What the heck is this forum for?

Hi all

I have been contributing for years to DxO Forum (singular) and happened to learn about DxO Forums (plural) only recently. I never got an official notification from DxO about the creation of this new forum and its purpose.
With its minimalist layout (no date, no quote, no preview) it doesn’t improve on the old one, it’s going backward. The usability of DxO Forum is much better than that of DxO Forums.
People told me that the difference is that you actually get answers from DxO staff on the latter whereas on the former it’s like tossing a bottle into the sea. It’s just users chatting together. It’s nice but as far as requests are concerned you can forget about it.

The question has probably been asked: what the heck there are two forums? Do you really take into account users’ requests and do you plan to implement at least the most basic ones? Or do you still feel you know better what’s best for us?

My experience with DxO has been a mixed bag. The soft great in spite of its shortcomings but the communication with the company is just under par.

Nick

Hi,

I guess you spoke a little bit too fast :

  • no date : top right corner of the message - just hover with the mouse.
  • no quote : just select the text in the message that you want to quote.
  • no preview : just look at the right of the message window in which you are currently typing.

The old forum is doomed to disappear. But I agree, there’s a lack of communication about this.

Yes you can quote responses, as I have done, by first selecting the text and clicking on the quote button that appears. It is a little quirky and you have to select the text carefully. There is also a preview window which appears to the right of the edit box. Perhaps yours is hidden. Look for a control to un-hide it. You can also create posts for new user requests and people can then add their vote to them in the “Which Features Do You Need” section.

https://forum.dxo.com/c/dxo-photolab
https://forum.dxo.com/c/dxo-photolab/feature-requests

The old forum is hardly used anymore and I guessing it will eventually be closed or archived in some way. Admittedly, this new forum is designed differently than most others I’m on and is therefore sometimes a bit confusing to navigate. However, I’m getting used to it.

Mark

[quote=“Pat91, post:2, topic:3603”]
no date : top right corner of the message - just hover with the mouse.
no quote : just select the text in the message that you want to quote.
no preview : just look at the right of the message window in which you are currently typing.[/quote]
OK. Got it.
You know the adage: “Why make things simple when you can make them complicated” and I would add: “Why make things as usual when you can make them odd.”
Once you got the tip it’s fairly simple.

So, if I get the message straight, DxO decided to shift the forum to another platform and therefore created a new one from scratch, didn’t notify the users of the old one (anyway I never got any notification from it) and just lets the latter go down the drain. It’s the first time I see that policy. But is it a policy or is just a sign of a complete disorder?
Nick

Edit: I need one more tip: how to make multiple quotes? The way I usually do them doesn’t work here.

Correct. Although I certainly saw one or two posts about this in non related threads but there was no official announcement.

Just repeat the select | click Quote button operation. Fairly simple and logical.

Communication and DxO have always been alien to each other. It’s pathetic. Even more so for a company in receivership.

Right… but not intuitive at all and undocumented. And how come that whereas I used the same syntax as it does it didn’t work?
Over the years I have contributed to dozens of forums. This the first one where I need to ask how basic functions work.
Nick

I agree that navigating a forum in this format is more difficult than most others I’ve been on, and it is not terribly intuitive. But once we learn all the ins and outs of using it it will probably meet our needs.

Good morning @saint-112,

Yep, that’s true, there wasn’t any notification sent to the old Forum users but it’s planned to be done before the old forum is archived. And this one seems difficult only from the beginning but I’m sure you will like it as it allows a lot more functionality than the old one (attaching images, logs, gifs and other files, setting different notifications and preferences in the personal account, voting system etc).

The two forums exist only for the time of transferring the users from one forum to another. And yes, we are taking the users’ requests into account (you have a Suggestion/feedback section here where you can post yours and vote for the other suggestions). And it’s actually not true, that we always feel we know better what is necessary for you - as an example - we implemented the Local Corrections because it was the TOP requested feature on the Forum.

Anyway I hope you will get used to this forum and we will have constructive discussions :wink:

Regards,
Svetlana G.

