Haven’t seen any major issues with the system. Little nits like not being able to paste into a post. The system is working really really well. But the more we use it the more we will know the nits. I think We will need some kind of top-level activity box though, because it can seem really quiet when you first come in since you can’t see what’s happening.
From a content perspective, I still struggle with what to put where. I don’t have a strong sense yet of the difference between a forum, a group, and a discussion. When do I share a link in a group and when do I put it in a forum? Feels like everything could go everywhere at this point.
Also - lots of notifications, clogging up my inbox. How do I turn them off but not miss important updates? Can I get a daily digest instead of real-time notifications?
I agree and I think we may need a post/guide on this. Try going to your Activity feed and see if that helps. It will let you filter by various categories, like your connections, people you follow, etc.
But one of our story items is to create a digest for most active posts for the day. I think that will help. Hopefully we have that out in the coming weeks.
This is tricky for sure, especially since we are catering to so many audiences. You have the Mavericks, the Enthusiasts, and the “gen-pop” all with different content buckets.
I have been focusing on the Enthusiast space to help build on that content and what I do is create a discussion thread and then use the group has a shoutbox to lead people to it.
Some items aren’t really needing a big discussion thread and I’ll just post directly into the Group, like a meme/image. Something that is just there for likes and “haha” type replies.
RE: Noise. We agree and are looking at how we adjust these. A daily digest is a big item on our list. We will be turning off the points emails as well. We wanted testers alerted that the system exists, but it’s very noisy.
I’ll look into how we can adjust the Groups alerts as well, as you get an email per post. If it becomes highly active, that is a LOT of emails.
I’ve created a guide on how to use the Timeline feature to get the most out of that activity feed. It could be a great option for a daily check to make sure you didn’t miss anything.
The timeline feature is cool but I think there should be a widget on the front page which shows the 5 most recent posts. That way, when users login is they can quickly see that activity is occuring.
Also, agree with Zahra that it is still confusing what to put where and that does need to be locked down. Some of us have signed in once and never come back.
Also, what are the rules about who can post what where? I assume nonregistered users can’t post. Registered users can post to general, etc. Paid users to their appropriate forums.
We have a story for having a recent activity widget, but it’s not a simple to solve as you have a distinction between forums and posts. Do we highlight group posts or just forums posts? What about posts in forums they don’t have access to? Numerous details to work out, but we also have to code and build that solution ourselves. However, we plan to have it out by Closed Beta.
RE: Groups/Forums, this will be a constant and circular discussion. Two systems are confusing, but everyone also agrees we can’t get rid of either of them. Community will likely decide for themselves where they spend their time. There are no strict rules on what gets posted where. That said, I will be doing an experiment in our Dev environment on making the system Groups focused to see if that can still work with what we wanted for forums or not.
As far as access goes, it’s pretty straightforward. On release, much of the content will be open for anyone to read. To post, you must have an account, even just a free one. Then, to access exclusive content and areas, you must have a paid membership.