is heatware dead?

rudy

rudy

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 4, 2004
Messages
8,704
Its not that people don't use it but I have seen multiple people say they cannot sign up to create accounts, and it seems to be a major barrier to using it.
 
Works great for me and I use it frequently. Although I did sign up 15 years ago. :eek:
 
I use it, it's getting a bit dated, and the lack of support on anything is discouraging.

I've had a support ticket in with the owner for years and he won't take care of it. Absolutely stupid.
 
Not a discussion about a hot deal, so I'm moving this to tips/trick/trolls, which is where heatware is usually discussed.
 
likely a site that had huge popularity but now is not well enough known for new people, and not keeping updated and adding new features. So only useful in the small niche world of sellers where everyone else just uses ebay.
 
I had retaliation feedback left to me. I sent countless emails and did not hear back anything. I have heard a lot of other people got problem creating an account as well. It looks like kind of abandoned. There were a guy on anandtech forum from heatware team that was trying to heal people, but I think he also went quite.
 
Had my account for like 10+ years, basically when i signed up on the forum here.

Wonder what the [H] community could do, at least in terms of voluntary back-end support.

[H]eatware sounds pretty jive, eh? :D

Edit: That being said, there is no way i'd be get myself into any sort of dispute service etc. Technically oriented site op (front/middle/backend hw/sw systems) sure. Dispute resolution = hell no.
 
They are slowly fixing it. 3 months ago I couldn't even recover my password without getting on anandtech and sending them a PM. I recovered it a week or two ago with no issues using the system. It really could stand a complete overhaul and if he would provide me with the DB I would completely redo the whole thing. If I had the DB then no one would lose feedback.
 
Well, how many of us donate? I'm sure if we all gave a dollar or 2 every so often, the owner would have an incentive to stay on top of things.

I'm sure a group of us can get together and at least offer some backup to the site admins. It's a staple resource to the community. If we want it to be better, let's get together and make it better.
 
MrGuvernment said:
likely a site that had huge popularity but now is not well enough known for new people, and not keeping updated and adding new features. So only useful in the small niche world of sellers where everyone else just uses ebay.
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What alternatives are there. Ebay is fine, but it only works for ebay absolutely useless for everyone else. And I have been on hundreds of forums in my years and sooner or later most of them die or close down. The thing I loved about heatware was the ability to keep feed back through different hobbies and time spans. When you have 1 feed back here, 7 feedback there, 5 over at that forum and they span 5 different hobbies its too difficult to gain trust. When all of them could be collected on a single site that would is nice. But I tried exposing a new group of people to heatware and it was an utter disaster most of them couldn't register. So I gave up. But I just wanted to see if it was just me or others had problems apparently they did. There is nothing more useless than a review site that cannot accept new customers. There is literally no point in continuing to support heatware if they site admins aren't going to maintain it. I don't even care about new features just keep it running, but right now its not running features are broken/don't work.
 
wolfofsin said:
Well, how many of us donate? I'm sure if we all gave a dollar or 2 every so often, the owner would have an incentive to stay on top of things.

I'm sure a group of us can get together and at least offer some backup to the site admins. It's a staple resource to the community. If we want it to be better, let's get together and make it better.
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Good point. I've sent PMs and emails asking about volunteer opportunities as a mod or an acceptance tester. I have also donated in the past. I never received a definitive response. I know the community is willing to pitch in, but I'd like for heat23 someone else behind the scenes to weigh in and let us know how we can help out. I would have no problem dedicating an hour or two a week and every other weekend.
 
I sure wish they'd get back on track. I like Heatware a lot.
 
TurK-FX said:
I had retaliation feedback left to me. I sent countless emails and did not hear back anything. I have heard a lot of other people got problem creating an account as well. It looks like kind of abandoned. There were a guy on anandtech forum from heatware team that was trying to heal people, but I think he also went quite.
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It's happened to me too, two people failed to scam by wanting to return their broken product, as I mentioned I already have every serial number written down and picture taken of. I know exactly what parts were in each laptop, but they got upset they failed so they left negative.

I tried e-mailing and such to no avail. I just gave up on heatware and only use it as a courtesy for others, but I personally don't care if the buyer/seller doesn't have heat with who I am dealing with.
 
danyune said:
It's happened to me too, two people failed to scam by wanting to return their broken product, as I mentioned I already have every serial number written down and picture taken of. I know exactly what parts were in each laptop, but they got upset they failed so they left negative.

