 | | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 7, 2011 by Mrs Zen
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1
 | | Hello all
I am trying to get my head around the best ways for Researchers to make suggestions about h2g2 to the volunteer teams and NPL, and for people working on projects to ask Researchers for comments and advice.
We appear to have rather a lot of feedback pages.
Ask h2g2 - A148907
Community Soapbox - A452125
New h2g2 Feedback - A87706669
Feedback - A5734
Editorial Feedback - A388334
Technical Feedback - A388325
Barlesque - A78067353
Design Feedback - A388343
Project Feedback - A459506
The GuideML Clinic - A187229
Feature Suggestions - A388352
h2g2 Feature Ideas page - A1064963
This seems to me to be too many. Which ones should we retire? Which ones should we re-name? Which ones should we keep?
Einstein said make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.
How simple can we make this?
Ben
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| | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 8, 2011 by  Vip
This is a reply to this Posting
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2
 | | Just my  :
Askh2g2 isn't a feedback page
GuideML Clinic is a Help Page
(that's two down, anyway  )
Community - keep
Editorial - keep
Technical - keep
The rest can be split into one of those three catagories. I see no problem with there being a temporary page set up for certain things - e.g. the New Feedback page for when we launched recently - but this needs to be tidied up and retired when its main purpose has finished. 
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| | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 8, 2011 by Mrs Zen
This is a reply to this Posting
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3
| | >> Askh2g2 isn't a feedback page
>> GuideML Clinic is a Help Page
Agreed, but they are mentioned on the Feedback pages. 
Some people have forms on their Personal Spaces which you can fill in and technomagically post a new thread or add to an existing thread on their PSs.
Z suggested a single page with three forms on it, one for Editorial, one for Technichal and one for Everything Else. I think that would only work if it fed three pages, and then my head starts exploding again.
My thinking for having one for Everything Else rather than Community is that stuff crosses so many boundaries - is Create Community, Guide, Strategy, Outreach or what? One bucket seems simpler. For now, anway.
Ben
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| | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 8, 2011 by Mrs Zen
This is a reply to this Posting
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5
| | For sure. And it's probably a good thing they do. I've done it myself ("We'll always have Stockholm.....")
My thought on that is that any threads in Ask that are feedback threads or threads about the future of h2g2 should run there for 8 or 15 days (over one or two full weeks) and then be moved to the appropriate feedback forum. Anyone who's subscribed will remain subscribed, and everyone's hopefully got a chance to see it whatever their pattern of using the site, and they can decide whether they want to follow it or not. But Ask remains more Asky.
I've seen several comments recently that people are offput or even upset by endless talks about h2g2 and how it's run, and I think it's important not to force involvement on people. Why should they have to care?
Ben
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| | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 8, 2011 by Mrs Zen
This is a reply to this Posting
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11
| | Potentially all of the above.
The following is interesting - here are the pages in the order of the number of conversations on them. It would be interseting to take it a bit further and work out how many posts per month each one has garnered.
Editorial Feedback - A388334
5475 Conversations
Latest Post: 2 hours ago
Oldest Conversation ends: July 14 2000
h2g2 Feedback - A5734
1316 Conversations
Latest Post: 15 hours ago
Oldest Conversation ends: April 29 1999
Feature Suggestions - A388352
587 Conversations
Latest Post: July 2 2010
Oldest Conversation ends: July 14 2000
Technical Feedback - A388325
541 Conversations
Latest Post: August 8 2011
Oldest Conversation ends: July 20 2000
Design Feedback - A388343
407 Conversations
Latest Post: 4 days ago
Oldest Conversation ends: July 11 2000
Soapbox - A452125
339 Conversations
Latest Post: Just Now
Oldest Conversation ends: Oct 14 2000
Barlesque Feedback - A78067353
152 Conversations
Latest Post: 2 weeks ago
Oldest Conversation ends: Jan 23 2011
New h2g2 Feedback - A87706669
100 Conversations
Latest Post: 2 hours ago
Oldest Conversation ends: 3 weeks ago
Project Feedback - A459506
52 Conversations
Latest Post: Last Week
Oldest Conversation ends: Nov 9 2000
Feature Ideas - A1064963 - (Not a Feedback Page)
19 Conversations
Latest Post: August 21 2010
Oldest Conversation Ends: June 24 2004
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| | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 8, 2011 by U94986
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15
| | I'd log into h2g2 support and go through the conversations. Answer the ones I could (smiley suggestions, moderation complaints, feature suggestions etc) and list the other threads into an email to the 'appropriate' person, mostly the bug reports and anything techie, but sometimes to the Guide Team as well. As soon as they were dealt with, or the appropriate person at least answered so I know they were subscribed I'd unsubscribe the account (although that would be impossible now to keep that account clear, you'd need a new one) so anyone who wanted to check it out would only get the 'new' conversations and wouldn't have to check them all to see if there was another volunteer already dealing.
It didn't matter if a forum was posted to once in a blue  or not, it would all be picked up. People would only get the threads they wanted and not have to go picking through themselves when they were busy. If I got it wrong, I'd be sent the link back with who it should have gone to, and I'd forward it again, done that way so I'd learn (hopefully!). I used to really like doing that, and *if* anything like that needed to be done in the future (ie emailing people/volunteer groups with a list of threads they should see) I'd be happy to do that. I liked that bit of the job.
Of course there are other ways of doing things, such as maybe having one feedback page, or maybe just a few, and or people might want to subscribe their own account. It was just a thought.
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| | | Subject: Feedback pages - HOW many?
Posted Nov 8, 2011 by Mrs Zen
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17
| | That's really interesting, Mina. I've not yet got to the Guru processes because I've been concentrating on the Mods' processes and on taking some time off.
I hadn't been thinking of it from that end; or to the extent I had been thinking of it from that end I had assumed there would be several Gurus subscribed to the pages and doing what you've just described.
What I have been thinking about was from the Researchers' end.
I use Wordpress a lot and if I want to know how to do something (like publish blog entries with the oldest on the top of the page, not the newest on the top of the page) then I go and have a furtle around the help forums. What I did on that occasion was type in a search term, restrict the search to the help forums, and read the conversations I found. And sure enough, I got my answer. (You can't do it, and WP are so far up themselves they are proud of the fact).
Now we won't get anything that slick here until we've got the ability to tag conversations and restrict searches to specific foums. Which is a shame.
So that's one scenario. Another of course is just turning up at a help forum and digging around to see what people have posted. Is that easier or harder with 10 of them? I genuinely don't know the answer to that.
The final scenario that I can think of is turning up and actually asking a question. But where.....? There are so many to choose from.
I'm going to have more of a dig around the feedback forums to see how they've actually been used.
Does anyone else have any thoughts? I am really curious to know what other people think.
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