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Re: New Community Forum Observations

 
DavidZuts
Outstanding Contributor

New Community Forum Observations

I posted this under the feedback section of printing and digital forum but feel it may be necessary to repost it here.

 

Well the new forum has been in use for a little while and I have a few observations.

 

1. It would appear it must be more difficult to post to the forum since the number or new posts, especially in the Printing and Digital Section has fallen off considerably. Previously there were at least 50 new items per day to the section and now you are lucky to see 20.

 

2. The system of Kudos is not working. I see two reasons. Previously users were given points by the original poster when they solved or at least got them started towards solving their issue. It appears now that most people do not know how to give Kudos since if you look at all the solved posts no one has been given a Kudo. Also the Kudos system does no allow for users to try to reach a certain level of recognition. Previously when you got a certain number of points you were awarded with a icon for that level. There is no incentive since there are no levels to try to reach.

 

3. Still no area within one's profile or on the main page for a listing of their questions. All you list is posted items but there is a big difference between responses to other people's questions and questions one posts themselves. I can still not find my questions unless I remember the subject and then do a search which is a pain.

 

4. The All Topics section is still not in order. When a person goes to a section of the Forum such as Printing and Digital Imaging they should be able to find a listing of all posts in the order of the last post not a mess of posted with the first yesterday and the second 5 hours ago. Also on the old board we could refine the way the post was listed such as posts with no replies.

 

5. The image upload issue has not be addressed. You say in your help that we can upload images under something call my images. Well my images does not exits. The Avatar is nice but it would be even better if we could upload our own image to be used as an Avatar.

 

Hope some of these can be addressed.

5 REPLIES 5
Kevin_Paul
HPE Pro

Re: New Community Forum Observations

 

David - thanks for your continued feedback/input - let me try to address each of your items below...

@DavidZuts wrote:

 

1. It would appear it must be more difficult to post to the forum since the number or new posts, especially in the Printing and Digital Section has fallen off considerably. Previously there were at least 50 new items per day to the section and now you are lucky to see 20.


 

While part of the transition was the migration of the content from the previous forums into the new environment, there are additional items we're now actively working on - and driving traffic into the appropriate areas within the forums is one of those.  We're working on search as well as navigational particulars that should continue to increase the size and participation of the community.

 

 


@DavidZuts wrote:

 

2. The system of Kudos is not working. I see two reasons. Previously users were given points by the original poster when they solved or at least got them started towards solving their issue. It appears now that most people do not know how to give Kudos since if you look at all the solved posts no one has been given a Kudo. Also the Kudos system does no allow for users to try to reach a certain level of recognition. Previously when you got a certain number of points you were awarded with a icon for that level. There is no incentive since there are no levels to try to reach.


 

This is something we've noticed as well - and I'm planning on distributing some information to the community soon about the kudos system - I think this is primarily an educational opportunity for us as community managers to help everyone understand how/why/what the kudos are all about.

Regarding the "levels", we do actually still have them, and in fact we've created new levels above where our highest-ranked contributors are currently residing in the ranking ladders.  You'll notice the ranks listed below people's names within a thread - titles such as "Occasional Advisor", "Advisor", "Frequent Advisor", "Contributor", and "Honored Contributor" are just some of the ranks currently available - but there are indeed ranks that no users have yet achieved.

 

 


@DavidZuts wrote:

 

3. Still no area within one's profile or on the main page for a listing of their questions. All you list is posted items but there is a big difference between responses to other people's questions and questions one posts themselves. I can still not find my questions unless I remember the subject and then do a search which is a pain.


 

We're looking into what our options are with this particular request - keep in mind that you do have options to "subscribe", "bookmark", and use RSS feeds for your questions/posts - so there are currently multiple ways to manage posts you're interested in, whether you've authored them or not.  But we will investigate the option to add a "My Questions" type area within a user's profile - stay tuned.

 

 


@DavidZuts wrote:

 

4. The All Topics section is still not in order. When a person goes to a section of the Forum such as Printing and Digital Imaging they should be able to find a listing of all posts in the order of the last post not a mess of posted with the first yesterday and the second 5 hours ago. Also on the old board we could refine the way the post was listed such as posts with no replies.


 

This should be resolved soon, with the next software release for the forums platform - I'll try to determine exactly when that will be happening and share that with everyone.

 

 


@DavidZuts wrote:

 

5. The image upload issue has not be addressed. You say in your help that we can upload images under something call my images. Well my images does not exits. The Avatar is nice but it would be even better if we could upload our own image to be used as an Avatar.


This is still included as something we'll be enabling - I can't promise when it will be available, but hopefully it will be soon.

 

I work for HPE.
Kenneth Chan_2
Honored Contributor

Re: New Community Forum Observations

David's point 1.

 

Another contributing factor might be that the forums are very hard to find.  I was recently away from my regular system without my bookmarks.  I tried using google with various searches eg "hp laserjet forum" (which used to work with the old forum) without any luck.  Try it yourself sometime, youu'll be amazed at how difficult it is to reach the right forum.