I tried e-mailing and such to no avail. I just gave up on heatware and only use it as a courtesy for others, but I personally don't care if the buyer/seller doesn't have heat with who I am dealing with.
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Mine was different. The guy sold me overheating video card and wouldnt take return. I endup with $150 paper weight and negative feedback. He left me negative, because I left him negative first. He was willing to remove it, if I remove mine. But I did not do it to give the community heads up. I have 275+ feedback and people already know me. So if anyone doesnt wanna deal with due to that 1 negative feedback, they can go to hell :) - That;s how I look at it.


Back to the subject, I can also contribute as a tester or admin or whatever they need. It was one thing keeping sale sections across multiple forums
 
It almost sounds like there needs to be a fundraising drive to get people motivated to donate, instead of a vague need for donations. I admit that I have never donated to HeatWare.

One might conjecture that between one and three per cent of all the money that changes hands on this forum gets essentially donated to eBay's PayPal unit through fees. Too bad some of that money can't go to HeatWare instead.
 
I've been trying to get a negative harassing heatware removed since 2003. Multiple support tickets has never warranted a single response. I've had 2 negative feedback for a single trade that went south. I'm ok with 1 negative heatware, but the 2nd was just un-called for.
 
Maybe we can have an [H] donation drive where the top donors get a special title
 
Send money to someone who doesn't maintain their site anymore? I don't think so. That money should go towards an alternate service if anything.
 
Skillz said:
Send money to someone who doesn't maintain their site anymore? I don't think so. That money should go towards an alternate service if anything.
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So then, let's put our minds together and create our own. There should be a way to interface to Heatware data. Obviously with their cooperation
 
wolfofsin said:
So then, let's put our minds together and create our own. There should be a way to interface to Heatware data. Obviously with their cooperation
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I really think if something is to come of this it wont have any support or backing from Heatware at all. If they were willing to cooperate then they'd do something about what they currently have going on and we wouldn't need to even discuss an alternate service.
 
Skillz said:
I really think if something is to come of this it wont have any support or backing from Heatware at all. If they were willing to cooperate then they'd do something about what they currently have going on and we wouldn't need to even discuss an alternate service.
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This is absolutely correct. Unless I'm mistaken, the best option would simply be to allow a user to have a place to display a link to their Heatware account, with maybe a section under it for them to input their ratings. I know this leaves room for someone to link their account and put a false number in below, but I always feel the buyer at least should have the common sense to burn that 1 calorie (or less) necessary to click that link and verify that information in order to protect themselves.

Obviously you could run into the issue of someone linking to a Heatware account that doesn't belong to them. Unfortunately someone could technically get away with that in a PM on any message board either way. Once again, the most protected buyer is the one who is most proactive in protecting themselves.
 
Unless whatever new site had a verification process where you could link to a heatware profile, and upon doing so, the new site would email the heatware profile in question with a validation code. At which point, you'd retrieve the validation code from your email, then enter the validation code into the new site and your profile/ratings would be automatically imported. Obviously, there'd be some sort of back-end to it.
 
Skillz said:
I really think if something is to come of this it wont have any support or backing from Heatware at all. If they were willing to cooperate then they'd do something about what they currently have going on and we wouldn't need to even discuss an alternate service.
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I concur.

As Skillz noted, we are effectively in this position because Heatware isn't maintaining their service. Integrating their actual product/services/platform/anything would be a sticking point, at best.

As ShepsCrook noted, we would need to migrate existing accounts (and associated metadata) to the new service, then allow the individuals to claim their new accounts back on the new service.

So, let's summarize:
Skillz - Screw Heatware, grab the data (accounts / associated metadata)
SkepsCrook - Migrate the data in, link up individuals to their accounts on the new service.

This data migration / account reclamation would not need the full service up and running. We would just need a skeleton front-end to run our designated user verification/validation process(es) and tie it into the accounts existing in the back-end inside some sort of staging DB.

With accounts properly linked/claimed by their rightful owners, we would want to (not reinvent the wheel) effectively reproduce what everyone on the internet has ever used - a good 'ole ratings system for online buying/selling.

We could do some sort of interface/component which recognizes [H] accounts to make things easier if you're buying/selling/rating from [H].

Now:
Before anyone wastes their time, i'll play that PM role and ask the most important question of all:
What is the business value of bringing this new "Heatware"-esq transaction rating system into being? (Keep in mind this would be a free-to-use service model).
Will people use it? Will people ignore it and continue using Heatware because of _____?
 
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The business value is there is significant number of us who buy/sell/trade online. Although Heatware, for the most part, is functional as-is. The need for moderated issue resolution is what would drive the migration to a new tool. The question remains whether having someone to contact in the face of an issue should remain free.

