I’m quite skeptical about the CAPTCHA test. It turns me off to the product. I know the response to that is typically “It goes away after 25 posts, newbie!”
But the primary issue is not that it’s inconvenient to me (which it is also). The primary issues is that I think if I wasn’t a technical-type, I’d give up resolving any product issues I came here for community help resolving, and ultimately on the product, rather than post here. The point at which I experienced it is the exact moment I went to have a second look for other products.
The “goes away after 25 posts” is fine for people who are here frequently. And those are the people whose voice will most frequently be heard. So I’d like to ask those people (you) to not accept it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind non-issue.
The market is starting to become saturated with products like VeraLite. The one that succeeds will be the one that draws in the new users, rather than pushes them away. The one an owner vouches for, for that specific product, while showing a friend a nifty voice-controlled scene.
Because of that, my issue (more than personal inconvenience) is mainly concern about investing effort into a product where the philosophy is “we grew the number to 25 posts over time, because we found that’s what removed our need for revoking spam accounts”. Of course, seeing a 24-hour wait for moderator approval on top of that was personally frustrating.
All told, it gives the wrong product support impression, in my opinion. I think increasing the impedance between new members and community help is bad karma for the product.
It’s not 25 posts, but a mere 5 posts and there are very good reason for it. The forums used to be spammed an awful lot. Honestly, though, I’ve never based my decision to buy a product or not on the CAPTCHA on their user forums. I too found it a bit excessive, but I would rather have to deal with a few CAPTCHAs than the forums be completely overrun with spam to the point it makes it unusable.
That said, yes, there are other products in the market now. Most offer a lot more than the Vera in terms of radios. Some match it in the plugins area (the ability to create). However, I think you’ll find that by far most of the new offerings out there pale in comparison for one reason or another. It could be price, extend-ability, or the fact that the Vera keeps it’s logic locally instead of in the “cloud”.
For now, IMHO, Vera is still the best out there, but they are likely to lose that lead pretty soon. Until then though, I’ll keep my vera and be happy with what I consider the best all around controller on the market right now.
Well, you probably spent as much time writing your little rant as it would have taken to fill out 25 captchas. Also, this is a community forum and not run by MCV. People give generously of their time to help everyone with questions and issues. If you can’t handle a little temporary inconvenience, then maybe you should take your business elsewhere.
The captcha is to reduce spam. It’s not to penalize new members. It has kept this forum clean of it and I vote for it to stay. I’d rather have a clean community to come to if it meant some little work from new members.
Garrettwp, yes, I agree. But I know other companies have clean support password-protected forums without it. You, as an experienced member, are exactly the audience I was appealing to. I know it helps you today to have this impedance for new members in-place. But if the product doesn’t succeed it probably also results in a loss of your time. I think “CAPTCHA vs. SPAM” is a false dilemma. One example of an alternate solution could be verifying product ownership instead, with for example a Vera product account.
Aldera, is the aggression really necessary? If you’ll notice, I was specifically stating my concern for the product, not my convenience. I’m quite aware that my post took my time; even more time to make sure that it was clear that my intent was to be polite, and not a “rant”. That’s the very reason you should consider that I did it for the benefit of the product. It certainly would never be addressed in time to help me personally. Also, you did not personally demonstrate the community generosity you mentioned with that reply.
Thanks for the neutral feedback, SirMeili. I read a post (seemingly from a moderator) from a while back that said it was 25, so, my apologies for misunderstanding. I understand that you wouldn’t make a decision based on a CAPTCHA. But I bet you would make a decision based on your perception of product support.
Forcing product ownership will not work. We have many members who come here to ask questions during their research of Vera before buying. If it ain’t broke, why fix it!
My suggestion is that it actually is subtly broke, per my comments about product support, or the appearance of such, via investment from MCV. Since obviously we don’t have evidence regarding loss/gain of market share resulting from the CAPTCHA, we can’t know. But I did say it was just my opinion, right?
And I didn’t mean to suggest forcing product ownership, my example was that proving ownership (such as by having a Vera product account set up) could simply disable the CAPTCHA for that account. What better answer to give regarding the CAPTCHA! “It goes away when you buy the product!”
