There are only 2 sections I would change about the profile pages... for the most part they are perfect.

#1. Make the "Add friend" button more obvious... It's like where's waldo whenever I want to add a friend.

#2. Organize the friends list better.

•  Maybe 3 sections: "Friends" would be people that are mutual, "Fans" are people that added you (but you haven't added them yet), "Idols" are people that you added (but haven't added you)... or something to that effect... just organized easier so that you can see who you need to add or who you respect that doesn't respect you. LOL
• Make it so that we can chose which friends are most visable (like a top 8 thing)

My initial suggestion is just to make it so there is some way to see all ratings vs seeing all reviews.  Perhaps this could be as simple as adding links and these links could be used for other things as well:

Reviews: 308 - would be a link to show reviews that can be sorted/etc as they are now in the middle, but no ratings

Ratings: 5 - essentially the same except would show ratings only.  And since ratings are supposed to be short one-two liners, perhaps text for ratings could show right on this ratings page.

You could also link Friends and Fans in the same manner if you wanted.

This is the only thing I can think of right now, but I think it would totally help those who can't find their ratings.

I came up with another one already :)  Would be cool if we could do the myspace type thing and organize our Top Friends so that every time we come to our page, our favorite friends show on top.  This could either be something just for each user to see on their own page, or something that the public sees as well.

We're off to a good start. Thanks for the feedback so far Roxann831 & Vivasuzi. Keep the ideas coming!

Honestly, I pretty much love the profile page and wouldn't change anything major about it.  As for tweaks, I agree with the ability to sort our friends for easier access to people you connect with on a daily basis. 

Also, under "a few more facts about me..." it always bothers me when I see that someone has made their entire birthdate public, especially when also using a real name and city/state.  You have to be so careful about identity theft these days.  Maybe VP could eliminate the birthday factoid, or even put a friendly reminder to use just the month, or month and day at the most. 

I really like the Profile page so I don't have much to say about it.  But there is one enhancement I've been thinking about for a long time with regard to the Facts About Me section.  I'd love to have more questions to choose from as I feel that my facts are kind of stale after all this time and some questions may not apply to everyone. For example, my favorite bands will never change so that's going to be static data about me forever.  And some people don't read so it's kind of a moot point for them as well.  I think it would be cool to have more facts from which to choose.

Also to piggyback on what LoveisJoy said, I agree about the birthday/city/state thing.  Many of us have changed our city to something slightly more vague but a reminder about posting too much private info might be a good idea.

I won't repeat what others are saying above, but I think several of those are great ideas.

I'd like to see the icon change after adding a friend, sort of like when you add someone's review to your favorites list. That way I can see very easily if I goofed and cut off someone I befriended, if you know what I mean.

I have really enjoyed seeing lots of pictures while reading some reviews. Would it be possible to have a little section that looks like a scrapbook or collage of pictures that we've put into our reviews? Perhaps someone looking at our profile page might say, wow--I would love to read the review about that...and click on the picture in the collage.

I think pictures draw a LOT of people in, so if you ever update the way reviews are shown, I think it would be cool to put one picture (if there are any in it) with the title of the review--people might be more likely to click on a review if they know they'll see some cool, crazy or colorful pictures!

Is there a place on the profile page where you can click if anyone has written a guide? That might be another way for people to access reviews that might not otherwise access them.

Love the new way we can update the "I am" tags (thanks to whoever did that)--perhaps we could have "facts about me" that we could choose from to display in the same way. Maybe even open a discussion for ideas for "facts about me" choices. Some people on this site are really quite funny and have some fresh ideas--bet you'd get some stuff you could use.

This one's just a minor one, but the area just above the reviews where it says something like "50 out of 50 reviews" is not on the little white box--it's off to the side when I view it from my computer. I have IE, if that's any help.

Maybe reviewers might have a few favorite reviews they have written that they think others would particularly like. You know--their best work, their passion, etc. If we had a way to pick 10 reviews (and update that 10 if we write a better one!) and call them something like "writer's choice reviews," I think that would be nice to have that as an option to view. I like the way people can choose most helpful, ratings, most recent, etc.

Some people take a lot of pictures. Do you think we could add more pictures to scroll through in the photo corner?

I'm not sure I understand what "subscribe to reviews" means. Maybe to add a description of what that is, perhaps by toggling over that or clicking those words.

Maybe add a tab at the top for "discussion board" and "look up a writer" because I never think to click to the right for discussions. I usually go to community and then discussion. People who are new to the site may be more likely to go to a discussion board rather than clicking on community. People who are new to the site may also be more likely to look up another writer if they see that there's a tab at the top.

Overall, I think you guys have done a fantastic job including all sorts of cool things on the profile page. It's easy to navigate and I appreciate all the hard work that goes into all of your efforts. Keep up the GREAT work!