Technically the admins of Heatware could walk away leaving the site running as is. They have no more obligation to us as a community. It is a labor of love and we either need to supply resources for the labor or some of our own love to it.
 
I'd be quite curious if anyone has gone up to the owner(s) of Heatware and asked if the site and its IP was up for grabs.

The moderated issue resolution aspect of this service is a serious can of worms though. That's quite frankly something that can/could/would turn full-time real fast, and if the make-up of the people involved in this effort is strictly volunteer and ultimately "only as much free time as i can spare"...that aspect of the effort/service would eventually flame out too (and maybe even present a similiar situation to how it is now with Heatware). I personally have 0 time for those kinds of activities, like most of the people would be involved.

I don't know about this one.
 
Have Kyle send an offer to buy it out. The new KBHeat feedback system.

I have no issues with it and still use it whenever possible, but from what I hear support is lacking. Works fine for me though.
 
That would be cool. I am not so sure Kyle would like the idea of running a feedback loop in-house. The admins even less so. ;)

It would be an interesting potential source of revenue though - tack a tiny fee on each transaction (1-3%) and use it to help run the [H].

Question is, would it be worth Kyle's time? I imagine he would need to do some tax work for that kind of thing.
 
atp1916 said:
I'd be quite curious if anyone has gone up to the owner(s) of Heatware and asked if the site and its IP was up for grabs.

The moderated issue resolution aspect of this service is a serious can of worms though. That's quite frankly something that can/could/would turn full-time real fast, and if the make-up of the people involved in this effort is strictly volunteer and ultimately "only as much free time as i can spare"...that aspect of the effort/service would eventually flame out too (and maybe even present a similiar situation to how it is now with Heatware). I personally have 0 time for those kinds of activities, like most of the people would be involved.

I don't know about this one.
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Would it behoove anyone to pay someone to moderate? If the time would make it a full-time job, why not compensate them for doing so?
 
Kelvarr said:
Would it behoove anyone to pay someone to moderate? If the time would make it a full-time job, why not compensate them for doing so?
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I think the problem is just how much income the site actually generates. I wouldn't imagine it makes a whole lot in it's current state. Simply because if it did generate a descent income I'd be inclined to believe the person who owns it would take better care of it.

IMHO, I think Heatware is dead. It's just a matter of time before something catastrophic such as a hardware failure or database corruption occurs and the site will probably never return. It seems the only reason the site is still running is probably due to it being on some sort of shared hosting and not costing the owner much to keep it up. Just my opinion though.
 
Kelvarr said:
Would it behoove anyone to pay someone to moderate? If the time would make it a full-time job, why not compensate them for doing so?
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I don't think very many people would like to take that on as their full-time profession...
 
Hey all, heat23 here - the HeatWare admin. I am actually not surprised if you guys thought HeatWare was dead. Honestly, I was pretty much hands off on the site except on occasion for the last few years. The support email got overrun with tens of thousands of SPAM messages and many legitimate support messages were gone. However, I have recently re-written the entire backend of the site and did some improvements along the way. The site is now more scalable and flexible than ever before and I am looking forward to making HeatWare more relevant. I am however just 1 person and need help from forum moderators and well-establlished traders to help in things like eval disputes (This is currently in progress). We now have an API available so forums can integrate with us so they can display feedback statistics for directly in each forum post. I would like to see HeatWare use more especially outside of the PC hardware genre, but I will need the community's help with that. Also, it should be great if we could develop a vBulletin, phpBB, etc. plugins to integrate directly with HeatWare API.

Heatware has been a hobby of mine for 17 years now, and I am very motivated to make it well-known especially amongst the new generation of traders (Reddit has been a big user of it). HeatWare doesn't "make" any money, any extra donations are saved for a rainy day. I personally have never made a dime on the site and haven't and don't plan on putting intrusive ads on the site.

I am also always open to hearing your feedback and suggestions on the site. After all, this site is for the community and even though I am not an active trader anymore, I still believe 100% in HeatWare's mission.

Thanks,
heat
 
I noticed some changes a few weeks ago. Figured someone was doing something with it. Glad to hear it's not dead.
 
good to hear HeatWare is still being supported!...I still use that for any F/S trade as a way of checking the person's history...on another forum I frequent (NeoGaf) they actually have their own internal database spreadsheet for buyer/seller evaluations/feedback but I still prefer a more universal app like HeatWare
 
Heat, what you do is much appreciated. How do we get info on the API.
 
TurK-FX said:
I just had a response from them for an email I sent them 2 years ago :)
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The admin just took care of an issue I reported back in 2012, as well as waaaay back in 2003 (same issue). Happy that someone is taking care of this stuff again.
 
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