FWIW I do not believe the member expected no minor glitches. I know that I didn't and still don't. Everything you say, of course, is correct. No argument. I did not intend to convey that anyone expected zero defects. Jim Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director ARRL Great Lakes Division 5065 Bethany Rd. Mason, OH 45040; Tel. 513-459-1661 ARRL, The national organization for AMATEUR RADIO -----Original Message----- From: Brian Mileshosky [mailto:n5zgt@swcp.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 7:30 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:18886] Re: Comment from Member Jim -- The announcements that raised a lot of excitement and anxiety then lack of delivery due to problems was unfortunate, but that's water under the bridge. It's time to let it go. As for bugs being found now, that's reality. Those who have designed and deployed a major website with ZERO issues are truly awesome -- because those people don't exist or, if they do, their total population can probably be counted on a hand. The other 99.9% of those who undertake such projects expect and find bugs when they do their initial testing, be it software, hardware, or both. That's reality, and it's time to accept it. Then, once deployed to thousands upon thousands of eager users, more bugs are discovered because a handful of employees cannot possibly find what thousands and thousands of people will...unless months are spent by the employees testing and trying to break the site (on top of the other full-time day job those employees are expected to do). Sometimes the best information on a product that's deployed comes from field returns. Prototyping, pre-production and production testing only yields so much information. Once you get it into the field for users to use, abuse, and subject to various environments, more vulnerabilities and problems are discovered that the engineer didn't find or think to test for originally. I'm sure you are familiar with this sort of reality, even from a huge place like P&G. This is the phase our website is now in. I'm not trying to excuse what's happened thus far, but I am trying to inject some reality that people tend to forget or have a hard time accepting. Let's move on, enjoy the great site we now have, and encourage our members to enjoy it as well. 73, Brian N5ZGT ARRL Director, Rocky Mountain Division On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Jim Weaver K8JE wrote:
FYI, the following gratuitous comment was made by a member and long-time very faithful ARRL Field volunteer. FWIW:
"Most of us who are IT professionals would never put a new site on line untill it was throughly tested and debugged on a serpeate server and after blessing by the head geek, cut it over to the network. ( That includes those of us who are retired too). I wonder what happened."
That which works on the new site is great. Now if we could only keep others as well as the Board from finding out that which is not working. I do not refer to minor glitches.
Jim
Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director ARRL Great Lakes Division 5065 Bethany Rd. Mason, OH 45040; Tel. 513-459-1661 ARRL, The national organization for AMATEUR RADIO
ARRL Director, Rocky Mountain Division On the web at www.RockyMountainDivision.org No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.801 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2811 - Release Date: 04/14/10 11:31:00