It's been awhile since I've looked at it. I used to have access to it but now can't find the link. Do I now need to get the unlimited membership in order to use the MRR archive?
We have recent threads on this already.
It is in a somewhat unusual place in the menus, and at least until recently did not require the new 'unlimited' trains.com membership to access.
To my knowledge however the issues with the archive index remain substantially or wholly unaddressed.
If they are going to play hide-and-seek with the content, it's time to ask myself if I'm subscribing to the wrong magazine. I'm still getting billed every month for the All Access Pass. That appears to be worthless. That will be the first thing I cancel.
See if you can get in this way; it looks like April still works for non-subscribers:
https://mrarchive.mrr.trains.com/mrr/apr-2021/flipbook/1/
That is a completely unacceptable solution. If they can't design a user friendly interface, they won't be getting any more of my money. I don't pay for poor service or products. What they have done with the website is a disgrace.
I only pay for the paper subscription and the archive, and my access still works fine. Just like before sometimes I have to refresh my log in.
But yes, the real issue is the lack of a working search feature.
My lack of trust in little electrons and the people who manage them is why I still have:
Complete MR collection from about 1953 to now.
Nearly complete RMC collection from about 1958 to now.
Complete NMRA Bulletin/ScaleRails from 1968 to now.
A smattering of other model train mags from over the years.
Books........... lots of them.
1700 +/- vinyl record albums - most in near mint condition always played on top quality equipment.
700 +/- music compact discs.
Original mylar tracings of every design project I have ever done for work or play (houses, furniture, model trains, tractor parts, electrical schematics and more).
Sheldon
I canceled my All Access Pass yesterday. I'm not paying for something if I have to search for the link to it. I don't like what they've done with the website as a whole and I'm not going to pay for it. I didn't access the archive often enough that it was worth $5.31 a month anyway so this was probably a good thing that it prodded me to cancel it. I'll keep my printed subscription for as long as they are producing it. I have no idea how long that is going to be. I've been predicting the demise of printed newspapers and magazines for over a decade now but they are still with us. I think they are living on borrowed time but how much time I just don't know.
John-NYBW I canceled my All Access Pass yesterday. I'm not paying for something if I have to search for the link to it. I don't like what they've done with the website as a whole and I'm not going to pay for it. I didn't access the archive often enough that it was worth $5.31 a month anyway so this was probably a good thing that it prodded me to cancel it. I'll keep my printed subscription for as long as they are producing it. I have no idea how long that is going to be. I've been predicting the demise of printed newspapers and magazines for over a decade now but they are still with us. I think they are living on borrowed time but how much time I just don't know.
What's happened to the website is something that's happened to software development, in general. I spent over 25 years as a computer programmer/analyst. Most of our time was spent on debugging software. Now, developers leave it up to the end-users to debug their products. That's why you see so many updates.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Had to write down a roadmap to get to the right place, still hard to find things.
John-NYBW That is a completely unacceptable solution. If they can't design a user friendly interface, they won't be getting any more of my money. I don't pay for poor service or products. What they have done with the website is a disgrace.
How user friendly do you want it. From the main Trains.com page, click on Magazines, then Archives and then select which of the archives you want to go to? From the Model Railroader page, click on Model Railroader Magazine and then Archive Access. Again, a pretty simple process.
The archives are fine, however the search index leaves alot to be desired....
Yes, it is a simple pathway as described above, however this system only lets you search by year. That's fine if you are browsing and just want to look at magazines from a particular year. A advanced search with this "system" means opening up a specific issue with search mode only applying to that particular issue. That's not much of a search engine, to me it seems like the table of contents for that viewed issue works just as well.
Want to look up something more specific like a weathering article from John Allen but you don't know what month and year it was published (December 1955 in this case)? I sure couldn't find it using the new archives. I had to find this article by first using the link provided by Overmod in the thread above (https://mrarchive.mrr.trains.com/mrr/apr-2021/flipbook/1/), then using the old search engine from this link. I did find that this archive link above does not include any MR issues newer than January 2020-I hope I'm wrong about this.
I hope I'm missing something and if so, please clue me (and all the other frustrated subscribers) in on making advanced searches with the newer index. To me the newer archive system leaves ALOT to be desired, and whether these bugs are fixed soon will be a big factor in deciding if I want to renew my subcription when it expires early next year.
