“Yet you are still here. What is your motivation to providing feedback and continuing to contribute?”
I’ve asked myself that very same question many times, in truth I have no answer.
Perhaps it’s some sort of misguided loyalty to a site that has provided a sense of community over this past 6 years, although many of the community have gone.
When I see the above comment to a community member I begin to wonder is this truly for me.
Anyways, time will tell, I mentioned earlier that you need to convert ‘browsers’ or ‘readers’, i.e. non members to become regular site visitors, the school is still the ace but only as long as no one else notices the potential.
It’s about creating a flow of conversation, rather than taking your focus away from what you’re reading when another member or members post something off-topic or inappropriate. Posts can also be hidden for various reasons, whether that be automatically flagged by the system (a “robot” detection if you will), flagged by a moderator, or flagged by another member(s). And in certain situations, those posts can become unhidden.
There are instances where users may not agree with a point of view and flag content. If enough flags come in, depending on the user, the community is deciding that the post is not valuable enough in that situation to be visible. However, as a checks-and-balance, in the the situation where the post is flagged incorrectly in the eyes of other members or the moderation team, readers still have the option to see the content. But they are making the effort to see it.
If posts stay hidden for 30 days without being changed by the author or moderation team, they are deleted.
As for Alexa data, let’s just say they don’t give you the real picture. If you read over an Alexa website profile page, you’ll also see the word “estimate” in several places. Unless a 3rd party has software running on our servers collecting data, which Alexa doesn’t, the information will always be an estimate. For larger site, with huge volume, they might get a tad closer to real-world metrics, but still nowhere near actual results.
We’ll continue to improve our design, content offerings, and initiatives to keep and bring in more contributing members. Thanks for the feedback.
What you said didn’t address the point I was driving at.
That’s my fault for not making it clearly enough, so I’ll try again.
The idea of hiding content is to prevent people from reading it, surely, until either a moderator’s checked it (with a view to either its removal or its reinstatement as he or she deems fit)?
Which one do you think serves that purpose better: hiding the text and leaving it actually hidden until that’s been done and the issue’s resolved, or pretending to hide it while actually drawing attention to it and effectively promoting it by substituting for it a prominent link saying, in effect, “click here to see what we’ve hidden”?
My point is that what you say you’re trying to do is confounded by the way you’re doing it.
You’re pretending to conceal something while actually drawing attention to it.
Don’t you think it might serve your stated purpose better if you removed this link saying in effect “click here to see what we’ve hidden”?
In practice, that’s bound to attract a lot of curiosity and attention, human nature being what it is, isn’t it?
That feature is surely designed to allow things to be temporarily hidden while a moderator makes up his or her mind about the questionable post? But that isn’t how you’re using it.
The result of the way you’re doing this is that far from promptly and efficiently moderating the spam, you’re actually drawing attention to it (for up to 30 days).
After a decade of reading, is BP buying me a new pair of glasses? Whoever designed this interface is trying to get all members myopic. Made me sign up to post a critique, what gives.
Thanks for the feedback. The content is being hidden. You can’t see it unless you decide that you want to see it. In some situations, mainly where members are flagging content, we’re taking potentially inappropriate content directly away from the viewing public, some times without the need for a moderator to be around. You, as the reader, have to decide to take action to view it. It’s a departure from the remove-now-ask-questions-later approach from vBulletin, or spam or inappropriate posts not getting immediate attention from staff . Blatant spam still gets deleted after moderator review. Also, clicking to view hidden content allows members to have the confidence that posts are not being flagged and hidden inappropriately by the community. And if you feel posts are being hidden inappropriately, you can cite the hidden post content and make a case that it should not have been hidden to begin with. This is a solution to what many members have asked for repeatedly - giving community members more power to police the forums for questionable content.
We think it’s a great feature, giving members that ability to hide objectionable content, but still giving readers access to that content if they feel the need to see it. Once the reasoning behind the feature is explained and experienced longer term, we think it will make more sense when you see hidden posts.
But we can absolutely review the 30 day setting and determine what other Discourse communities are doing with the notification text. The 30 days was the system default, shipped with the new platform, so if can be changed. Thanks again for the feedback.
Thanks for the feedback. Can you give us a bit more detail about what you don’t like? Background color and font color combination? Font type? Font size? Colors?
Let us know and we can take that back to the design team. Thanks!
Not in any realistic or meaningful way. People can still see it.
That brings me back to saying that you’re doing no more than pretending to conceal something while actually drawing attention to it.
You haven’t answered my concern at all.
Hiding the content without having a link that says, effectively “Click here to see what we’ve hidden” would answer it completely, and that’s how other forum admininstrators use that kind of feature.
It comes down to a very simple question: which works better, having that link there or not having it there. It’s a tiny, simple thing, but makes an enormous difference to the result. At the moment what you say you’re trying to do is being completely confounded by the way you’re trying to do it, and it would be really easy to change that.
This is where I’m going to disagree with you. It is hidden. You can’t see it unless you act and click it. You’re making that decision. Don’t click, it stays hidden. Click it, it becomes visible. You understand that hidden content has been hidden for a particular reason, most likely because it is low value or spam or off-topic.
As I mentioned previously, we are looking at what other communities are doing with the exact text/notification.
It’s exactly the same thing as the sales copywriters’ trick of using headlines “The information they didn’t want you to know”.
It’s a way of making something more prominent, and drawing attention to it.
Copywriters are still using that time-honoured technique because it works. And that’s the outcome (whether intended or not) of what you’re doing. As I said, you’re only pretending to hide the spam whilst actually drawing attention to it.
Thanks for replying, but nowhere in this conversation have you attempted to answer my simple question: do you think it’s more hidden by having a link there saying “Click to read what we removed” or by not having a link there saying that?
The answer is, yes, we’re happy with the implementation of the hidden post feature and accompanying link text. We completely understand your sales copywriter comparison. But we also know that not everybody responds to copy like you do. Some users are drawn to it and feel the need to click it, others are not and will continue down the stream of posts and conversation, ignoring it completely. You’re one of two people to bring this to our attention since launch. If the feeling becomes more widespread and more users feel the same, we’ll be more inclined to make a change.
But we’re receptive to your feedback, so we will look at what other communities and websites are doing in similar situations and take that into account.
I enjoy white, like Steve Jobs and his Mac, yet the font is not sufficiently thick to compliment the beauty of a pure backdrop. The words seemingly fades and make folks like me squint with reading glasses. Surely no size fits all, so a suggestion for the developer to introduce a limited number of options for readers to choose their individual preference? Perhaps just a white or gray background, and the size of fonts. A simple job.
We’re testing different font colors and sizes as we speak. “Themes”, a way to change background and site colors, are something that won’t be possible until we upgrade to the next version of the platform. That will require considerable testing on our part because the update is a major release, and updates several different areas and systems that run within the forums, while also including changes to mobile design and function. Thanks for the feedback.
He’ll say “Both questions were answered” but he won’t answer that.
He can’t admit “It would be more effectively hidden without the link” because that would unravel his entire argument and expose it for what it is.
It’s his forum, and if he invites feedback but then won’t answer a totally legitimate and obvious question, there’s nothing you can do about it, and everyone can see why he won’t. I suggest you drop it, now. I will, also.
It’s not a question about hiding effectively. We’re offering options, not trying to make the content disappear. We can argue this point forever, but if you don’t take my comments as an answer, I can’t do anything more than I’ve done. But that’s the last we’ll chat about this feature beyond what I’ve already stated.