It’s not more difficult per se, it’s different and undocumented. Everyday we have to cope with new stuff that introduce a different approach to basic stuff so you need to re-learn trivias you couldn’t care less about.
By the same token, I bought my first Mac in 1987. During about 15 years in the Finder you would create a new folder by typing Cmd + N. Then, with the introduction of OSX early 2000’s you had to type Cmd + Alt + N. More than 15 years later I still make mistakes. It’s like the H grid for stick-shift gear-boxes. It may not be logical but you are used to it.
Moreover I had discovered that I had been kept in the dark for more than a year about the existence of a new forum and that the one I had been contributing to for years was going down the drain. I had to sign in for new account as if I was a newbie. Therefore I was not in the most enthusiastic mood to start with. And on top of that the user interface is minimalist and obscure.
Nick

No kidding?
Dxo has always been at odds with the basics of communication but this one sets a record.
Nick

Do not take so literally :wink: , it only means that the old forum is still alive and the users switch to the new Forum bit by bit.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

Well… it’s according to what I witnessed and to what you said yourself, which seem to be consistent. It’s a completely erratic communication policy, if it can be called a policy.
I am retired. During my active years I was doing consulting, development, training, etc. I studied scores of companies at the very core. In many cases I was wondering how they could possibly survive so desorganized they were. Some eventually went bankrupt. OTOH, many had a very sound way of operating.
From that experience, when I see such careless policy I try to imagine what flawed procedures gave birth to it. My imagination is always superseded by reality.
No wonder DxO is in receivership.
Nick

Actually, we’ve changed the approaches and I hope you will change your mind with the time.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

2 Likes

And what are the forseable purposes? Because from my standpoint it’s getting worse and the more you say the more I wonder what world you are living in. May I urge you to get real. The real world doesn’t work the way you obviously think.
When I tested DOP some years ago I was immediately enthused in spite of some shortcomings that were normal for a soft in the making. In the forums I subscribe to I always promoted it when people asked questions about RAW converters. Since some time I feel much less enthusiast and I tell people that the future of the company is at stake and that the addition of the NIK collection is great but many of the simple and easy to fix shortcomings are still not addressed and it doesn’t seem they are in the pipe. And anyway there is practically no communication between the users and the company.
Bottom line: you lost an active evangelist.
Nick

Being an idiot I have one more question: how to get a notification when there is a reply? I tried the options that seemed relevant: Watching and Tracking, to no avail. As a matter of fact it’s the same thing with the old forum.
I probably missed something.

You can set it like this or change it to your taste to be notified:

No, it is definitely getting better. You see it alone at this thread, where a DxO employee has responded you four times, although you are speaking in a rude fashion. In the past view weeks, there were several responses from Svetlana and Marie, some responses directly from developers, and even a response from a product owner concerning the future development of NIK. It is possible to create voteable feature requests now, which will be taken into account according to DxO. I see these as really good steps to improve public relations.

There are some undefined things like:

  1. Why is the old forum not closed?
  2. How will the development of NIK affect the development speed of PhotoLab?
  3. What is the state of the receivership/restructuring procedure?

But I am happy about every improvement in communication that has been made.

5 Likes

Absolutely agree. I’ve only been a DXO user for 7 months, and during that time I was disappointed by the inactivity and lack of DXO responses to the old website. This new forum is significantly more active and I have much more confidence that DXO representatives WILL respond to queries.

I also understand some of the frustrations people have had. However, I love, and use DXO PhotoLab Elite, and the other add-ins that DXO Labs markets, every day! Even though I already had a free version of the NIK collection, to show my support I purchased a new license from DXO . They are obviously going through rough times with their financial situation, but I’m glad they are still around and very much hope they will recover. I would be very upset if DXO PhotoLab disappeared. For those of us who love it and would miss it, perhaps we need to bite the bullet and hold back on the rhetoric a bit, and support their current efforts instead of trashing them for things in the past.

I actively promote the use of PhotoLab on other sites during raw processing discussions. I do this because I believe that this product, even with its somewhat limited functionality compared to its competition, is still a superior piece of software that is fast, efficient, very easy to use, and provides outstanding results in less time. And yes that promotion is a little self serving since getting others to fall in love with it, as I have, will help to ensure its survival.

Mark

4 Likes

plus one
The fact that official DxOmembers or Staff are responding in a open forum is a plus, and i believe they don’t do this as a dayjob but beside there other job as a service to us.
So rudeness for the sake of blunt communicating isn’t the way of building a forum.
some time it takes a few day’s so what?

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Thank you for the support guys :slight_smile:
About this one:

  • Just a matter of transferring the users (I still revise some sections of that Forum).
  • Actually it should not affect as separate teams will carry them.
  • The procedure is almost completed and the results will be announced in the current weeks.

And yes, Forum assistance is not my main job but I hope I’m fast enough in replying to your needs.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

2 Likes