New Community coming tomorrow

[pinbrook]

I was at a conference yesterday talking about social media, one of the speakers was from kodak, she outlined a situation they had with a camera, that came to market called something like i9.

So many people moaned about kodak using numbers as product names, that they held a poll to rename said camera ( i think this was all twitter).

In due course the camera and others in the same line were renamed with descriptive product names.

Excellent Example of a big corp listening to their customer base 10/10

A little bit later on when asked if Kodak would do the same exercise again - she said no!!

[jont]

What i'd like to see is a company that release a new look and a has a person on hand to react to what customer's say almost instantly, better still talks to its customers before it does it, waiting simply will not improve the look, it's just gets you used to it more.

Customer focussed companies? Behave yourself Hackett-man.

Nobody likes to admit they are wrong, especially when they have paid good money for something. The strength comes from admission and taking the steps to resolve it.... which is typically only a minor change from the original plan.

[pinbrook]

What i don't think they've clicked onto is the fact that if they set the width to say 90-95%, it will fill 90-95% of the available screen, but they will still get their background if that's the effect they want.

the community is quite acceptable at 1024 (my netbook) so the fluid should work!

but i agree with everything you say Lee, there does seem to be a real reluctance to change something which is really quite trivial

[Jan]

A little bit later on when asked if Kodak would do the same exercise again - she said no!!

To be fair Jo you have completely taken that out of context, Madlen Nicolaus was asked if Kodak would use crowd sourcing to name future products and she said no because they felt that they had the naming issue under control now but she also said that they would consider using crowd sourcing to find solutions for different problems.

Regards,

[Paul Bulpit]

Thanks for all of the feedback. ... ... ... ...

... ... ... We won't do anything immediately. We will let things settle down a bit, then review our next actions.

Chris

Very short-sighted in the light of all the criticism from regular users.

Have changed my resolution to see for myself - it's definitely horrible.

[cbarling]

For goodness sake guys (excuse my exasperation), I've said:

- we will review it

- the design of the community wasn't done with the same attention (or by the same poeple) as the design of the site. I didn't say that clearly enough probably

It's being taken as if nothing will be done. That wasn't what I said.

There are a number of points to be taken into account, including how things look in relation to the main site, as there are links from the main site to the KB, and the marketing guys wanted consistency across both. We need to organise the meeting to discuss this in the light of feedback (that's already in process), we need to decide what to do, then we need to do it, then test it and implement it.

Something that is being used by thousands of people won't and shouldn't be changed on the fly. That doesn't mean it will take weeks, it's just that we follow a process.

Chris

[leehack]

I think your previous post came across for a number of us, "we'll take a look in the future", "we'll see how it goes", "we're still not sure that it is as bad as you say", "time will heal". If you counter that response versus something like "We agree it doesn't great and should have paid more attention, but rest assured we are on the case and something will be happening very shortly". I think you'd find the direct rather than wishy washy reply services people much better.

Something that is being used by thousands of people won't and shouldn't be changed on the fly.

Fully agree, but from our end this is exactly what seems to have happened. You said yourself it's not had the level of care it perhaps could have.

That doesn't mean it will take weeks, it's just that we follow a process.

You recently installed 3 customer moderators as a go-between for actinic and the forum, all three of them happen to be web designers and are on here daily, i'm not aware that any of them were included in the process, a little bizarre wouldn't you say? A 10 minute consultation with said people would have ensured clangers like the google search did not occur. Perhaps the "process you follow" needs reviewing, it simply cannot be in tune with its customers! Instead of spending time explaining what you're doing, trying to appease people, why not talk to them before you change things in the first place - much better use of valuable time.

I understand your frustration, you clearly are treating it with some urgency, your wishy washy reply didn't get that across AT ALL. Bear in mind for many of us, this is our online home, a place we see each and every day and love! When you come in throw some poor decor up on the walls, limit the functionality we're used to and show a general apathy towards people's opinions, people rear up (just like you just have). We're passionate about this place, we spend a lot of time on here, it's our home, please bear in mind how much this place means to people.

[leehack]

As a footnote, I think it's important to add that the eye may well have come off the ball with V10 on the horizon, i know you guys are working very hard on that and that is understandable. Just bear in mind this is what we encountered almost every day a few years ago, so please make sure we are not on the way back to those days.

Thanks for coming on and clearing things up also .

[pinbrook]

For goodness sake guys (excuse my exasperation)

Dont forget Chris, this is how some of us feel too. We have all been working towards better communication for several years now, the fiasco with the community seems to have taken us backwards.

