Home: Message List - Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

organicgirl1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:56:38 GMT

Reading all of the contents on forum improvement. I concure that we don't need another "manipulated site" by authors who post conduct that fails to meet "professional " and real comments focused on the agenda. Personally, I sought out this group because it is a professional site which does not post and edit pictures as other sites do. To this date have non-professional conduct. Thank You.

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

massagefever — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:10:23 GMT

I would like for my posts not to disappear when they are appropriate.

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

DomainDiva — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:57:09 GMT

Being able to edit within 10-15 minutes would be a good feature. I personally would like to see more involvment by the moderators. Personally I think that allowing all kinds of avatar, logo and picture content would just visually clutter the board. People don't follow the rules for spam and other community conduct, what makes us think that these new rules would be abided by?

This board gets hijacked occasionally and the moderators disappear, don't answer questions and have allowed hacking by so called 'members' into the posts of other members, marking quesions answered and removing posts at will.

When there are problems, the moderators should respond to the community not hide behind code. We know who we are, we need to know who these moderators are.

My 2 cents.

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

Lighthouse24 — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:03:00 GMT

On the subject of editing (and my earlier comments regarding it) . . .

I now participate in another forum that allows editing for fifteen minutes after a post appears. That works really well for a couple of reasons. First, you can clean-up the typos and things that didn't come out quite like expected. Second, it cuts down on some of the trivial back-and-forth "sniping" that people can get into sometimes -- there aren't so many knee-jerk reactions reflected in lengthy threads because people have the ability to change or "take back" what they posted for a bit.

I no longer participate in a community that allows a member to edit his/her posts forever because (a) it became impossible to follow the logic in evolving threads, and (b) people tended to edit frequently just to serve their own purposes. Imagine what this forum would look like if I went back into all 2,000+ of my old posts (some of which draw a lot of search traffic) and put an ad for my latest book or a link to this week's special offer -- and if everyone else did that too. It becomes an advertising forum, and totally useless as a support or learning community -- and I'm not in favor of that happening to the SBOC.

So being able to edit for fifteen minutes after a post is made is something I really, really like. Being able to edit it forever is dysfunctional in my view.

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

25trekker1 — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:17:28 GMT

Sometimes clarification of a post seems necessary. Rephrasing a question or changing just one word can achieve. I have done this on a couple of occasions. Is this considered editting?

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

SEOpro — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:00:51 GMT

Ah ha!!!!!

Now you see the value of being able to edit posts. The forum owners can move an entire thread to a different subsection, but contributors can't even make a typo correction.

I suppose it's a real bank mentality. They want to be new age an' all, but they just don't have it in their DNA.

Let's see if BofA can bring this forum up to snuff...

Waiting in pregnant anticipation...

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

Bridge — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:43:23 GMT

Anyone interested in seeing a list of real features should check out:

http://www.simplemachines.org/about/featu
res.php

Simple machine forums is also available FREE to anyone wishing to download/upload onto their on site to create a discussion board. It is very powerful and the Admin controls are excellent. You can set up a huge array of rules/feature to help manage your board (many not even listed because they are so basic to discussion boards - though not here).

you can see it in action here:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/i
ndex.php

If your website is hosted with godaddy (and other like hostinginsomniac.com), you can install simplemachnies thought your admin control panel - it is one of the free software adds offered.

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

SBOCTeam — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:52:52 GMT

Community members,

To better organize our content we moved the helpful feedback to "Community Feedback."

Thank you,
The SBOC Team

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

Bridge — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:05:39 GMT

Perhaps if there was an edit/delete function (like most boards) a poster would be able to delete their post and stop unwanted solicitations.

Perhaps a situation changes and the poster would like to provide more current information.

It is not a case of type first, think later. Things change and the board should be able to change rather than be static,

The reason most sites have an edit feature is that they have found it makes the site more relevant and professional.

It seems the positives would more than outway the negavtives.

Re: Open Letter: How this forum could be improved

RickFelten — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:56:26 GMT

I think you make a great point:

"Sometimes, we may post something and a few hours or days later realize how dumb it was."

The issue is that we tend to 'type first, think later' and this is what brings down the quality of the posts. I'm not directing this to you designer, so please don't take offense. You just bring out an excellent example of key differentiators between amateur and professional sites. What is wrong with actually spell-checking the content we produce? What's wrong with thinking about what we want to say and then putting it in writing? What about actually reading it before we hit 'post message' for the world? I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any prize for speed of posts that would preclude taking these simple steps. If we don't get caught up in the emotion of the moment, everyone will benefit.

I'd be interested in seeing some suggestions on how we can help members grow and prosper in business. Like, how do we get members to feel comfortable about asking tough questions without getting a ton of sales pitches, rather than solid answers?