I only have 5 years of university studies under my belt, so of course, I have almost NO IDEA how best to use a computer; I sure was NOT a technical whiz kid and I mightily envy those who were (and are!) because THEY might have a better chance at knowing what they’re doing on-line! My lack of familiarity with computers is what makes it infinitely harder for me to ‘catch on’ all the important little nuances about being on the internet, using social marketing, trying to build a business, etc., on line, and what makes it even worse, is that every time I look around, things are getting harder — not easier — to use. Perhaps those who ‘make the rules’ want only experts like themselves to ultimately understand how-to-do-what on-line, and then hope to charge a pretty penny to make things work for the rest of us. Maybe ‘specialists’ come aboard to ‘improve’ sites like (in the past) the Advanced Book Exchange, Facebook, and now this site, Webs (formerly Freewebs), but instead of really improving the site, they rack-up hours and hours of overtime fixing mistakes for apps and programs and ‘improvements’ that got messed-up while being ‘improved’. When I sold books for a number of years on ABE (The Advanced Book Exchange, out of Victoria, B.C.,), it was obvious to all the dealers that exchanged messages on both on-site and off-site forums, that the more improvements management tried to make to the system, the worse the system got! After awhile, potential book buyers became so confused, they went elsewhere. Bookkeeping became a nightmare. Plus, all this busy-work, tinkering and re-tinkering with the site, changing defaults, making it less possible for clients to try to reach individual booksellers, that all this busy-work raised costs for ABE, which they passed on the consumer and their client-booksellers. These unnecessary, unwanted, ineffective changes came in waves, every six months or so. It got so bad I had to bail out of ABE, once I couln’t sell more than a book a week there.
There is something JUST AS WACKY going on in E-Bay! It has become less and less user-friendly over the years, and the more attention upper management, which probably does not have the technical skills to implement necessary changes themselves, but farms-out such tasks to teams of technical whiz kids who take & play with the system for a few months, inevitably leads to them getting some things right, and some things very, Very wrong… leading to people saying that old phrase, as good now as it was in the days of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or maybe even the Tower of Babel, “IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT!”
I’m wondering whether the mess-ups happen on purpose, so these technical guys can get some extra overtime from the fat cats who cut the paychecks but don’t have a clue how to do the technical stuff! How Else can you explain ‘improvements’ that are worse, and more complex, and more “buggy” than the way things were before the so-called ‘improvement’ was attempted? And as soon as the system stalls, and everbody panics — then the technical guys obviously can get EVEN MORE OVERTIME to (sooner or later!) try to erase the problem! I have nothing against people getting O/T, they can have lots & lots of it, I don’t care, but hopefully that spent money won’t be passed on to guys like me — but of course it will!
I was looking at a Forum of Q’s and complaints from bemused Webs subscribers on the site just now, and it is amazing how many different ways a big system like Webs can get buggy and batty and slow and confusing! This was formerly Freewebs — I don’t know why they changed from such a good name — Freewebs — what’s wrong with that? over to ‘Webs’ unless it is the obvious reason that less and less is ‘free’ in the world, this site included. We are all encouraged to get bigger and better accounts…for a price, of course! I miss the old Freewebs, where I could more easily navigate. But then, I’m an older timer. I can type fast but I don’t have what it takes to use this site, and others, such as FACEBOOK which is almost totally beyond me, for some reason! I need some night school, I guess.
I had a BLOG on his site which I called “Ed’s Blog” that I was fairly happy with. I could re-enter once-posted blog materials and edit incorrect or missing copy, I could replace some material with new material, and I could slip back into any place where I had previously been. Then, along comes a call to copy my whole blog into Web’s NEW Blog… This happened in early January, as I recall. I haven’t been able to confidently, professionally, use my Blog since! I have also been unable to EDIT material which is stale and dated and needs to come off the blog –such as a Notice which shows me working at a certain place — where I don’t work at anymore! This notice is without a doubt the cause of some confusion among visitors and clients, and yet I have NOT been able to figure out how to delete the fhing, because every time I try to delete it, the edit function terminates and I am brought back to Home again, without anything good happening.
Well, let’s see what happens! I am going to TRY to post this “new entry”. I hope it goes in the right place — BELOW my masthead with my photo and accompanying text of introductory material — the LAST couple of times I tried to post a new entry to my blog, the material either went OVER (above) the heading, or it disappeared in a cloud of electrons into hyperspace, thus verifying Einstein’s suspicion that this world often sucks!