In hindsight would it have been better to say, we will review this next week at our weekly meeting - we like to stick to our proceedures, please expect our response next xxx-day.

No commitment to what you will do, but a clear commitment to discussing it and when to expect feedback.

Very glad to hear you say it wasnt the website designer who produced this...

[Ben]

You recently installed 3 customer moderators as a go-between for actinic and the forum, all three of them happen to be web designers and are on here daily, i'm not aware that any of them were included in the process, a little bizarre wouldn't you say? A 10 minute consultation with said people would have ensured clangers like the google search did not occur.

Lee, as you know, there is a private forum for the moderators to communicate in. I posted a note about the new design and KB in that forum the previous Friday before the change was made, and included a link to a fully working test forum with the new styling as a preview, but I didn't receive any comments. I agree, it would have been useful to catch some of the 'clangers' beforehand.

[cbarling]

Lee, I thought we gave a preview of the new community to all mods a few days before we went ahead. See Ben Dyer's post on the moderators form. But we got no feedback.

I did use the word "will", not "might" about the review, but OK, that obviously didn't communicate sufficiently well.

Incidentally the things that could be changed straight away without impacting on the other objectives and were low risk, namely changing the space at the extremities from white, and fixing the lack of Google search bug, were both done immediately.

So I will be completely honest and say that I found it depressing that the same tired old "Actinic never listens" stuff seemed to come pouring out.

Chris

[leehack]

Lee, as you know, there is a private forum for the moderators to communicate in. I posted a note about the new design and KB in that forum the previous Friday before the change was made, and included a link to a fully working test forum with the new styling as a preview, but I didn't receive any comments. I agree, it would have been useful to catch some of the 'clangers' beforehand.

I find it all a bit strange that you posted a link to a new forum that has already been built, a few days before it goes live and have somehow convinced yourself that you involved us in the process. Are you saying that if we had said the colour scheme was poor along with the other feedback that a number of people have also said, you'd have jumped into action? please do me a favour and drop that jackanory! You didn't even ask for feedback from what I have read, just posted a "here it is" link.

Contrast that with Ben D's post about forum structure which opens up ideas before things even start and you will see a considerably different attack to the process of creating new things by myself.

You don't include people until the very last stage of a project and expect them to feel they were part of it. As Chris B has pointed out, you need to discuss these things, so the timescales to change anything were an impossibility on those timescales. I have better things to do than spend time on pretend exercises Ben, if you're interested in my opinion, then ask for it before you start and throughout the process. Don't pretend at the end of the process.

[leehack]

Lee, I thought we gave a preview of the new community to all mods a few days before we went ahead. See Ben Dyer's post on the moderators form. But we got no feedback.

See previous post.

I did use the word "will", not "might" about the review, but OK, that obviously didn't communicate sufficiently well.

You've cleared it up now, it's fine, it came across as wishy washy and we know best, but we're all human, i can now see what you was thinking and that things were happening. (will be changing holds so much more weight than a we will be reviewing it, if that makes sense)

Incidentally the things that could be changed straight away without impacting on the other objectives and were low risk, namely changing the space at the extremities from white, and fixing the lack of Google search bug, were both done immediately.

Fair comment.

So I will be completely honest and say that I found it depressing that the same tired old "Actinic never listens" stuff seemed to come pouring out.

Believe me Chris, i really do understand how hard you guys have been working on communication, really i do and on the whole it's so so much better and full credit for that. You're frustrated and so were we, we either have to agree to disagree or work together to ensure these things happen as little as possible.

It's one exercise where things have not been handled any where near as good as they could have been, it's just one exercise Chris, don't get all "same old" it's not like that, it's an isolated event, especially over the past 18 months or so. Many of us love this place Chris and really do give a crap about it, that's what drives people's feelings and their thoughts about it, that's a positive in my book every day of the week. We love your community and care about it, that's all.

[Ben]

Actually, Lee, nobody's pretending anything. What I've said above is simply that the moderators had an opportunity to preview the new design a couple of days before the change was made. I inherited a concept for the design and had to tidy it up within pretty strict parameters and within a tight timeframe. Would I have changed some of the process looking back on it? Probably, yes. Would we have delayed/changed the site if the feedback from moderators was strong enough? Potentially. Was there enough time to make changes such as bringing back the google search? Absolutely, and I don't think pointing that out would have been a waste of anybody's time.

[Ben]

Closing this thread now as points have been made and all taken on board.