Open Message to AVSIM Community

<p>As you have surely noticed, we have had our issues over the last week or so. Here is the situation in a thimble.. We updated to the latest IPB software last week and it has been a problem ever since. Frankly, the upgrade was not ready for prime time and it still isn't. We are not happy with the response from IPB, and their lack of authoritative help in fixing things has been pretty dismal. Never the less, we are where we are, and hope that we will get the assistance we need next week. In the meantime, we have disabled some things (actually most things), and you will notice those.</p><p> </p><p>We have disabled GUEST access to the forums and functions. In a hobbled system, we need to give importance and system resources to our registered members. When we see 275 registered members online and over 550 "guests" online at the same time consuming resources, that is not right given our current situation. So, for the time being, we have required that guests register before they get the benefit of AVSIM's resources. That requirement may go away, or it may not. Our focus and priority is with our registered users.</p><p> </p><p>Secondly, you are going to see a lot of missing functionality, including our previous menu system. We will bring functionality back as we can and will test each in terms of system load before we move to the next mod.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, I have to say that this has been a frustrating experience for AVSIM Staff too. We provide a free service and I have to tell you that some of the messages we have received have been more than disappointing and in some cases, downright disrespectful. I hope that some of you will consider that before you post about how bad we are, incompetent, unprofessional, etc. etc. (Unprofessional at what? Providing a free service from a bunch of fellow flight simulation enthusiasts?). Anyway, I will leave it at that.</p>