Yep, I'm frustrated too.....
Medina1128 John-NYBW I canceled my All Access Pass yesterday. I'm not paying for something if I have to search for the link to it. I don't like what they've done with the website as a whole and I'm not going to pay for it. I didn't access the archive often enough that it was worth $5.31 a month anyway so this was probably a good thing that it prodded me to cancel it. I'll keep my printed subscription for as long as they are producing it. I have no idea how long that is going to be. I've been predicting the demise of printed newspapers and magazines for over a decade now but they are still with us. I think they are living on borrowed time but how much time I just don't know. What's happened to the website is something that's happened to software development, in general. I spent over 25 years as a computer programmer/analyst. Most of our time was spent on debugging software. Now, developers leave it up to the end-users to debug their products. That's why you see so many updates. TRANSLATE with x English Arabic Hebrew Polish Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak Czech Italian Slovenian Danish Japanese Spanish Dutch Klingon Swedish English Korean Thai Estonian Latvian Turkish Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian French Malay Urdu German Maltese Vietnamese Greek Norwegian Welsh Haitian Creole Persian TRANSLATE with COPY THE URL BELOW Back EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal Back
I was in the same line of work for a similar number of years. When I started, most of what we did was batch processing and the users would get printed reports. As they started getting access through mainframe terminals, we started to develop those applications and one thing we put a lot of emphasis on was to make things as user friendly and intuitive as possible. In the beginning many of our users didn't have much of a comfort level with computers and so we had to take baby steps with them. Near the end of my career, just about everyone had a connected PC on their desk so there was a much higher comfort level. By that time, I was pretty much a dinosaur but there was still a need for my skills as we were still running a number of legacy mainframe applications. Once I retired, I haven't paid much attention to the business. The shop where I spent most of my career got rid of their mainframe over a decade ago so I doubt there is a single line of code I wrote that is still being executed.
I digressed. The point I started to make was even though the technology is different now, it's still important to develop applications that are as user friendly as possible. I am now looking at things from a users standpoint and I don't like the recent changes to the website. It's just not as easy to navigate as it had been. That is not a good thing.
jmbraddock John-NYBW That is a completely unacceptable solution. If they can't design a user friendly interface, they won't be getting any more of my money. I don't pay for poor service or products. What they have done with the website is a disgrace. How user friendly do you want it. From the main Trains.com page, click on Magazines, then Archives and then select which of the archives you want to go to? From the Model Railroader page, click on Model Railroader Magazine and then Archive Access. Again, a pretty simple process.
I agree. It isn't exactly buried.
There's only two things that bug me: 1) any time I swap between MR and Trains or the Forum and MR/Trains, I have to log back in and 2) why is the current issue not viewable under "Current Issue?"
NittanyLion jmbraddock John-NYBW That is a completely unacceptable solution. If they can't design a user friendly interface, they won't be getting any more of my money. I don't pay for poor service or products. What they have done with the website is a disgrace. How user friendly do you want it. From the main Trains.com page, click on Magazines, then Archives and then select which of the archives you want to go to? From the Model Railroader page, click on Model Railroader Magazine and then Archive Access. Again, a pretty simple process. I agree. It isn't exactly buried.
Really? I used to be able to link to the archives from the Model Railroader home page which no longer exists. On August 16 I started this thread with the simple question of how I get to the archives from the new set up. For nine days the only answer I got was to link to the April issue and go from there. From the trains.com home page, it's not exactly intuitive as to which of the pull down menus the archive link would be in. Sure, it's easy to find once you know which menus to use but it's not exactly obvious how you navigate there.
I've canceled the all access pass and have no intention of subscribing to trains unlimited. It's just not worth it. I'll save the additional charge each month.
John-NYBWFrom the trains.com home page, it's not exactly intuitive as to which of the pull down menus the archive link would be in.
I am very stumped how it isn't intuitive. It takes exactly zero mouse clicks too.
On the main page, you hover over "Magazines" and one of the options on the dropdown that appears is "Archives." Click that. There you go, all of the archived magazines. I don't know how that could be made more intuitive.