Moving to Get Statisfaction

[+tozainamboku]

I can understand from Groundspeak's point of view that Get Satisfaction works much better for them to get feedback on the Geocaching.com website and on the iPhone and Android apps. It makes perfect sense for them to ask people to report problems and ask for new features using that site. Even the sections for asking questions and giving praise are bettter in most instances than the forum. Get Statisfaction gives Groundspeak ways to track the problems and ideas that people have submitted and it has a way for the company to provide feedback to acknowledge that they have seen these post and indicate if they are not planning, considering, or actual implementing that change.

 

However the Get Statisfaction site is unsatisfactory to me in one area. When idea and problems are reported in the forums there is usually a lively discussion on the merits of each one. Workarounds are given and refinements made in the suggestions. The design of the Get Statisfaction site discourages some of this discussion. You can respond to a idea or a problem, and you can comment on someones response. This unusual threading technique makes it very hard to have a discussion between two or more people with different views. There is an easy way to show you like an idea or have the same problem as someone. You can't vote that you don't like the idea or that you don't think this is a real problem. There is a a way to vote for the "best" responses, but often that means that some really good points that are not popular get hidden. There is not method for quoting someone, so it difficult to respond to the points someone makes in a response or a comment. And if the number of responses gets too large the older ones are cut off resulting in people not being able to see the entire discussion.

 

Sometimes the lively discussion on an idea is viewed as negativity to new ideas. In a way, the design of Get Statisfaction to discourage this kind of discussion is good in that people who are afraid that an idea would be attacked on the forum feel more comfortable on that site. But many changes that get proposed have rammifications that even Grounspeak's lackeys don't consider. Broad feedback from the community like that given in the forum discussions can make it clear when what looks like a small change might impact a lot of people negatively.

 

Rather than shutting down this forum, I would like to see a pinned topic that people use the Get Statisfaction site as a place for initially suggesting ideas and reporting problems. Then, if a topic there deserves more discussion, be able to start a topic in the forums to discuss the topic and have the Get Statisfaction site link here. I would like Groundspeak to say that while they will monitor the Get Statisfaction site instead of this one, that for topics that deserve more discussion they will check in the forum for input from those with other views.

[+t4e]

i agree with you, tozainamboku

while at first i thought the FEEDBACK was a great idea it, after using it for a bit it quickly turned into a pile of nonsense

 

there is no continuation of discussion especially where many people have replied

its very hard to follow responses when one can comment on any single post made

many times i see a notice of a comment being made few minutes ago, but when i go to the page there is nothing new at the bottom, there is no clear indication where that comment is, one would have to scroll through all the postings to find it

also there is no possibility of replying to comments made within a section of replies

 

i would have much preferred, like you suggested, that a separate section was added here in the forums...but seeing how inefficient this forums are for years now, i am talking about the timeouts and the overload, i don't think the forums can handle any more load

 

i am inclined to think that the feedback was created in an attempt to put off the promised, now way overdue, forum software upgrade

[+Panther&Pine]

I'm also not sure about shutting down the forum.

I don't know that I'll get the IT support I can from this forum.

 

I have no issue with moving the SmartPhone stuff (mainly cause I don't use one so I don't care).

[Jeremy]

I understand the concerns with the "like" functionality of Get Satisfaction not having a "don't like" button. If Groundspeak considered the merit of any new idea based on the number of likes I would agree that this is a problem. However, we take in consideration all of the points of each idea before we consider implementing a new feature.

 

I have been watching some more hotly contested and argued ideas in Get Satisfaction and can say that the layout works far better for the decision makers at Groundspeak than the forums. The topics are far too scattered in the forums and many issues are buried within topics. Right now we get posts in Get Satisfaction saying "the issues are clearly outlined in the forums" but from our perspective, they are clearly buried in the forums. This is why we looked at using a feedback tool like Get Satisfaction in the first place.

[+tozainamboku]

As I said in the OP, I can understand why Get Satisfaction works better for Groundspeak. But on the more hotly contested issues it is really difficult to make your opposing voice heard.

 

Look at Bring Back Virtuals. In order to get the points agains bringing them back, bittsen had to start an idea "Don't Bring Back Virtuals". Now you get people for virtuals posting in the Bring Back Virtual thread and people opposed to it posting in the other thread. Not entirely true - but still it is hard to follow the conversation in two places. And there are numerous other threads with various ideas for bring back some virtuals or modifying the Waymarking site, etc. So the result is the topic is just as scattered as it is on the forum with a new Bring Back Virtual thread every week. And don't think that these will end just because you use the Get Statisfaction website.

 

And there are numerous places where someone gives and idea an the workaround for it gets lost. Someone suggesting a GUI change and gets told that there is a Greasemonkey script to do that. This forum has been a wonderful place to share ideas like Greasmonkey scripts or using GSAK as workarounds to so-called problems with Geoaching.com. The Get Statisfaction site may not be the place for that. These are solutions that come from outside of Groundspeak. The company has a great way to tell people what it's plans are, but they may not be as willing to say "Not a problem as you can use one of the third party workarounds". In many cases, Groundspeak will make the change because the existence of the workarouns has shown it to be useful. So they might say "Planned" and people will miss the fact that while waiting for it to be implemented they can use the work around.

 

It may be we can have these discussion in the General Topics now. Perhaps the forums that are closing will not be missed. I just hope we don't get moderators closing topics saying "post this on the feedback site" when there is something substantial to discuss and the forums would work better for that.

[+Team Cotati]

This move to 'Get Satisfaction' is totally awesome and waaaayyyy cool.

 

And the reason that I feel this way is that I believe that it will encourage more and better input from a much broader group of geocachers.

 

This is a good thing.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Team Cotati

[+Panther&Pine]

I understand the concerns with the "like" functionality of Get Satisfaction not having a "don't like" button. If Groundspeak considered the merit of any new idea based on the number of likes I would agree that this is a problem. However, we take in consideration all of the points of each idea before we consider implementing a new feature.

 

I have been watching some more hotly contested and argued ideas in Get Satisfaction and can say that the layout works far better for the decision makers at Groundspeak than the forums. The topics are far too scattered in the forums and many issues are buried within topics. Right now we get posts in Get Satisfaction saying "the issues are clearly outlined in the forums" but from our perspective, they are clearly buried in the forums. This is why we looked at using a feedback tool like Get Satisfaction in the first place.

It is your sandbox in the end.

Just letting you know why I'd still like to have a forum like this one, where I can ask my silly websitse issue questions and get answers.

[Jeremy]

It is your sandbox in the end.

Just letting you know why I'd still like to have a forum like this one, where I can ask my silly websitse issue questions and get answers.

 

We're just trying to be clear that if you want Groundspeak to monitor issues, ideas and questions, you should go to Get Satisfaction. As a social forum you can chat with fellow geocachers. Currently we're expected to monitor and pick out issues, ideas and questions meant for us here, and it hasn't worked very well.

[GOF and Bacall]

From a cutomer perspective that other site is a failure. It is hard to follow a topic and maintain any sort of continuity of the replies. The topic pops back up to the top of the front page with a little note, "so&so posted a reply". Oh yeah? Where? In at the end of the discussion or someplace in the middle? And though the company participation was very high the first day it seems to have waned. Fewer and fewer topics seem to get a company reply.