I have a couple of thoughts. Since some of us are doing comparison reviews, there should be a place where we don't have to rate the review. It's weird to review two things - one you love and one you don't - and have to rate it.

I still think the tags could be cleaner. Perhaps we can clean them up on our own i.e. the duplicate or almost duplicate tags without erasing them from our previous reviews (maybe this is impossible to do!)

Also in the name of the English language I am "prefer organic food" doesn't read correctly. Is that ok? Should we strike to make it correct i.e. I am "a lover of organic food" or is this petty? Love the board. Will close the Yahoo one. Jo

Jo,

Funny you bring up the issue with the "I am tags", but sometimes I have the same problem.  I don't know if anyone cares about it being grammatically correct or not, but I find that I care.  For some reason I get nit-picky there.  Not with anyone else, just myself.

 Rudi

I don't really like the "I am" tags but always try to make them grammatical. I used to think a lot about them but now have a handful that are mostly used over and over. In a grammatical way, of course.

--Bob

Speaking of I AM tags, every time I edit a review, at least one of the tags is dropped. Then I have to remember what I used and retick it again. Sometimes two are gone and nowhere to be found. It happens every time I edit a review. I did mention this before. It's not a huge deal but it can be time consuming when I just want to edit a review for a typo to go through the I AM tags and find the ones I used before.

Also ... Is there any way we can edit pic subtitles without deleting the pic? Again, a small thing but, if I make a little typo, I have to delete the photo and reupload it then recaption it. It would be great to just be able to edit the caption. And Bob, I agree, people really should take a minute to write a little caption rather than leave the photo name up. It takes a second and make a difference!

Patty - who will never use am I AM tag that doesn't fit the I AM structure of the sentence.

I get nit picky too and even if a suggested tag is very close to what I want, I won't choose it if it doesn't make sense

"I am movie watcher"

Instead I add/change my own.  I made it a habit to open the I Am tags on my profile whenever I am writing a new review so that I can use the same ones over and over.  Maybe there are some I can merge so it's not all over the place but I'll deal with that later :)

Someone sent me a note here that they looked for something under "home cook" or something like that. They found what they were looking for in my collection. I use a lot of "I am" tags. I am a lot of stuff. If you want my biker stuff, then click biker tag. If you want my "mom to boys" stuff, click that. Very different. Same with the "eating healthy." If tags are used to match right to products, they do help sort collections. 

Some thoughts about the new Yes/No voting on reviews...

Yes and no... I like the idea of being able to give a thumbs up or down to a review. However, the two buttons are too close together and easy to get wrong. And once you click on one, you can never change your selection. What if the reviewer edits the review and fixes it? I can't change my vote!

I'm respectfully suggesting two things:

1. Make "Yes" and "No" more distinctive and separate them a little.
2. Let the opposite selection stay available after I vote, just in case I change my mind.

Thanks for the changes and improvements so far... I really appreciate the effort.

--Bob

There was some indication before if we'd press "good point" that's now "helpful." I'm not sure what's changed. I can't tell now. I may read a review again and then not see that I gave a thumbs up/good point, so I press again. It does not seem to hurt anything though. It just does not add a number, so then I know I did that already. Is this maybe the hamster trick to see how many of us will press it over and over? Count me guilty (-: I just keep reading those frozen pizza reviews.

Bob said: "1. Make "Yes" and "No" more distinctive and separate them a little.
2. Let the opposite selection stay available after I vote, just in case I change my mind.

I didn't know we couldn't change our vote once we locked it in. We could always go with green yes and yellow or red no so people don't get mixed up. I do think we should be able to change a review's rating if someone comes along and edits it for the better - or worse.

But the reason I came here was to suggest that these boards have a QUOTE feature so we can follow conversations better. I did mention this to Jolie but wondered what you guys thought. I would like to quote people and respond to them and not confuse everyone. I think we all know how to use the quote feature and it would enhance the discussions.

Thoughts?

PattyTherre said...

But the reason I came here was to suggest that these boards have a QUOTE feature so we can follow conversations better. I did mention this to Jolie but wondered what you guys thought. I would like to quote people and respond to them and not confuse everyone. I think we all know how to use the quote feature and it would enhance the discussions.

Thoughts?

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I would definitely like a quote feature here in the discussion boards. In fact, I would have used it now to quote Patty's post!

Edit: I just DID use the "Quote" feature on this existing post, which was written before the quote function existed. Kewl!

--Bob

Patty, I would like to be able to edit the picture's caption without deleting the picture also so I'm waving my hand on that one.

I don't see my pictures when I do my review. I've had that happen to me before and it drives me nuts.                                     

Also please please let us be able to edit the title somehow. I know we can just e-mail Jolie and maybe there's a risk that a new product will be added and then some weird product name will be substituted but it sure would be nice.

Ok any chance we can be alerted to replies here?? Jo typing as the packers move boxes around me!

I agree with Jo.  I feel bad having to bug the VP peeps is I messed something up I can fix.   I think I have the right product and look and look again after I hit publish and OH darn it...wrong color, wrong type.

 

@Bob/Patty:  quoting is coming to the forums soon!

@Jo:  email alerts to forum replies is on the list, but I don't have an ETA on how soon.

There's lots of other great feedback here from everyone.  One thing that might help us is if you start separate topics per feature idea or bug report.  That way we can track each idea without them all being jumbled in a single topic and maybe missing something.

kevin said…
@Bob/Patty:  quoting is coming to the forums soon!