That isn’t even really the point. I meant to give one possible solution to point out the false dilemma of CAPTCHA vs. SPAM. The overall point was that other companies have clean support boards without CAPTCHAs.
Yeah, totally agree Nick. 5 posts is much easier to stomach than the 25 I understood it was at one point. I would have liked it if I was told that it would go away in such a short time.
I understand that some people don’t get turned off by it, but I did, and you did, and I’ve seen similar post by others. So I assume there are some people who see it and decide not to proceed, and I assume that’s bad for the product. But I didn’t mean to start an unproductive argument about it.
[quote=“shannon, post:9, topic:184431”]Yeah, totally agree Nick. 5 posts is much easier to stomach than the 25 I understood it was at one point. I would have liked it if I was told that it would go away in such a short time.
I understand that some people don’t get turned off by it, but I did, and you did, and I’ve seen similar post by others. So I assume there are some people who see it and decide not to proceed, and I assume that’s bad for the product. But I didn’t mean to start an unproductive argument about it.[/quote]
I would feel completely different if this was a forum that had a major presence by MCV, but it’s not. This was set up for users to help users (or to just talk). For support reasons, there are alternate ways to contact MCV that are much more efficient.
For that reason, I got over the CAPTCHA requirement pretty quick. Granted, I understand that there is nothing to tell a new person that this is merely a User based Forum with no interaction (for the most part) from MCV. Perhaps that should be laid out more clearly.
Are the mods MCV? I wasn’t surprised to hear that the forum is for users to interact, but I would be surprised to hear a site bearing the mfg’s root domain name requires end user administration.
That is not uncommon for some user based interaction sites. I do believe that MCV moderates these forums, but because of the CAPTCHA they have to have a far less hands on approach to it. Less spam requires a lot less moderation.
alden u r rite.
especially the captcha the word is hardly to read.
I can understand why this forum has so many questions before u can post, its to prevent spam.
but there’s a part of question for asking about largest mammal [answers is whale] why cant give multiple choice instead.
I hope this forum be more user friendly n rooms for improvement if possible.
thanks.
The reason this is not clearly laid out at the onset is most likely to make it hard for potential spammers to find out they can just post 5 posts and after that they can flood the forums at will. Which I prefer not to happen.
Was it an irritant to me for my first 5 posts? Yes. Did I get over it? Yes, right after posts 5. Look at the silver lining though for the new members posting to complain about the CAPTCHA. Only 5 complaint posts and that CAPTCHA magically disappears. How about that for gratification?
I think I mentioned a couple times, I didn’t post for my own personal gratification. Unless you count the fact that I don’t want to invest my time in a soon-dying product.
I personally think Z-Wave is the strongest consumer solution currently, and MCV is where it’s at for that. However, competition is heating up, and it will require a product that doesn’t turn off new users, one that entices them, to stay relevant when Google starts making public consumer promises about Thread.
you have your valid point as a user of veralite product & the administrator also has their good reasons to safeguard their forum.
every comments or feedbacks from whichever parties should treat it as positively mindset in order to improve further.
my suggestion
user of veralite product
user can register using their product serial number togather with their email address in the forum registration page.
so when user post their thread, it can wavie off those captcha & those questions.
because they are consumer of veralite products n not spammers.
Well I can tell you from experience that we had tonsof SPAM when the CAPTCHA was turned off a while back. And everyone complaining about it is already past the 5 post minimum now. I guarantee you’ll forget all about it once you’ve used the forums for a bit longer.
I too, am a tech-minded person, and new to the forums… my 2c: It’s not a big deal to me, and the benefit of having a cleaner forum is worth the minimal inconvenience.
(And this is my second post, so only 3 more to go… what else can I comment on today?)
P.S. The capcha word stays the same when I clicked on “Request another image”… so I was able to look at it 3 different ways to confirm I was seeing the correct letters.
Captcha ok, but the inability to directly post a question on the forums, due to the “moderator approval”?! Sorry but new users should not have to wait to ask questions or to participate…
