While I was eating dinner, I started to think a bit more about this, and I've come up with what I think is a good idea which will really assess the degree to which this is a problem for members. Why not just run a poll and ask? I've even drafted some text for it:

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Title of Poll: Poll Regarding Site Speed

"We at Renderosity are working hard to improve your experience while visiting the site. Towards that goal, please let us know how you would best describe the browsing speed of Renderosity:

A. Renderosity is much faster than most other sites I visit.

B. Renderosity is somewhat faster than most other sites I visit.

C. Renderosity is about the same speed as most other sites I visit.

D. Renderosity is somewhat slower than most other sites I visit.

E. Renderosity is much slower than most other sites I visit."

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That's my suggestion and I think it's a fair poll. It seems to me that every time this topic comes up, it's suggested that this is an isolated problem, that most people aren't having any speed issues when they visit the site. So let's find out! Why not just run this poll, put it on the front page, place links to the poll in the weekly newsletter, place links to the poll as a sticky in every forum. Give it maximum exposure for a week, keep the real-time results public so there's legitimacy, and let's find out the true story. If the results show most people think the site speed is okay (which I would interpret to be any of the first three categories in the poll), those of us regularly complaining will have more reason to think "Hey, maybe it's a problem on MY end". On the other hand, if the results show a widespread speed problem, that would certainly be useful information for the PTB's...information they can use to plan the final stages of the conversion.

It's not hard to set up a poll such as this, but I'll guess that the PTB's will just say "No" to this idea, perhaps by saying "we're still in the middle of the conversion", or "we have an annual survey and members can express their feelings about the site at that time."

Well, just about all the major areas of the site are already converted: store, forums, gallery, site mail & freestuff. As far as the annual survey, I just think this is too important an issue to bury in the annual survey or rely on members "writing in" some comments about this.

Reliable information is so very valuable...let's all get some valuable information on this important subject!

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