 


David's point 2.

 

Totally agree with David  but a more serious problem is .....  Whilst I like the idea of a person other than the originating author giving kudos (I've done it myself), what is stopping an unscrupulous person setting up a new (bogus) user and using this (bugus user) to assign himself kudos?

 

 

New Point

 

I am seeing posts whereby a previous solution is known to exist but it is a link to the old forum and these don't work ; for example see :-

 

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/CP2025N-not-printing-under-Win7/m-p/1155120#M188217

 

I am convinced this is putting  a lot of people off - there is nothing more frustrating on the web than a broken link!! Can the old forum be re-instated in (perhaps) read-only mode?  or the old links automatically go to the appropriate page in the new forum?

 

 

New Point

 

Don't do what I've just done ....

 

1. type in a response in reply to a message

2. click Preview

3. click (browser) back button by mistake -  instead of Rich text

 

You lose EVERYTHING and have to type the whole thing out again .... *!#@

 

Regards

 

Ken

 

 

Paul Walling
Honored Contributor

Re: New Community Forum Observations

Well - I've only just found my way back - when the new forum started, my daily list from business support forums no longer appeared in my inbox - I only received the IR Resources forum notifications.

Looking at my preferences here, the email setting was at default - presumably notification of every post? But nothing's arrived!

I've changed it to the daily digest and hope that will solve the problem. But I wonder how many others have been affected that way? Maybe that's part of the reason for a drop off in postings?

 

Paul Walling
Honored Contributor

Re: New Community Forum Observations

An update....

 

Well - it didn't work !!  This morning's HP email missive again contained only the IT Resource Centre Forum list.  Is anyone listening?  So - what should I do now ?  After being active on this forum for six years, I 'm more than a bit disappointed and very tempted to vote with my feet!

 

Why is it that IT companies feel it's perfectly OK to let half-baked stuff loose on us - their customers - and are content to let us waste our time first of all learning how to use the new stuff, then discovering what's wrong with it and then feeding it back so they can maybe patch it up if they decide that doing so is important enough.... 

 

What happened to quality and getting it right first time?  And for that matter, what happened to all the feedback on the old system - had that been acted upon there would have been absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel - and produce a square one!. And what about consulting customers about what WE wanted before deciding what to do?. Not doing so sends a clear message that HP ain't interested in what its customers think - and I for one am well past beginning to believe that, having sent consistent recommendations in responses to HP's feedback requests over the past three years - with absolutely no evidence of any action being taken on their part!

 

Considering we so-called "Founders" are expressing so much dissatisfaction with the new forum, won't someone "up there" consider bringing back the old version - that worked well, was easy to use and let members find all that they needed quickly.  It was only that dreaded and too common "system not currently available" message that let it down!    IMHO, it was streets ahead of this new one.

 

Maybe we should start a "BRING BACK OUR LIGHTBULBS" campaign - if we could be bothered!....

But HP almost certainly wouldn't and, in any event, I don't think they deserve or even want our views.

Sad really! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin_Paul
HPE Pro

Re: New Community Forum Observations

Paul - thanks for your thoughts and comments.  We certainly are interested in everyone's opinion about the new forums - we want the community to continue to thrive as it has done over the past ~12 years, and I believe that the new forums platform will allow us to continue taking steps to further improve the experience for all of our users.

 

We feel that the new forums add a lot of great functionality we couldn't previously offer - RSS feeds (in addition to continuing email subscription options), private messages to other community members, built-in spell checking, social tagging, enhanced search options, user image galleries, macros, and a more robust recognition system beyond the old "points" model (where only the person that originally asked the question could reward replies) are just some of the new capabilities.  There are others on the horizon as well.

 

As far as your specific email notification issue, here are some suggestions:

 

  • There will be separate email notifications for these BSC forums and the ITRC support forums - they won't be aggregated into a single message, as the forum databases and environments are separate.
  • In order to receive BSC notifications, you'll need to subscribe to specific forums or threads that you want to receive notifications for.  To do this for a particular forum, hover over the "Board Options" pull-down menu (located just to the right of the "New Message" button), and select "Subscribe".  To sign up for email notifications for a particular thread/topic, the process is the same but the pull-down menu is called "Topic Options", and is located next to the "Reply" button at the top of the thread.
  • If you'd rather use RSS feeds for notifications, which provide a much more robust set of customizations and choices of readers (beyond just email), you can use the "Subscribe to RSS Feed" links located in the same pull-down menus as the "Subscribe" options mentioned above.
  • There are several options on how the email subscriptions are handled, via your profile.  Click the "Profile" button at the top of any page, and then select the "Subscriptions & Bookmarks" tab.  From the "Options" page you can select how often/quickly you want to receive notifications, as well as manage other settings.

I hope you find all of that useful - please let me know if you still have questions about how to sign up for, and use, any of the available notification options.

I work for HPE.