Very important... Please read

Oh how disappointing! i thought this was going to be a message UPDATING us on what you were doing to rectify the forum speed instead of telling us off.

Since the down time the other day its become SLOWER and thats when i can open the forums, other times they just sit there and dont load.

After speaking to lots of people they arnt even bothering with hitched anymore and are looking for alernative forums.

This long and ongoing issue is losing you members fast and furious.

Maybe your priority should be sorting this out instead of pleasing Dove man!!!!

As an advertiser I am more concerned about the amount of people leaving the site because of the slow speed!

I have advertised on here for nearly 5yrs and have seen the bad language far worse than it is now. It is impossible to open pages and when you do you can't even post on them as you get an error message.

Hitched is the quietest I have ever known it, and I am regretting renewing my Advertising ubscription as I can see it gradually dying a SLOW death on here. Gone are the days when you could have 3/4 pages of new posts within a few hours, now it is taking days not weeks to fill 1/2 pages.

Surely the issue here is getting the forum working properly?

To be honest....there won't be a swearing problem (personally I don't think there is) as there won't be anybody using the forum. I really think you need to be worrying about getting the forum up to speed again rather than what people are writing in it.

Not wanting to be antagonistic, but isnt this going to be a tricky one given the issues even David Cameron experienced recently over whether he was or was not swearing on radio. Obviously some works are clearly offensive, but where do you draw the line? Id hate to be banned from Hitched for using something I thought was innocuous, but others (perhaps due to regional difference in the use of a word) found offensive...

What Sherrie said re speed of the forum versus a little nortiness.

I stopped advertising on Hitched because the supplier listings pages are a mess, visually and geographically. I was going to renew my listing now the new business is up and running (didn't Barry pass this on, I did ask him to?), despite no improvement in the listings pages. Firstly because I felt it was the least I could do for having access to such a great community that isn't policed overzealously and also because the forum posting style and it's sense of community accurately reflects myself and my business.

Obviously I won't be doing that but I doubt you'll lose any sleep over it. I don't afterall, have 300 employees or any blue chip clients. Actually I do have some prolific clients but I'd never be vulgar enough to use them and their status win an argument on a wedding forum.

I find it a little odd that because one member, who broke forum rules in his first post by advertising, then proceeded to become offended about swearing (of which, in that particular post, there was none), made a complaint, this has prompted a telling off, at the worst possible time, when a lot of members are thinking of leaving. I really enjoy Hitched, and whilst I agree prolific swearing is unnecessary, I think the main problem with this site at the moment is speed.

Hitched is definitely the best wedding site around, but it's just too slow at the moment.

The speed (or lack of it) on this site is anough to make anyone swear.

Personally I havent seen any actual swearing, I have seen some words that sound like particular swear words, or words with letters replaced with something else, but I really dont think its much of an issue. I wonder whether the number of complaints about swearing is anywhere near the number of complaints and issues with the speed of the forums!?

Http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/What-the-feck-Ad-gets.4777178.jp

It's not about fecking feck, is it? Fer feck's sake!

What has Barry caused? You can just picture him rubbing his hands together with glee while his 300 staff members are cooing in his ear (interpreted by him as saying 'well done, you are a genius).

Lumpy, not a feck but a fook. Or to be precise some fooker took offence at the word fooker and now we're all fooked.

x

I can't believe that you actually let this fecking Dove looper (I seriously hope that is not too offensive for you) from nowhere actually get to you enough that you actually wrote this post, I actually cringed whilst reading the OP.

I am so sick to the back teeth of the BLATANT ADVERTISNG on hitched, which goes unoticed - we all frequently report using the report abuse button which never seems to work. This is a friendly forum, full of nice people who provide support and advice for each other - once you start policing the forums where do you stop and draw the line?

YAYW is looking more and more welcoming every day - they are even allowed to use the S word over there....

<flounces>

It's posts like this that would make someone swear!!!!!!

Are we not all adults here who would use that kind of language, some on a day to day basis (I know I do!), swearing only gets offensive if used against someone like that "spanner" and his stupid Dove Release post.

Think you need to get your priorities right and fix the problems with the hitched website or I'm sorry to say but you will end up wishing all posts were covered in swear words cos there won't be anyone here to ban or kick off the site.

Excuse me??! 'a number of complaints'???? Oh please...

If people can't cope wit the odd feck, shyte, ❤️❤️, arse or heaven forbid a word with a few *** in it then they should go elsewhere. Hitched, both OT and WP (and I'm guessing BT and WL too although not a frequent visitor on either) has always (imo) managed to be 'above' the pathetic policing of other sites where fluffy over sensitive people dwell and run screaming from the room at the slightest bit of humour, honesty or feisty banter.

And THATS why you've got (although not thru' any effort on your part to fix the countless issues with speed and pain in the - oh feck it, I'm going to say it - arse advertisers) such a fabulous crowd on the forums here.

