Key Publishing Forums: refugees welcome here

overscan (PaulMM)

overscan (PaulMM)

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So, I rarely visit the Key Publishing forums (https://www.key.aero/forum) despite being a member for almost 20 years, but they've just done a major upgrade to their site and migrated the forum to Drupal, a content management system used for the whole of their new website and boy is it bad. The forum is basically unsearchable at present and the interface is just appalling. Its missing fairly vital features.

If you are a refugee from Key, please note that the "Aerospace" forum is the best place to discuss aircraft of all eras that got built. I am open to creating new sections if needed.
 
I've was a member there since the last 15 or so years as well. Left a couple of months ago because they literally refused to invest any time or resources moderating the darn place or ensuring there was some modicum of adherence to topic and following the forum guidelines. Glad I left before they did this horrendous switch.....
 
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Yes, their new social manager guy is keen to fix the problems, but it was very badly done. They needed a more viable product BEFORE migrating to avoid the kind of messy backlash they are encountering now. Getting some forum members to test drive it would have been an idea. Drupal, the system they are using, can be configured with plugins for private messages and other missing features, they just didn't do it yet.
 
A stunning example of how not to carry out an upgrade. We should be so grateful that Paul did a far more professional job on the recent move here. Thanks man :)
 
…… and if you look at their forum Code of Conduct it says it was last updated 49 years and 9 months ago. Wow, decades before the internet was established, that's some achievement :D
 
Schneiderman said:
…… and if you look at their forum Code of Conduct it says it was last updated 49 years and 9 months ago. Wow, decades before the internet was established, that's some achievement :D
Click to expand...

Thats Jan 1 1970, the default date for all UNIX-based operating systems.
 
Using a content management system to run a forum is novel. You could do it, but it's not what I'd advise. If you have your business critical stuff on there, you really want to keep the hoi polloi as far away from it as possible. Ideally on a completely unconnected server.
 
What they are doing is uploading magazine content into paid articles, so I imagine the idea is people search for "P1121", and get both forum posts and paid article content in the results, driving people to subscribe to their paid content.
 
Ah, one of those things that sounds like a good idea.
 
It all started here for me in 2005-2006... and stopped shortly thereafter. I found the whatif modelers forum that then led me here, also nasaspaceflight.com in 2008... and I've never come back.

Key publishing is to aviation forums what AH.com is to alt history: repetitive. Too big. In the sense it is so huge and old, it often has the same question repeated two or three years apart by newbies, over and over. And on top of that, if you dig an old thread, you are accused of "necro" and can be banned. On AH.com it really has taken absurd proportions.
 
bring_it_on said:
I've was a member there since the last 15 or so years as well. Left a couple of months ago because they literally refused to invest any time or resources moderating the darn place
Click to expand...

Maybe booting out, without warning, explanation, or thanks one of their long-serving moderators didn't help. But that's what you get at Key for being associated with a well-know aviation historian :)

Moggy
 
Yes... I had bailed from Key by late 2013 due to being on too many forums... and Key was the one that was less-useful to what I was doing then.

I do miss Moggy, as well as a few others - but not many others.
Moggy helped keep Key as close to bearable as it was.
 

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