Ideas for notification and new user threads
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 7,236
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From: Somewhere in NJ
Ideas for notification and new user threads
After reading some recent threads, and looking at the site info forum, it came to my attention that:
The initial postings about the sig/avatar issues did include a concern about the immediacy of the change, outside of the change itself and the 10+ pages of arguing about member vs. non-member. (I will use the word USER wherever appropriate in the thread to signify any member or non-member.)
The site info forum has a fairly insignificant number of views on its threads compared to the user community, or even member community. If you exclude the one protest thread, the number of views looks like another local forum, with views in the very low numbers into the several hundreds. Considering that there is info here on the use of the board, changes to the site, etc... I'd expect to see the number of views higher.
My suggestion is about how to get general information out to the users of the site.
1) Create a forum similar to Site Info., for locked, admin posts only. These could be about changes, FAQs, How-to's, site structure, obscenity/vulgarity policy, Membership policy and how to become a member, and other information that would be viewed by people looking for information. Perhaps even some linked threads to the questions answered 1000s of times in the S2000, UTH, Tire and Wax/Wash forums. Call the forum New User Info or New User/Site Info - and turn the existing forum into a HELP Forum.
2) Expand the user agreement notice on the registration form. Perhaps link to this new forum, etc....
3) When a critical message exists, or a message needs to get to the user community from an admin, either send it via the PM function to all accounts, OR, replace my initial S2Ki welcome screen with an additional page requiring me to pass through and view the information.
Bottom line - If there is information that NEEDS to get to everyone, then make sure it GETS to everyone. Systematically, you can NEVER confirm that some people won't blindly acknowledge a message they receive, however, you can confirm that it got to them and that they took action. If they aren't aware of the action they took, that's now their problem, and they don't have much to fight about. There will always be debate about the content - and that's a seperate, ongoing issue.
The initial postings about the sig/avatar issues did include a concern about the immediacy of the change, outside of the change itself and the 10+ pages of arguing about member vs. non-member. (I will use the word USER wherever appropriate in the thread to signify any member or non-member.)
The site info forum has a fairly insignificant number of views on its threads compared to the user community, or even member community. If you exclude the one protest thread, the number of views looks like another local forum, with views in the very low numbers into the several hundreds. Considering that there is info here on the use of the board, changes to the site, etc... I'd expect to see the number of views higher.
My suggestion is about how to get general information out to the users of the site.
1) Create a forum similar to Site Info., for locked, admin posts only. These could be about changes, FAQs, How-to's, site structure, obscenity/vulgarity policy, Membership policy and how to become a member, and other information that would be viewed by people looking for information. Perhaps even some linked threads to the questions answered 1000s of times in the S2000, UTH, Tire and Wax/Wash forums. Call the forum New User Info or New User/Site Info - and turn the existing forum into a HELP Forum.
2) Expand the user agreement notice on the registration form. Perhaps link to this new forum, etc....
3) When a critical message exists, or a message needs to get to the user community from an admin, either send it via the PM function to all accounts, OR, replace my initial S2Ki welcome screen with an additional page requiring me to pass through and view the information.
Bottom line - If there is information that NEEDS to get to everyone, then make sure it GETS to everyone. Systematically, you can NEVER confirm that some people won't blindly acknowledge a message they receive, however, you can confirm that it got to them and that they took action. If they aren't aware of the action they took, that's now their problem, and they don't have much to fight about. There will always be debate about the content - and that's a seperate, ongoing issue.
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