So what have you acheived with your headteacher like post then Mr N? Other than totally pee'ing (am I allowed to say that??) a LOT of regular Hitchers off. Whoop Whoop. Indeed.

<Mrs SP wanders off to consider the implications for herself and other paying HIBs following this really quite unnecessary berating by the powers that be about 'swearing' and the seemingly quite heavy hitting flouce by fecked off members - opphs - am I allowed to say the word 'member'???...>

After the forum being down for hours again last night it seems nothing has changed & it is still as slow as ever.

Well said Mrs SP.

Well I don't think this is the best wedding site, and although I've not been registered that long, am getting pee'd off with the slowness of it already.

Well that's it for me then.

I thought everyone at hitched was adult enough to cope with a bit of friendly banter. I have found the forum endlessly frustrating in the last few weeks with the slow loading of pages, the endless server errors, and now this.

I'd like to thank everyone for making me feel so welcome. I've met both virtually and in person a number of really nice people, but I won't be posting here anymore.

I've had enough, so I'll be voting with my feet and moving on. I really hope that everyone has wonderful weddings and lives together. I'm on facebook if anyone wants to find me.

So long, all!

Ali xxxxx

It is awful that so many hitchers are now leaving the forum due to over zealous policing and the speed problem, although can't says I blame them. If I was a newbie joining now there is no way I would be sticking around. Dove man has ALOT to answer for!

Please stay AliLindsay atleast til after your wedding so we can read your report and see some pics, seems a shame to leave so close to the big day.

x

I could understand this if the forum had suddenly become filled with offensive posts full of really bad language but I can't see that it has got any worse than it was 2 to 3 years ago in it's heyday. In fact at that time I thought some really vicious threads personally attacking members should have been removed and weren't. The forum is quite tame now compared to then. I don't swear in my posts basically because I don't in my day to day work, however I accept that other people do and I am NOT REMOTELY offended by anything I have seen on here recently. What I am offended by is the fact that we were told as paying advertisers that we had to add the suppliers logo and that the site would be policed for this, yet blantant advertising has continued and the report button still doesn't work. I used to be addicted to hitched and spend hours on here everyday but now it takes so long to open one post it isn't worth the hassle. I now use the Brides wedding forum which is faster and doesn't require *** in texts or remove totally inoffensive words like e*bay. Iguess that your main source of income is the Hitched site and the forum is really only here to keep up your web ranking through the hits to your site, so I guess that anything we say won't really bother you at all.

Is anyone from the hitched 'team' going to make any comment on this at all? Or are we just chatting to a blank wall? C'mon guys - surely you have to see you've really narked people off and you're losing members by the bucketload.

And I for one, as a paying supplier, is pretty narked myself seeing folk leaving in their droves. And the seemingly unbothered attitude of the Hitched team ....

Anyone?? helllllooooo? Take a look at the title of your own thread - 'please read ... very important' .....

Also, can I just add, its worth remembering this forum is only making money for you guys because of us guys. without the forum members who spend a lot of time on here for various reasons, this would be a pointless venture for you. But if folk who've been on here for years are less important than some random idiot who seemed to churn up this whole issue (along with the hideously rubbish status of hitched and its running speed, lack of focus on naughty advertisers being removed etc) then I guess you won't be fussed at the mass exodus.

However, I think it very very sad.

I agree with what everyone said so far. I'm more a lurker, but I do not find the odd swearword offensive at all. This forum is to get ideas, support each other and to let off steam if needed. And when emotions run high, well, I fully understand the odd swearword.

What I find dissappointing is that the moderators drop a bombshell like this, which obviously caused a stir throughout the members and have so far not acknowledged our replies ☹️

Looks like I am coming in quite late on this but I would like to add my thoughts..........

I have been a member of this forum for about 18 months now, and not once in my time here have I been offended with the language people use, as I don't even think it is as bad as you make out it is! What does offend me is the amount of blatant advertisers who come one here selling their tat, and then get defensive when we tell them to go away.

What also annoys me is how slow the forum has become during the last few months. I have now been asked by several hitchers on facebook if I am ok as I have hardly hitched in months. The reason for this is that I dont have time to wait 10 mins to load 1 page, thats when I can actually get on at all! With my busy lifestyle I need somewhere I can come for 10 mins at a time and actually be able to reply to a few posts.

I am really disappointed by this thread. Since joining Hitched I have met many lovely people, both virtually and physically. It would be such a shame to leave here, but personally I dont want to be in a place where we are spoken to like naughty children.

Dove Barry hasn't succeeded in making the forum a better place, he is just making it a ghost town, and without all us hitchers there will be no Hitched.

Good luck with the future of this site, I think I'm off!

I think I'll join you Zippy.

