Why did the Forum hyperlink disappear?
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May 2, 2006, 08:30 AM
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dhjdhj Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 220 |
Why did the Forum hyperlink disappear? I normally get to this BETA support forum by moving the mouse over "Support" and clicking on the dropdown box that takes me to these forums. Today, that dropdown menu has ONLY the FAQ link. Ominous? D |
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May 2, 2006, 10:36 AM
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 nick083 Parallels Team Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 43 |
Improving support quality Dear Friends, We need to provide a good quality of the product itself and its support. Due to a large volume of support requests we removed the links from the site. We think that we should provide the links only to users of the product. It will allow users to asktheir questions and find answers faster. I can assure you that we'll never close the forum. Everybody will be able to read and post. Again, our only intention is to make the support better. It must work for you as users of Parallels product. Regards, Nick |
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May 2, 2006, 10:51 AM
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AtariAge Junior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 17 |
I personally do not feel that hiding the forums is a very good move. Before I installed Parallels, I spent some time reading the forum to gauge opinions of other people who had installed it. This later lead to my purchasing the product. I now expect the amount of traffic (and posts) in the forum will go down to a trickle, making them far less useful to those who do manage to find their way here. I could see you not allowing people to post unless they are using the product, but at the very least you should still make them visible to visitors who are doing research on the product before installing and/or purchasing it. ..Al |
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May 2, 2006, 11:43 AM
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joem Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 1,275 |
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But one bad idea in a long string of good ones isn't such a bad track record. I'll bookmark http://forum.parallels.com for now. __________________ MacBook Pro 2.4G; core 2 duo; 4GB RAM, 500G HD 10.4.11 XP, 768 Meg RAM |
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May 2, 2006, 01:25 PM
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dhjdhj Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 220 |
Very BAD idea. If a new user can't find your forums, then they are effectively closed! I don't blame you for wanting to improve the signal-to-noise ratio but eliminating the ability for people to find the forum is NOT the way to go. Make them read-only if you want, and perhaps require a key to be able to post if you want to restrict to legit users. I would also point out that the Mac version of your product is BETA and YOU (Parallels) are also benefitting from allowing beta users to post because you're able to make the product better (more quickly) and you're also benefitting because users are able to help other users. If I didn't happen to have bookmarked the direct link to the forum so I could find my way back, you would have immediately seen a credit card reversal for my preordered product! A big reason to use a product is quality of support. I've no doubt that VMWare will provide a Mac VM sooner or later. If it even begins to look like support is faltering here (and a missing link is a big indicator of such a trend), I will just jump to a competing product (and tell others to do the same thing) when it arrives - the initial cost of a product is only a small part of the TCO. David Jameson Quote:
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May 2, 2006, 01:29 PM
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dhjdhj Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 220 |
If you need a cheap but really good ticket system and knowledge base, take a look at http://www.kayako.com/ After seeing it at a number of sites, I bought and deployed that system for my own company (www.digiportal.com) and it only cost a few hundred dollars - REALLY worth it. It's PHP based, runs on the usual LAMP model, etc. (Note - I've no affiliation with Kayako other than as a satisfied customer) David Jameson |
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May 2, 2006, 04:25 PM
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dsmac Junior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 7 |
This forum is (was) one of Parallel's best sales tools. You have a largely ecstatic, loyal user base. The responsiveness by the PW team to the issues, ideas, and comments of the forum participants has been truly remarkable, and builds tremendous confidence in potential customers. While there is a fair bit of noise and the forum is becomming increasingly disorganized, I have yet to see a "disgruntled" customer or a single case of flaming. Dialogues have been courteous and informative. What a great user base! After initially reading some marketing hype, I decided to visit the website. Only after spending a couple of days in the forums did I decide to preorder the software, because at that point I could tell it was not just hype. I'm really happy with my decision. I'm sure my experience is similar to many others. |
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May 2, 2006, 04:47 PM
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rohela Junior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 19 |
I wonder if all of the posts on other forums about Parallels being a front for Russian scammers is correct. This suspension of the forum makes it look that way. Any marketing person will tell you that public perceptions have very little to do with your intent or even the truth. You are jusdged by how your actions look, and taking down the public supprot forum and hiding it looks horrible to anyone but the beta testers who emotionally identify with the product Can't get the product running? Never had a product? It doesn't matter if the next relese is the final proudct with all features implemented. What you have done by hidding the forum goes against everything that Mac peopel beleive in. Mac people ahve always insisted on free and open discussions of all issues. Even Apple allows criticism on it forums. Unless things change quickly I will report this outrage to every Mac forum and BB. If they take this post down I will act immediately. I am an award winning Mac software developer and placed a pre-order. But in 22 years in Mac software I have never heard such a lame excuse for suddenly hiding after taking money. This reminds me of what happened in the early days of Mac software when a software utility company was really being used to launder drug money. They also suddenly shut down support when their scheme was under investigation. Shutting down the forum is generally a sign of something horrible to happen and I do not believe what they say about it being to imporve service. Like every other person in the Mac professional community I wnat to know what is really going on? |
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May 2, 2006, 11:19 PM
