Does anyone ever visit quality magazines on-line readers forum? It appears the board is down, has been since January, yet they continue to metion it in the magazine. What gives???? Or is this another example of a lack of commitment to quality (LOL).

CarolX

Al,

I haven't tried the Quality Digest lately, but the one at Quality Magazine has been inactive since January http://www.qualitymag.com - Link was: /disc1_toc.htm

I e-mailed the publisher about a month ago and never got a response.

CarolX

Are you talking about www.qualitydigest.com (http://www.qualitydigest.com)?
If so, it works fine for me.

Big Red,

No, the one at
http://www.qualitymag.com

Web sit of the magazine "Quality".

CarolX

Whenever I try their page (Quality Digest) all I get is a blank screen, not even an error message.

Carol,

Maybe they are more bored than a board!

ASD...

One more spew about this and I am done...

I complained to the editors about this and their response was....

"Please be aware that our editors do work 2 months in advance on issues, so at the time of putting together the April issue, our Web site was working and would only on occasion go down."

So let's do the math....April issue is worked on in February....and the board has been frozen since January....am I getting the run around?????? Good thing I am not a paying customer!!!

CarolX

Can anyone tell me all the quality 'boards' on the web that they know of? I know the ISO 9000/QS-9000/ISO 14000 Support Group Board is still up at --> Long Dead Link --> http://www.isogroup.iserv.net/board/ - but are there any others?

Marc,

iso stop has a message board. And there was one at another site, quality mall or quality america, my tiny little mind fails me.

CarolX

I think the Quality mag board is active at
http://www.i-boards.com/bnp/qm/default.asp
Go to http://www.qualitymag.com and click on 'reader Forum'.

As for other boards, there is misc.industry.quality on Google (erswhile Deja).

:) I was thinking of starting one on my site, but after I joined the Cove, I thought better of it :).

I think this forum is THE BEST.

- Atul

Ah! The i-boards (Quality Magazine) site has some good stuff! I'll have to check the others out as well.

Just seing what's happening out there that I don't know about.

Marc you must have a lot of patience to sort through all the BS on that site. I couldn't believe the (and I have to be frank here) CRAP that goes on in there. To me it was very tiring trying to find valid strings of questions/answers/sharing and I finally just gave it up.

If the BS is just a recent development and I should bear it out...let me know, otherwise I'll just wait an accept whatever you find and pass along to us here.

Ta, Eileen

There is another forum at Lean.org. Kind of quiet most of the time. The ASQNet is available if you are a member of the ASQ, and Atul's lead to iSixSigma are the one's I visit. There is also a forum called "The Art of Profound Knowledge" at the EZBoard, but it has been quiet for a long while now, generally due to low activity although the content was quite good.

Regards,

Kevin

Originally posted by Curtis
There is another one: *** Dead Link Removed ***

This is the successor to the ISO Support Group board that has become the epitomy of cynical venting.

The original board was abandoned by the ISO Support Group folks several years ago but soemhow developed a life of its own.

A couple of years ago Rick Clements sold the ISO Support Group and the new owners instituted a new discussion board. It is not very active but there are some good folks using it - often new to the standards.Thanks for that information. It explains a lot. The ISO Support Group board is really a weird 'board'. I wonder why the owners keep it up. :confused:

Originally posted by E Wall
Marc you must have a lot of patience to sort through all the BS on that site. I couldn't believe the (and I have to be frank here) CRAP that goes on in there. To me it was very tiring trying to find valid strings of questions/answers/sharing and I finally just gave it up.
Was just browsing through all the boards mentioned in this thread. This one's Horrible!. Marc don't you feel its a waste of time trying to counter all the worthless 'arguments' that go on there?

If you mean the ISO Support Group board, I don't go there very often and when I do I mostly scan the first page of the main listing. I have made a few comments there from time to time but rarely.

I mainly brought up the subject of other boards because I was interested in whether there are any other decent boards that I haven't been to. I'm always curious about what else is happening.

Marc,

Getting to know your competition (LOL)? I think that the EZboards are close in format, but lack the knowledgeable audiance you draw here at the Cove.

Your site is by far the leader in format, content, and contributions. I am excited every time I look to see how many folks have signed up here. I would be interested in seeing how many hits you get a day on the front page of the forum, sort of like your ASQ Section page has buried on the last page.

You have created a great resource here and I appreciate learning from the many excellent contributors here!! It's great fun!

Regards,

Kevin

Like Kevin, I enjoy seeing the tally climb daily of people joining. It seemed just two weeks ago, or so, the number was at an even 2000. :smokin:

There would be quite a lot more people registered but until the last of August when I switched software I didn't require registration to be able to start a new topic or to reply to a topic.

I did set the config so non-registered users can respond to posts but to start a new thread one has to register. I can make it so that one has to register to even see the boards - but then it sorta defeats the purpose.

Checking out the competition? Yes - to some degree. Quality Assurance is pretty much a niche field so expectations of tens of thousands of visitors is not realistic.

FYI - about 1000 to 1600 individual visitors every week day hit the Cove. That's not 'page views' or 'hits' - those are much higher. But - one must read log files with the proverbial 'Grain of Salt'. For example, I have to estimate people who did a search and came here only to find the site has nothing to do with what they were searching for (such as information on the Cayman Islands using Cayman as the key word in their search) using information from the 'single page visitors' analysis. Another issue is if one person logs on in the morning and then logs on at noon and then again logs on at 3.30PM - that counts as 3 individual users. This is just to illustrate that log files and what is actually happening is often open to a lot of interpretation.

I judge 'popularity' of the Forums on how many people are on at once - so far the max at one time was 20 ('guests' and registered users are counted together. That's not very high. But again, this can be mis-leading when the site as a whole is analyzed. In addition, the registered users number is misleading because many people register but never come back for whatever reason.

I have noticed the number of different questions asked is pretty low recently. That might be expected because we've gathered a lot of information here in these threads. If one is half adept at searches s/he will probably find the info they're after without having to register and ask.

Just some thoughts.

It appears the old isogroup.net forums are gone. Anyone know if they popped up somewhere else?

The Quality Mag forums are up at http://www.i-boards.com/bnp/qm/

The ASQ has forums up http://www.asq.org but they're for ASQ members only.

What else is out there in quality related arenas?

What else is out there in quality related arenas?

Quality Digest (http://www.insidequality.com)
Forums are free. They've got moderators like Forrest Breyfogle and
Donald J. Wheeler. But somehow there's not much activity.

I visited a few of the others and looked at the "Quality" of the questions being asked. The questions look like ISO 101 compared to the somewhat free-wheeling discussions we have here. The alternative methods used by other companies and the candidness of the members to disclose them, gives you a lot more to think about than visiting these sites moderated by supposedly Q types with their canned answers. JMHO ;) :smokin:

Also a members only forum at AIAG, however there is "zero" activity. Which to me is strange considering the number of member companys.

Saferpak has a ISO 9000 section as well as some more packaging-specific kinda stuff. It seems well set-up (at the last time I was there) but it gets nowhere near the activity of the Cove, and thus has nowhere near the quality or quantity of content.