I'm not saying I'll never be back but the forums are currently unusable due to the speed and the amount of downtime. And then they go and piss off people who use the boards frequently by ignoring all requests to do something about the speed (new sever too little, too late?) but posting about not swearing instead. Really? We're all grown ups here and can decide how appropriate certain words would be for ourselves, can't we? Well, apparently not anymore.

At least I have a lot of you on Facebook to keep in touch with. See you all on there girls.

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay in replying. It was a very late finish last night and we've got a few things to tidy up.

We do read you posts whenever we can and do take your comments and feedback seriously.

I'll deal with the forum speed first --

As most of you will know the forum has been getting slower and slower over the past few months. We ordered a new top end server for the forum and we were in the process of preparing for that this week. In the last couple of days the whole site got even worse and we spent yesterday morning working with our hosting company to try and find the problem.

Early afternoon they advised us that they thought the problem was a hardware fault and this was contributing to the performance problems. They couldn't advise how long it would take them to find and repair the fault so we took the difficult decision move the site to another server and rush the move the of the forum to another server. This meant we had to take the site down yesterday afternoon, which I obviously hate to do, ready to back up the databases etc.

Sods law we hit a few snags moving the site and we finished getting the site configured about 2am. We will monitor performance over the next couple of days but the site is a lot quicker than its been in recent months.

The site is now operating on more powerful servers but we didn't get a chance to finish all the optimization we have planned to do before the cut over. This means that there are some additional improvements we think we will get over the coming weeks.

Thank you to everyone for sticking with us during this time.

Next Topic - Swearing.

This has turned into a very emotive issue so I'll explain our point of view. We have always taken quite a light view to forum moderation and allowed lots of banter and strong opinions. This wont change.

There is a swearword filter on the site that if you swear it will replace the word with something else and most people accept this or use something that rhymes.

Our issue is with members bypassing these filters and using strong language. There are agencies around whose role is to identify adult content sites - some of these use human reviews others have robots that read the text on the page. These agencies then share their results with the major search engines and content filtering companies

We had an incident where someone made a complaint to one of these agencies and they got in contact with us. If we get flagged as an adult themed site then it will hurt our business. I know we are not targeting children but for example if you had Googles content filter on you home PC,because you have children,and you searched for wedding speeches Hitched would be blocked from the search results.

We dont want to block people ability to express themselves we just dont want to get flagged as an adult site and miss out on search engine traffic.

We are not a big company - we dont have the resources of Confetti or YAYW behind us - we do try and respond to feedback and fix things as quickly as possible but I know we are not quick enough always. Please be assured we will continue to try and we do listen your views.

Thank you for sticking with the forum during this tricky time

Dean

Me too.

It's dying a slow death here. I can't access Mel's forum from work (which is probably a good thing!) but I'll be over there in the evneings.

See you on the other side girls!

Hmmm - what you don't seem to get that you've really hit a nerve with folk on here because of the way Darren dealt with the issue. Ultimately its like our concerns/complaints don't matter going back months and months because they don't 'harm' hitched and its ratings but some'one' makes a complaint via some agency and suddenly its headteacher at the front of the class time.

.. and then the above quote appears! That for most will be like salt in the wounds. I get a lot of business from Hitched and now I probably won't because many folk are defecting. So in some ways the handling of this whole situation has damaged a lot more than just your search engine traffic rating potential.

ETA - Dean, thanks for replying - you've at least had the decency to do that and that should be recognised... shame Darren didn't find the time to given it was his post that narked people....

What confuses me is that it is very clear to all those who were involved with Barry the Dove man's thread, that the complaints have come from him and his 300 employees etc etc.

If we can use words that rhyme, how come we are all getting bollocked (ahh swear filter didnt get that did it?) for using the word 'fooker' which is what Barry got his knickers in a twist over?

Nobody banned him for advertising, so why are we being threatened with being banned? It doesnt make sense to me at all.

Dean thanks for replying but in all honesty I think it should be Darren apologising for his attitude problem but in all honesty I think it might be a bit too late.

If Darren was doing his job he would of caught Barry out and banned him for advertising, it always seems to be people from other sites coming over to this one and causing trouble then us "devoted" (using that word very lightly) hitchers that have to bear the brunt of it.

Darren if your not careful, your not going to have a website to worry about anymore

There are agencies around whose role is to identify adult content sites - some of these use human reviews others have robots that read the text on the page

Are FYEO not adult content?

My thoughts exactly!

Wow. Ladies I've not been on hitched much lately (honeymoon and all) but I think I've missed something.

Back to the topic though. I can't be bothered with this site as it's a bit slow and there didn't seem to be much happening but swearing...... Swearing happens and I don't get offended and anyone that works with the general public have to be fairly tolerant of foul language. Who is this guy Barry? and if he is so offended by this site why come on!!! We haven't heard from him on this thread I take it??