PLEASE READ-- A Note About This Board (October 2006)

Hi everybody,

As I mentioned when I announced September's site updates, we'd like this New Features forum to be the place where all of Meetup.com's members can come to read the running list of updates to the site. As always, we're very grateful for your feedback-- positive and negative-- and I encourage you to post your on-topic replies directly on the upgrade announcement threads.

You'll notice that these announcements, going back many months, have been pinned to the top of this message board. New threads that have been started by others are now available after the discussions that have been pinned. If you'd like your post to have more visibility and receive more responses from both staff and your fellow members, please post on our other Discuss Meetup.com boards.

If you need help, please post to the Help Forum.

Please post your suggestions in the Suggestions Forum.

You'll find other Organizers to talk to in the Organizers Forum.

Thanks very much,
Melissa Parrish
Product Manager

Hi, Melissa.

I understand what you're trying to do with the new structure of this board. May I make a usability suggestion?

Having so many pinned threads guarantees that user discussions will never be on page 1 -- and as new months roll by and additional pinned posts are added, users will be pushed further and further down the list.

How about creating ONE discussion, which is locked, that contains an index to the other threads? Pin that discussion to the top, so that anyone who wants to look up prior months' features can do so. The rest of page 1 can then be occupied with user discussions.

The reason is simple: Navigating a discussion on page 2 and beyond is extra work, because the breadcrumb links take you back to page 1. Then you have to click forward to the page your discussion was on, and finally click a discussion to read. Keeping the newest threads on page one, and older historical threads lower down, makes for faster navigation.

Regards,
BobW

Personally, I much rather know what organizers have to say than read the new features for November 05. This souds like you don't want the organizers to voice their opinions, and really what was new in November 05, January, whatever, now it's old news, I don't think it's fitting to pin those. The last 2 or 3 months? Sure. Anything more than that is no longer new, and odds are something has already been changed with the updates for the new months.

Bob, Carla --

I'm not the one who pinned the discussions, so not really my place to say. But I think the idea is that this forum is to be used exclusively for new features -- that way, Meetup has a central place where you can see a chronological account of what new features we debuted and when. (Along with replies pertaining directly to the announcements of those features.)

We already have existing forums to allow more formal discussion -- the organizer forum, the suggestions forum, etc. In order to keep things tidy, we want to encourage users to think about which forum they want to post their thoughts to before they do it. "New Features" isn't really the appropriate place for features suggestions or bug reports since we already have dedicated forums for that stuff.

Hope that makes sense...

Keith

Thanks for the clarification, Keith.

In that case, can I suggest that you remove the "Start a new discussion" link from the forum? That way, it's obvious that you are to reply to an existing thread, instead of starting threads of your own.

BobW

I think that all the other non-features discussions should be moved to other forums, too. I'll see what I can do to help a bit with that.

Hmm

Bob, Carla --

I'm not the one who pinned the discussions, so not really my place to say. But I think the idea is that this forum is to be used exclusively for new features -- that way, Meetup has a central place where you can see a chronological account of what new features we debuted and when. (Along with replies pertaining directly to the announcements of those features.)

We already have existing forums to allow more formal discussion -- the organizer forum, the suggestions forum, etc. In order to keep things tidy, we want to encourage users to think about which forum they want to post their thoughts to before they do it. "New Features" isn't really the appropriate place for features suggestions or bug reports since we already have dedicated forums for that stuff.

Hope that makes sense...

Keith

I think that this is right on for the new features forum, IMHO I think it would better serve the intent of that forum for it to be "read only" with links perhaps that allow you to jump to the appropriate forum to report a bug, ask for help or give feedback etc.

Hey Gang --

Can I ask for help from all those helpful people out there with great answers, whether staff or not? I have answered and moved a little over two pages worth of discussion from this forum, but there are still unanswered questions on pages 2-3 that are still behind the new feature discussions.

If some of you can answer some of these, it will make it so that I only have to e-mail the person who asked the question (rather than answer and e-mail) with a link before moving it to other forums.

Thanks!

Hmm

Bob -- yep, it definitely makes sense to hide the "Start New Discussion" link. However, we were hoping for a zero-development-time solution, which is why we haven't done so yet. Definitely something worth doing, though -- I imagine we'll hide it with a future release. I'm sure it's confusing to write a new thread, only to have it show up on page 2!

For now, we'll have to rely on moderators to seek those threads out and answer and/or move them.

Keith

Melissa,

First off, let me say this forum is a great idea. It's long overdue.

I've been mostly offline for about a month, so imagine my suprise when I check in and find I've got to read over 400 new and updated threads to get back up to speed. Imagine my greater suprise to find I'm re-reading threads that I read and participated in over a year ago. (OK, I know I should have realized it early, but it was late and I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.)

Hilary is doing a great job shuffling and reorganizing. But, I also agree with Bob. Creating a pinned, locked index thread to the long-past improvement threads then pulling the pins on threads that are a year or more past would go a long way towards deconfusing this forum and allowing the new, unpinned threads to come to the fore.

And a with a grateful tip of the hat to Keith and the rest of the Development team for their splendid work, Bob's suggestion is a zero-development time solution.