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I think that the quality of Code Project is going down. There are a number of issues that need to be addressed but there is no way that I can click on a link and provide the CP staff with a problem (bug) report. CP also needs a bug report tracker that lets me know what's happening. Let's make CP more professional!
Chris may believe that ads are important. And to some extent I agree. But the large number of ads is disconcerting. Also when ads hide navigation I am even more concerned.
Gus Gustafson
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Let's use the Site Bugs & Suggestions link in the list on the left first. Then we can work on the other stuff. 
Will Rogers never met me.
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gggustafson wrote: Chris may believe that ads are important. And to some extent I agree. But the large number of ads is disconcerting. Also when ads hide navigation I am even more concerned.
So, you would be willing to pay a monthly installment to be here?
I could never complain about the existence of advertisements on a totally free site.
I would report if an advertisements is preventing navigating the site. I don't recall ever seeing that happen. I'm running Firefox 28.0. I wonder what browser you are running.
If you see the "Help" menu item above, then click on that and go to "Bugs and suggestions." If that menu is covered by an advertisement, go to http://www.codeproject.com/suggestions.aspx[^]
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It is not a totally free site to me. I hope that I have earned my "free subscription" by my articles and advice.
I am not complaining about ads. I am complaining about their number and their misplacement. What's worse is their inappropriateness. I am an experienced developer. I do not need products that help me develop trivial solutions. I believe that a large number of CP members are the same as me. If CP needs a subscription to eliminate ads from pages that I visit, I might even consider paying for it.
Gus Gustafson
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Bill_Hallahan wrote: So, you would be willing to pay a monthly installment to be here?
CP wouldn't exist without its users. CP's users provide content and answer questions. Remove the users and what do you have left?
/ravi
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote: Bill_Hallahan wrote: So, you would be willing to pay a monthly installment to be here?
CP wouldn't exist without its users. CP's users provide content and answer questions. Remove the users and what do you have left?
/ravi
ravi, the point was made in response to the OP writing:
Chris may believe that ads are important. And to some extent I agree. But the large number of ads is disconcerting.
I expect he did't considered the continuing costs of paying for high bandwidth from an ISP and server costs.
I consider conditions here to be more than equitable. The advertisements never bothered me. And, I hope the people who made this site make a good profit too from advertisers. I can see this took a lot of work.
The article quality varies. Open sites on the Internet are analogous to mining for gold. There's gold, but you have to sift through a lot of dirt to find it. Restricting access to the cognoscenti is neither possible, nor desirable. Good ideas come from all kinds of people with varied levels of expertise.
Sites that do restrict access often have an higher average quality of material, such as sites that publish academic papers, such as the ACM or the IEEE sites, but that comes at the cost of having fewer members and fewer ideas, and also requires a financial price. There are a huge number of practical ideas here that never reach those types of sites.
modified 17-Apr-14 21:15pm.
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The ads don't bother me, either. Sadly, I don't find them useful (appropriate) and have rarely clicked on one. 
/ravi
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Hey Gus,
If you see something that's broken please do let us know about it. Each of us, Chris, Sean, Matthew, Kamil and I, and the whole team, really want to know as soon as possible.
I remember a few years ago talking to Chris about 3rd party monitoring services to watch the site and he smiled and said that he would be surprised if an alert came in before he got an email from a member. (fyi we actually have 3 external services and at least 2 internal ones). So please, best is bugs & suggestions which you can see we're very active in:
http://www.codeproject.com/suggestions.aspx[^]
or if you think the site is *really* broken, an email to webmaster@codeproject.com will do the trick.
I do have to say that I'm exceedingly unhappy you feel the quality of the site is going down. We have been working like bandits on new and better features, adding full Git support to articles and allowing them to become full projects along with an amazing developer focused collaborative task management system, and most recently a documentation wiki system for projects.
https://workspaces.codeproject.com[^]
As for advertising, well that's a tricky balance. I can tell you that minimalist is our general approach, but to be useful the ads have to be effective too, and we try incredibly hard to make them relevant and on-topic as well.