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Quoting is now live.  Enjoy!

bkovacs said…
Edit: I just DID use the "Quote" feature on this existing post, which was written before the quote function existed. Kewl

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Wow.  That just boggles my mind.  :)  Glad to know it didn't blow up on you though!

bkovacs said…
Some thoughts about the new Yes/No voting on reviews...

Yes and no... I like the idea of being able to give a thumbs up or down to a review. However, the two buttons are too close together and easy to get wrong. And once you click on one, you can never change your selection. What if the reviewer edits the review and fixes it? I can't change my vote!

I'm respectfully suggesting two things:

1. Make "Yes" and "No" more distinctive and separate them a little.
2. Let the opposite selection stay available after I vote, just in case I change my mind.

Thanks for the changes and improvements so far... I really appreciate the effort.

--Bob

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Here's a little secret. If you accidentally vote NO, then you can go back in and mark YES and we will fix it. (the inverse works too!) However, if you vote NO, NO or YES, YES it will only count as once.

Ok, another comment related to the yes and no. I usually leave a comment if I'm going to before I vote. It's just what I got in the habit of doing. Then after I hit send the page doesn't bring my back to the line that says "was this helpful"? If it did I think we'd be more likely to vote. Just a thought. Jo

Must be many people write comments before voting because I often get six comments and five votes and I go crazy wondering why someone would comment (nicely) and yet not give me a GP, er, HV. I suppose that could be the reason. I always vote first then comment. If I forget if I voted or not, I do it again for good measure knowing that my vote only counts once.

PattyTherre said…
Must be many people write comments before voting because I often get six comments and five votes and I go crazy wondering why someone would comment (nicely) and yet not give me a GP, er, HV. I suppose that could be the reason. I always vote first then comment. If I forget if I voted or not, I do it again for good measure knowing that my vote only counts once.

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I'll have to start doing that but I know just now I forget to click helpful. I'll try the reverse. Of course that would solve my problem! Jo

I feel as if I have a list of ways to change the site and it's not meant to be a list of complaints just stuff I find along the way.

Am I the only one who doesn't feel that the list we get of "reviews by friends" is as easy to click and read as other sites. I can't put my finger on it. I'm not sure if it's the layout or what but those of you who write elsewhere and get notifications do you feel as if there is a difference in user friendliness? Jo

Actually Jo, that's is one of two reasons I am posting today, I was out of town and came back to try to catch up and it is taking so much time to go through the list of reviews and my comments.  My main concern right now is greeting people and trying to then keep track of them to revisit .. . as I run through my quotes and try to go back to see if they have posted anything new then I return to my main comments page and have to page through it to get back to the page of comments that I was working on.  (Does any of this make sense) For example, I am on page 5 of my comments, I am going back to check on a new greeting I made, see how they are doing and such and then want to go back to my comments.  I go back to page 1 and then have to go over to page 5 then start the process all over again. ...

Maybe a comments from freinds and fans ... section could be helpful or a way to simply return to the page that I was on either would be incredibly helpful to those that welcome and encourage new members. It would also help me as I try to make more friends and fans... just a thought.

I thought the stats would be cooler if they showed next to each review title on my profile page.   They count up so slowly I guess nobody stops by but when I see I've gotten one (by the total GP count) I wish I could find which one was rated.

Yes, it makes perfect sense and to make a point I already made the fact I found this post from you was just because I'm going through each block! Jo

I have several suggestions:

1.)  The ability to add video footage when appropriate.  Not a link, but footage.  I don't do video now, but if a find something that I like when I'm traveling, doing a car show, etc., it might be a nice feature.

2.)  Altering the photo addition aspect to the reviews would be helpful.  Currently, the limit of 3 pictures at times seem to be quite limiting, not always, but sometimes.  Since the ability to add more pictures is possible within saving and revisiting of review efforts, why not streamline the process and just make it simpler?

3.)  The ability to alter the title header for additional information or spelling corrections would be quite helpful, and alleviate the necessity of writing an email to the office.

Just my thoughts,  but I'd be quite interested to hear your views.

Steve

I am still just hoping to leave private messages. I came across a review where the person misspelled the name of the product throughout the review. It made me crazy but I didn't want to say anything publicly. If I could have sent a private message saying that the product spelling was wrong, I think the person would have appreciated it and not have felt criticized or embarrassed as s/he would have if I made a comment publicly.

PattyTherre said…
I am still just hoping to leave private messages. I came across a review where the person misspelled the name of the product throughout the review. It made me crazy but I didn't want to say anything publicly. If I could have sent a private message saying that the product spelling was wrong, I think the person would have appreciated it and not have felt criticized or embarrassed as s/he would have if I made a comment publicly.

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Ditto

I wish you could click through to the specific website on travel reviews. For exmaple, I was reading a Southwest Airlines review and there was no click-through to their website. On the right-hand column was a Google ad with travel-related websites, but not Southwest's own site.

That would be cool, and would make perfect sense!  I imagine the reason why that link isn't there, is there is a financial issue for inserting a link that has yet to be obtained from the linkor.  Just my guess.

I get an e-mail every time someone leaves me a comment, but I also get an e-mail if I leave a comment within a review as a response to someone else's comment.  I don't need to get an e-mail saying that I left a comment.  Can something be done about this?

PattyTherre said…
I am still just hoping to leave private messages. I came across a review where the person misspelled the name of the product throughout the review. It made me crazy but I didn't want to say anything publicly. If I could have sent a private message saying that the product spelling was wrong, I think the person would have appreciated it and not have felt criticized or embarrassed as s/he would have if I made a comment publicly.

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I agree 100%.  I've asked for this before.  It would be very helpful in so many situations to be able to send a private message.

Rudi