THWACK Product forums seem under served by SolarWinds tech and the community these days..

I've been a too long time user/implementer/tech tweaker of SolarWinds. How long?  When I first implemented SolarWinds NCM was called Cirrus and some of the icons used were waaayy NSFW in any sense, so that long.  An oh my old THWACK account had enough points to get a hoodie or about anything in the store (shoulda got it then).

THWACK years back seems a great platform to get feedback, help and tips from other SolarWinds folks and the SolarWinds tech people themselves.  Having been away from it for a few years I'm back doing a almost bottom up redo for my current contract company and find THWACK forums with lots of posts and no replies.  When I actually posted a complaint in a thread suddenly a helpful admin came along but what's happened to this community?  Was it the big hack?  I also see the "What we're working on" sections have no updates since 2021, really??  You folks are not working on anything new?  I mean 2021 some months ago time.  It really feels like THWACK has lost a lot of participation from folks that use the products/modules very few posts with decent threads in them.  Now most times I have to resort to just opening a ticket because I get no replies to my posts.  What happened?

Parents
  • For me, the Thwack upgrade broke everything. You can't find anything useful anymore, and the community who used to contribute tons of content seems to have moved on.  The forum just seems dead compared to what it was prior. The energy hasnt been the same since the cutover. 

    I, too, remember the icons and the Easter egg in the NPM about pop-up. ;O

Reply
  • For me, the Thwack upgrade broke everything. You can't find anything useful anymore, and the community who used to contribute tons of content seems to have moved on.  The forum just seems dead compared to what it was prior. The energy hasnt been the same since the cutover. 

    I, too, remember the icons and the Easter egg in the NPM about pop-up. ;O

Children
  • Not only the upgrade though... The SolarWinds portfolio expanded considerably in the last few years (i.e. Loggly, sentryOne, Papertrail, Pingdom, just to name those). Pertinent content (to the user) gets flooded. THWACK does not present content based on the product you own or your interests. In my case, I have no WHD, but too often, when scrolling or searching I first find stuff related to it... Not that I don't want to want to see any, but why it should pop-up on top of the list?

    This lack of content tailored to the users is possibly one of the reason why you seem to witness people lacking interest. That said, I know there's are great people behind THWACK that might be interested to see how to improve. : Anybody you would refer this thread to?

  • When the migration was forced on them from the original Thwack platform a few years ago, the replacement was not good at all, however this was identified pretty quickly and a 3rd incarnation was put in place. This is way better than the previous platform, but I can certainly see some things do not quite work the same or that not all data is as searchable as it used to be. No doubt because of the huge job of migrating historic data.

    Things like the content exchange are a significant improvement and the gamification elements. May be there is too much content and the focus of the forum content has been lost a bit? What I do suggest is feedback on areas you do not like, and when I say 'you' I refer to all Thwack community members, as SolarWinds have invested a lot of time and effort in to Thwack, so where things can be improved they will no doubt take that onboard and look to make improvements.

  • tbh Content Exchange used to look better many years ago with lots of nifty reports made and handy helpers.  These days it looks kinda slim on some of the main products.  And please does everything have to be html code???  I'm not a web programmer, just a Network/Security Engineer. 

  • Yep and we don't get points when people download what we shared anymore I don't think.  I'm ok with the XML but yeah it's harder to read but that's the "cloud" right?

    Bill