Anyway, please do let us know when something is broken, and please understand there are no nefarious intentions. We want to offer an excellent and valuable site to you. Let us know how we can do that better.
David
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David Cunningham wrote: I do have to say that I'm exceedingly unhappy you feel the quality of the site is going down. We have been working like bandits on new and better features, adding full Git support to articles and allowing them to become full projects along with an amazing developer focused collaborative task management system, and most recently a documentation wiki system for projects.
i think hes referring to the quality of the articles appearing rather that CP itself. And if thats the case i'd agree and i reckon that part of the issue is that CP is casting it's net too wide (my opinion)
Bryce
MCAD
---
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bryce wrote: i reckon that part of the issue is that CP is casting it's net too wide
In what way? Do you mean: accepting a lesser quality than we should, or accepting articles on article we shouldn't?
I built CodeProject to help me and my fellow addicts programmers share and learn, and as I grow and avoid maturing my journey's taken me way, way off the path I initially set out upon. We've gone from MFC and C++ to ASP, C#, VB, Java and will continue on with node, Ruby, Objective-C, Go, F# and whatever else a dev needs to know to get their job done.
At a quick count I'm dealing with 10 languages or sub-languages across 4 major operating systems day in, day out, and I'm not as knee deep in this as I used to be. That's actually scary (the number of languages, not that I'm not as knee-deep. I know you count that as a blessing)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris, don't be so touchy. You did the programming community a significant service. We have all benefitted from your hard work.
I suggested that a current CP project was going to produce less-than-desired results. You didn't listen and unfortunately my prediction has been borne out by the quality of the submissions.
My view is that CP is a great site. It does what its founder wanted it to do. But CP is taking off in a strange direction. Maybe you can rein it in.
Anyway, thanks for the site.
Gus Gustafson
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Not being touchy Gus, I'm trying to understand what Ads are blocking your navigation. [Edit: and I'm getting crossed wires here! You responded to my response from Brycey, and I'd like to hear his thoughts since I think his concerns are different from yours]
With regards to the "Current CP Project" do you mean the HTML contest or The Guild?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I had a similar experience whenI went to Waterfox 28.0, where ads begun showing up everywhere, and I mean even in my own web site. Apparently a new extension was added (do not recall full name but it had to do with ads). Removed it and issue went away. Next day, issue is back and so is the extension. Finally was able to return to sanity by turning "Update Add-ons automatically" off and removing the extension.
And I mean everywhere, I (and my users) got popups in input fields!
I wonder if this is what is happening to CP dotheads??
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gggustafson wrote: Chris, don't be so touchy
Neither Chris, nor his response to you, is touchy. That was an insulting statement.
modified 18-Apr-14 15:05pm.
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I'm inclined to disagree about CP casting its net too wide. There are so many technologies out there just in the Microsoft world, that it's next to impossible to even be aware of them all, let alone be knowledgeable about them. I have come to CP both for 101 level information on technologies and for help when I'm having difficulty with some obscure feature of a technology. I'd hate to live with just MSDN as a source of information.
Yes, some articles aren't very well written, but perhaps it's the author's first attempt at writing an article for an audience larger than their coworkers. When I read an article, I also read the comments and I pay attention to the ratings when I search for info on a topic. I have seen people post constructive criticism in the comments and I encourage others to do so.
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David, I do not suggest some nefarious purpose. Just mis-guided.
Let's look at the two pages to which you referred me. In both cases, I enter the pages with a fixed format using IE9 Win7.
Bugs and Suggestions
The first thing I notice is that two collections are displayed: Bugs and Suggestions and The current TODO list. I believe that these two collections should appear on two distinct pages. Note too that at the bottom of Bugs and Suggestions there is the familiar CP page navigation controls for the other pages in Bugs and Suggestions. But following that is a line of inappropriate classification choices, a line of flags, and a line of instructions. What are they for?