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David Witkowski Junior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 6 |
I have to agree with everyone that it was not a good idea to remove the forum. I don't see how this will provide better support. Limiting who can post to a forum is not the way to provide better support, it more effective if you allow people to discuss their ideas and take all of the input and evaluate it. Also, you should have sent an email to the current forum members so they were not caught unaware when looking for the forum link. Doing this so abruptly makes people think the company or product is not stable or real and I for one really like it and want it because it fills a need. Please try to provide better support by keeping in touch with valuable customers and those who provide input in this beta process. (I am not being critical, just expressing some thoughts, I think the improvements in the product and the responsiveness to requests and bugs has been great! |
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May 2, 2006, 11:40 PM
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colourpixels Junior Member Join: May 2006 Posts: 8 |
I think removing the link is at best inconvenient I've pre-orded PW and found it pretty confusing to see the forums dissapear from the homepage. I assumed they were no longer in existence until by chance I tried one of the pages in my history. I think you'll be hurting valid customers by removing the link. The problem of signal to noise posts would be better solved with either more categories or requiring a serial # to post. Look forward to seeing that link return to the homepage. Dale |
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May 2, 2006, 11:44 PM
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rohela Junior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 19 |
How can I give my employees Macs to run Win on Parallels if I cannot count on Parallel to properly support the product? Likie everyone else I hope they succeed. I paid for the product. But all of the people attacking me are basically saying that they are emotionally invested in the company and so take any questioning of the company as a personal attack. However, the people at Parallels should know that the vast majority of the public is not as emotionally tied to Parallels as are their beta testers, and especially the people on these forums. The public's reactions will be very different from what you see here. They want open adn visible forums so they can make an informed decision. I don't care if the bandwidth charges on the forum are too high (or whatever concern caused you to make this horrible decision)- raise the price of the product but give us something that we can rey on to conduct our business activities. Beta testers do not make their living with a product. The real world does. You have to market to them and not think that beta testers represent anything but the technological first adopters who will make allowances that the public will not. Am I being a little shrill? Yes, because I want them to stop being programmers and start seeing what it takes to make a conmpany that is more than a niche player. |
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May 3, 2006, 07:54 AM
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myflyertrains Junior Member Join: May 2006 Posts: 4 |
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May 3, 2006, 10:06 AM
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Angelo Schneider Junior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 12 |
Sorry, but this makes no sense! I'm a USER of the product! I'm even a paying customer!! I searched for 30 minutes now ... frankly: I wasted more time = money in searching for the forum than your product costs! I used google to find the forum, lol did not come to thje idea to search in the browsers history. Angelo |
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May 3, 2006, 11:20 AM
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Ben @ Parallels Parallels Team Join: Mar 2006 Posts: 56 |
Hi guys - I want to state that we are NEVER going to close the forum, and we will NEVER censor what you say! All we've done is remove some of the links in the main menu structure, so the forum can be a place where real Parallels users can discuss the product. Everyone who is a paying customer, a beta tester, or anyone working with an evaluation copy of any of our products will be provided with the forum address and can register and post on any of the topics/threads. We're going to evaluate how this new system works, and after a few weeks, we'll decide if its a good idea to re-link the forum from the main page. Thanks for your patience as we scale up support! __________________ Cheers, Ben @ Parallels |
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May 3, 2006, 11:31 AM
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drtimhill Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 85 |
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Now, can we all get on with testing this great product? --Tim |
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May 3, 2006, 12:27 PM
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Edd Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 89 |
It's a pretty brave move, and I agree with posts on both sides of the argument. I used the forums before downloading AND before pre-purchasing you product, but understood that there were some serious beta testers out there and tried not to add to the noise (maybe I'm failing there but I'm trying). However, you should send out an email to all registered users to let them know what was going on, especially only a week after the forums DID actually go down for 24-48 hours for 'feature teasting.' I personally only found your blog by accident and read the entry saying only the forum links are down not the forum itself. I don't have the luxury of going through my browser history, so google was the only way. Prevent confusion... send a blanket email out to all registered users stating the link and reason for the change, maybe then some of the above he-said she-said nonsense will stop. If a reason you didn't do this was to prevent off-topic posters from getting the info, then boot the users (politely) and then send the email. A little more professional than just removing the link and sitting back to see how quickly your user-base picked it up. |
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Jul 15, 2006, 01:43 AM
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lhlh Junior Member Join: Jul 2006 Posts: 4 |
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first, it took me 5 min to search and find this forum. not a good hiding place. second, when i could not find a forum on the main page, i thought they have bad support. and then my email went unanswered (still ), so it's over loaded bad support. after looking for someone who started a forum, and finding the official, I think you are hiding cause some bad comments which will not bring in new customers. don't worry. I will read through the forum, but it's not a good start. having the software today is not good enough reason for me to buy it. get me annoyed and i will be looking for a download. so when i heard about this software and was ready to put down the money (rare for me), playing cat and mouse is not a good start. now lets see what i find in the forum. |
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