Let's document the problems on the Microchip forum

[drh]

2014?

[wheresbicki]

In general, their ASP.NET web server is causing a bunch of issues lately. That Thread Reading Mode (aka Tree Mode) doesn't display replies. The profile settings are all locked.

[Jim.Nickerson]

And the site is down again.
same vintage 2014 down for maintenance and with my saved link a new page

New 404 page

404_08_06.JPG (68.96 KiB) Viewed 366075 times

[Jim.Nickerson]

vintage 2014 404 again this morning
Maybe they are really moving/upgrading the forum

[IIXII]

From: Axel Siebert
Sent: Friday, June 9, 2017 8:48 AM
To: 'forums@microchip.com'
Subject: Account banned due to broken forum

To whom it may concern,

Yesterday I tried to post a problem workaround to your forum to help others.
It was not possible, the only response I got was an insulting, technically laughable, unprofessional and, to sum it up, extremely aggravating "Access Denied" error message.
Some research in the very same forum showed that this problem is well known, unfixed for years and somehow related to the actual content of the post, but it's all rough guesswork.

My only option was to retry the posting again and again, varying the content, until I would find out what would go through.

It's not like any of those posts that didn't trigger the error actually did get posted - since I'm a new user, they were all held for moderator approval. Which, by itself, is a crude and unfriendly anti-spam measure, but at least it has some discernable merit, as opposed to the Access Denied affront.

And guess what, today my account is "banned until n/a. Reason: multi posts". Which did not happen automatically during my attempts, but hours later. Presumably at the point where a moderator should have reviewed my two dozen posting attempts, but obviously didn't - I took care to leave a message in the subject or the body, stating the reason why I was doing these multiple postings, and still I was banned.

The chain of failure here is impressive:
I found a bug in Harmony, tried to fix it and hit a disassembly bug, tried to analyse it using the Pro version of the compiler but couldn't do that easily because I had to work around a bug in your license manager, tried to post about that bug and couldn't because the forum itself is broken, and got banned while trying to work around that.

It should be readily apparent that this is NOT the way you want to treat your customers. Professional customers who have a say in whether your silicon ends up in a product or someone else's.

Summing up, you've already lost me in the long run, but unbanning me now would still be a nice touch. Oh, and maaaaybe fixing the Access Denied nonsense so I can actually post?

Regards
Axel Siebert

[jtemples]

Let us know if you hear back...

[ric]

Now you've discovered why in frustration I set up this alternate forum.
Their forum admins are totally clueless about web server setup.

[NorthGuy]

The Microchip forum is severely broken.

When I view recent posts, it shows that I'm logged off (in the upper right corner) and posts are not actually recent - http://www.microchip.com/forums/RecentPosts

When I view the list of forums, it shows that I'm logged in as "davekw7x" - http://www.microchip.com/forums/Forums

And I cannot post anything! - Access denied.

[jtemples]

it shows that I'm logged in as "davekw7x"

I don't think I've heard of that bug before. Are you really logged in as him? Can you get into his profile?

[NorthGuy]

it shows that I'm logged in as "davekw7x"

I don't think I've heard of that bug before. Are you really logged in as him? Can you get into his profile?

Nope. It's only on this one page. On most other pages I'm logged as me (or not logged at all). You can try to click the link in my post to see if this affects you too.