broken forum links!!

[Alvaro Sanchez]

I find it quite frustrating that once I try to follow a link from a recent posting (say 2010).. the link does not work at all.



Is someone within REIN IT looking at fixing the broken links from previous postings?

 

[REINteam]

Hi Alvaro,



I have to apologize for the inconvenience as I know running into broken links can be incredibly frustrating. We are in the process of repairing all links from the previous version of the forum so that they will direct to the right places.



This is a large undertaking and does take some time to fix each and every one, but we are working diligently to get them fixed as fast as possible. The majority have been rectified since moving over to the new version of the forum, but there are a number that still remain.



If there is a specific link that you are trying to access that is coming up as broken, would you mind sending a quick e-mail with a link to the post that contains the broken link to [email protected] and we will try to address it right away. If you have any more questions, feel free to post them here or send us an e-mail at any time.

 

[Alvaro Sanchez]

Thanks for you reply Madison... but seriously some dropped the ball doing the forum migration. Yet, I do not see why would that be a large undertaking or time consuming...I have personally done migrations in my field (databases, forums, content management systems ,etc) and it only takes minutes... unless of course you are trying to do them manually!



If you are doing them manually, I would suggest to select a section of the forum and do all the postings at once instead of asking the end user to identify and send each broken link by email which could take months to fix all the links (not very realistic and disappointed again with your suggestion) .



Perhaps, you should escalate this issue to upper management so that they
can get some resources to get the links fixed in a week or two (MAX)
instead of ignoring the problem and allow more users get frustrated as
well.



I am a mail-in member and having the forum is one of the MAIN methods for me to interact and learn from others. If most of the postings are broken then what is the value of the forum? (half-content missing). I hope you get my point as I am paying good money for a service which I am not getting at the moment.

 

[REINteam]

Hi Alvaro,



Thanks for your suggestions regarding the broken forum links. We recognize that many of our Members rely on the forum to stay connected and get answers to questions, and that it is a significant benefit of REIN membership, so it may be reassuring to you that in our weekly customer service and support meetings, the myREINspace improvement project is always our first topic.



You have accurately anticipated many of the steps we are currently taking to repair them, and your posts are very timely in light of the project we have undertaken here to improve the forum.



As you suggested, we have hired a consultant to assist us with the repair project, and are dedicating staff time as well. We are in fact repairing the links manually, and last week we had a number of staff here locate and submit thousands of forum links to our IT implementation group for repair ` resulting in a significant decrease in the overall number of broken links. As Google continues to crawl the forum site over the coming days, we will get a much more accurate read on the number of broken links that still remain. Our goal is to get to zero broken links.



We also realize that there are some other usability issues related to the forum, and so we continue to work on improving and redesigning the user experience. We wish we could do this all at once, but the reality is that we can only make incremental changes and so the improvements, both the obvious ones, and the subtler ones, will happen gradually over time.



The objective is to make the forum easier to understand and use, more engaging for the community, faster, and a more valuable investor support tool.



Thanks again for your suggestions, and for your patience as we work through the improvement project.

 

[Alvaro Sanchez]

Thanks for looking into it and hope it gets resolve soon...