesk is excited about this change, and is confident that all the
> valued users of our discussion groups will quickly appreciate and benefit
> from the improvements to this web experience.
>
>
> Eric Wright
> Product Manager – Support & Learning
> Web & eBusiness
> Autodesk, Inc.

[petercharles]

A message for Mr Eric Wright

If you are going to b****r about with the forum AGAIN, please phone up Mr Sean Dotson and ask for a copy of the software he uses for his very "easy to use" mcadforums web site and just impliment that!