I notice is that I cannot collapse items that have sub items under them. It appears that someone "sliced and diced" the format of the Lounge. This causes a problem displaying the whole page. Especially The current TODO list.
When I go down to The current TODO list, at the bottom I see "Displaying 26 tasks out of 39". There is no familiar CP page navigation control to let me view the other 13 tasks. Adding "You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate" is hardly useful.
I suggest a redesign of the Bugs and Suggestions page that removes these concerns.
Workspaces
On the Workspaces page I find "Connect to GitMachine using your favourite [sic] Git client (XCode, Visual Studio 2013, EGit for Eclipse) and upload your code or clone from a remote repository." I don't use VS 2013. Are you limiting Workspaces to CP members who use VS 2013? I use VS 2008 because it does exactly what I need without bloat.
But I guess that my real question is "Why Workspaces at all?" What unfulfilled need of the CP membership is satisfied by this dubious feature? All I want to do is to click on the Download buttons found in an article.
Gus Gustafson
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gggustafson wrote: I believe that these two collections should appear on two distinct pages
They do. Tasks is on http://www.codeproject.com/tasks.aspx[^] but I slipped Tasks at the bottom of Bugs and Suggestions for purely selfish reasons: it's easier to but and paste between the Bugs and Suggestions discussions and the actual TODO list)
gggustafson wrote: notice is that I cannot collapse items that have sub items under them
In Tasks or the Bugs and suggestions page? The Tasks hierarchy is definitely collapsible. What browser are you using?
gggustafson wrote: When I go down to The current TODO list, at the bottom I see "Displaying 26 tasks out of 39".
The Filter control at the top of Tasks opens this up. Keyboard shortcuts are extremely valuable for some of us, but I understand they aren't for everyone.
gggustafson wrote: I use VS 2008
Try this Git Source Control Provider[^] for VS 2008. There's lots of options for everyone.
As to the Why please see
An Introduction to Workspaces::Git for Windows users[^] and An Introduction to Workspaces::Tasks[^]
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I slipped Tasks at the bottom of Bugs and Suggestions for purely selfish reasons: it's easier to
but [sic] and paste between the Bugs and Suggestions discussions and the actual TODO list.
I think that you have admitted to messing up the web page. Please undo it. That you would do it for personal reasons is immature and unprofessional!
In Tasks or the Bugs and suggestions page? The Tasks hierarchy is definitely collapsible. What
browser are you using?
Please read what I said. IE9 on Win7 in fixed format. And my collapsing issue was with Bugs and Suggestions.
I will look at Git.
Gus Gustafson
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gggustafson wrote: That you would do it for personal reasons is immature and unprofessional!
Seriously? You think that this is a mature response from you? Insulting Chris. If you want to set a site that does exactly what you want, then start one yourself. I think that Chris is allowed a personal indulgence here considering how much work he's done for the community.
modified 17-Apr-14 16:34pm.
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Too bad you didn;t read my earlier response to Chris.
Gus Gustafson
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gggustafson wrote: But I guess that my real question is "Why Workspaces at all?" What unfulfilled need of the CP membership is satisfied by this dubious feature?
Collaboration, I find it brilliant.
I've been working on and off on a project that's simply to big for me. As soon as I have a functional embryo I will let other people in on it and add functionality to the article/project.
gggustafson wrote: All I want to do is to click on the Download buttons found in an article.
You can still do that, cant you?
It's added functionality without any of the old functionality removed. Right?
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gggustafson wrote: Are you limiting Workspaces to CP members who use VS 2013?
I am using GitHub and VS2012. I have not seen GitHub UI yet. I just use shell to do it for me. Works fine. Although, I have not tried VS2008 yet. You may want to give it a try.
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so these arent things that should go in the bug/sugs forum? Seems like it to me.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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David Cunningham wrote: Let us know how we can do that better.
Clickety[^] Please, pretty please. 
/ravi
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