Hi everyone, Rosemary recently pinned some questions on the Claris Community site, asking developers to provide their feedback: Claris Community (English)
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It may help if they have people read various forums and follow up on issues.
Like if someone writes in one of the forums about FileMaker 2023 not doing well, they should contact the author to get details and figure out why it performs bad in the wild.
That user may never get to the Claris community and never report an issue there. They may just decide that FM 2023 is not good and keep their old version and then of course not upgrade their license as they just keep the old version...
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I would rather discuss these things here since reading threads in Claris' community is quite inconvenient (lack of scroll function).
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Agreed, fmsoup is a real, standards-based, website.
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I understand the compulsion to say "I would rather X"... because "Y".
At the same time, if we want our feedback to have its intended weight and for it to get eyeballs (both from Claris and from other developers who can reply and enrich the discussion and the overal feedback in its quantity and diversity), then I think there are times where we need to think to ourselves, being part of a community, is this exercise more efficient if the community rallies and things get centralized and what happens if we each go our "I would rather" way.
Claris cannot please all of us individually, some would prefer a survey that would preserve their anonymity, some would prefer being asked in another language, etc.
I understand and respect all that. I won't stop people who would choose to discuss this elsewhere, as long as they understand that in this context side discussions may not have the same impact as what they may have if they had taken place where we got an invitation to rally.
I know that in political systems some people choose not to vote and they consider that a statement, a voice equally strong as the ones of people who do vote. I happen to not be someone who thinks like that.
We can all have legitimate concerns about the topic of feedback when it comes to Claris (see Does Claris ever listen developer feedback?).
As it stands, when we get this type of invite, if we all choose to go our own way, I think we become part of the problem, not the solution.
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Feel free to start your discussion here if that is where you feel most comfortable.
I have been onto the community forum and the thread there is well worth reading.
I will tag @RosemaryTietge now so that she knows that there may be some side chatter here.
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If memory serves me well, the soup came to existence because Claris made an unfortunate technical choice in their community platform and would't have listened to their community members.
We here at the soup offered a solution (thank you @Cecile!). Naming it a problem now that Claris actively seeks input from their customers in their forum is a far stretch.
It is great that Claris changed course. Only, after witnessing a full decade of intransigent closed-ears culture I am prudent about the outcome.
I am observing and see that Claris already got a lot of good and substantial feedback right now. If they take things into account there's already a packet of work for them.
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Maybe I was faster than Rosemary in sharing this and maybe she would have shared it if I had not already. Now we will never know. You read intent where there may not be one and draw your own conclusions from something that may amount to coincidence (even if I am sure past experiences are factored in). Maybe my own choice of wording was poor and prompted you to answer this way.
You may not feel that you got an invitation because you heard that relayed by me instead of relayed by Claris staff. I'm sorry if I robbed you of that opportunity. Some others may still see an invitation in this. Where you say you wish you got something coming "more directly" from Claris. Some other may have other preferences as I said previously (where to have those discussions, the format, the language, etc.). Impossible to please everyone as I already stated. We live in the era of social networks and information travels faster and wider as it is relayed by the members of the network than if a single source was attempting to reach every corner of the global community establishing a direct channel for each. Perhaps some would push things all the way to say they did not get an invite because they did not get a dm or it did not land in their inbox. Everyone will trace that line somewhere else and I cannot change that.
Please do not shoot the messenger.
What I do, I do in believing it is best for the benefit of the larger community we are ALL part of.
If you choose to opt out of other communication channels that is up to you. It does not mean other people should think like you do.
I am honestly very surprised to see what you wrote, more so from someone holding your chair. It screams to me something not unlike "my way or no way", not values that FM Soup promotes.
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If at all possible, I'd appreciate responses directly in the threads on Claris Community. I do my best to keep up with all the places our community gathers, but most Claris team members cannot do that. And those threads are being monitored by many people from Claris.
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Please elaborate.
I'll do so in a board meeting if you invite me. I don't believe we should extend that portion of the discussion here.
I appreciate your request, but it isn't something that Claris can do right now.
The Claris team is small. At this moment, we do not have enough people to actively monitor all the places developers discuss Claris products. For product issues like slow performance or other bugs, the ONLY ways to be sure Claris sees and investigates issues is to report directly to Claris either via Report a product issue topic on Claris Community or contacting Claris customer support in your region.
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@Bobino Yes--you were faster than me on this. Thank you for bringing to to TheSoup's attention.
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Thank you for sharing! I bailed on Claris forums when they blew them up a while back, but it's good to see they're working on making themselves accessible there. I appreciate everything the soup does, but I might check out the actual Claris forums again. In the ideal world it would probably make more sense to have discussions there if their forums are working again.
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@JasonMark The feedback asked for is centered around 3 questions. If/how that translates for everyone in where they may engage in discussions, that really is a question of personal preference. I tend to think the ideal world does not exist, but we can each, in our own way, attempt to make the one we have a little better. Our respective attempts may not always be in harmony, and that is why when we discuss those issues, we need to keep discussions healthy to avoid our world, imperfect as it may be, being torn down.
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IDK what this means. I was just trying say thank you for posting this because I gave up on Claris forums and didn't realize they actually looked at them or that they worked again. IDK what the 3 questions or the harmony is, I'm just glad that someone at Claris seems to care. I also appreciate that @RosemaryTietge posted where to submit bug reports. I asked on the Soup about that last month and the answers I got were basically "wait and hope that Claris finds it on their own" so for me this thread is a huge win, since there's an annoying bug that showed up last version.
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@JasonMark Sorry for any confusion.
The 3 questions are the post titles for the pinned post at the top of the page I shared a link to at the top of this thread.
I was simply trying to avoid this topic getting diverted again onto something where people start sharing their own comparisons between the 2 forums.
I myself was and am confused when you mention that Claris forums are "working again". Claris shifted from one service provider and that was a rough transition for many of us, but as far as I recall, they always had something up and running.
I'm sorry that you got something misleading about where to submit bug reports. I tried scanning your past activity here on fmsoup to see where this took place, but it seems it must have been within a discussion and not a standalone discussion you started under the "Questions" topic, making it harder for me to find where it happened. If you can DM me a link to where this took place, I think there is value for that information to also be updated in that thread to avoid misleading others as well.
cool yeah there was a time where I couldn't log in to claris forums, or maybe it logged me out every time I went to a new page or something like that and search wasn't working and all google links went to dead pages and I basically gave up and found FMSoup and hadn't gone back since.
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I think I just asked a crappy question. Here's the thread. I'll post the answer there:
The FileMaker community at large consists of different forums and conferences, and all have their raison d’être. They cater for different needs of their respective members like scope of interest, scope of business, language and culture (list not exhaustive).
It takes people to keep in touch with members of the community at large. It is an effort - and a choice.
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