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback LoveIsJoy, Biggheart and Katrena. It is very much appreciated. Keep the ideas coming!

hey everybody-- a few others things to consider:

1. What do you want to see privately for yourself?

One thing we have thought about here is an orientation like:

My Friends (with all your friend related activity, people you may want to befriend)

My content (all of your reviews to browse, suggestions of things to write about, etc)

My profile (photos, extended questions, settings, etc)

 Would that be helpful or no?

2. What do you want to see publicly?  Do you want to control what others see?

What do you think is most important for people to see?

Would you want to customize the page or for us to just lay it out for you?

Do you want/need a blog on your profile page?

Do you want to import photos from sites like flickr or your photo albums?? 

Before I get to Jolie's questions, I love the profile page but agree with what has been said. Having said that and being fairly computer literate I'd love to do more with scribbles only because it's fun. Put up a Meez, for example...more pictures somewhere - be able to show our personalities more. I wonder how many people do read our scribbles. I think enhanced more people would read our scribbles and then read our reviews.

1. What do you want to see privately for yourself?

One thing we have thought about here is an orientation like:

My Friends (with all your friend related activity, people you may want to befriend)- Hmm - I like the people I may want to befriend because I just looked up dog lover and found someone I never had met. She hasn't written in a couple of months so I encouraged her to write but I'm not sure I would do that on my own a lot.

My content (all of your reviews to browse, suggestions of things to write about

      That may help new people - new people speak up:) i.e things to write about. I do think it's helpful to be reminded that an event is coming up or winter is coming and people want reviews about xxxx; however, I also feel a bit pressured by that so it's a double edged sword.

My profile (photos, extended questions, settings, etc) YES see above

Would that be helpful or no?

2. What do you want to see pubically? Do you want to control what others see?

What do you think is most important for people to see? How many reviews we've written - as I said before the most helpful numbers are misleading (in my humble view)

Would you want to customize the page or for us to just lay it out for you? Profile page? Customize with some things laid out by you.

Do you want/need a blog on your profile page? I like it

Do you want to import photos from sites like flickr or your photo albums?? Yes

Me again - do people like to see the # of votes they get? Maybe it's just me (and Bob) but my lack of votes - like two- on many reviews - makes me very nervous and somewhat upset. Maybe people just don't like the subject matter i.e. my future daughter in law's dog's pink purse or I'm just not one of the popular kids.

What do others think?

Profile page . . .

First, I like the personal pages. They are friendly and easy to follow for the most part. One of my favorite things to do is visit the profile pages and read the Scribbles and see the photos and read comments. Even when I'm maxed I can enjoy doing that.

The biggest thing that would help me is something indicating new folks who have read my work and added me. Sometimes those emails go to the spam box. I hope I've fixed that. Food Buzz has an inbox thing on the profile page. I can click that and see activity like fans added. I like that a lot. I hate to appear to be ignoring someone when it's just that I don't know they read my work and liked my stuff.

Along those same lines, I click to see fans and it does not page on next, next easily. I often end up back at the start. I think that's when I check someone out. I can't click back and be back where I was at. I have to start over on the list to check out folks. This is fans and friends.

More photo space would be great. I remember things visually. I recognize photos folks have up. When they change them all over with just the few slots available, then I get confused. I do love new pics though. I don't know if it would take up too much space, but I'd like to see more spaces for photos.

I would also love a space for a home page URL on profiles. I suppose that could be abused, but many spaces online allow a spot clearly marked as a home page from the user - web page, blog etc. I link back to VP but can't link to Yes You Can Grill from VP. Some members who are reading food might like the recipes. Let's hope so anyway (-: or I should hang up my web page. I'd also like to see other folks projects and many I would think do more personal work outside product reviews.

I'm not a huge stats and numbers person. I am pleased that people take the time to read and click good point etc. But it's the more social stuff I enjoy. I like comments and questions or just someone saying hi.

Icons of the products (esp the member photos) beside reviews would catch my eye as well. That is in looking at profile pages of other members.

Private message would be nice. I'm not likely to tell someone something in terms of writing in a public space. If I see a typo that changes the meaning, then I'd let someone know if I could do it in private. And example - someone said "bare with me." OK. We can all figure that one out. But, it really does read "get naked" with me literally. I would mention it and would want to fix it if I did that. But I would not put that on public comments.

I'd also like an email option. Optional only though. Some folks are fine with putting that up. Some aren't. In some cases, there may be times when a private email might be good. I have (a few times) posted mine. Something may not seem right for public discussion but may be important to a couple of members. An example here might be in the health area.

Jolie said…

hey everybody-- a few others things to consider:

I really like the Profile Page as it is - a lot of thought was put into it.  Some improvements would be to add more photographs. Also, someone else mentioned that navigating the Friends/Fans section is somewhat awkward - that could us a tweak.  I prefer keeping the Stats , Comments, and e-mail Private.  if the stats section can be upgraded at all it would be nice is we could  sort Stats by Posting Date. That's all I can think of - thanks for asking.

I like the profile page but if I could change anything it would be to make the reviews more visible on the main screen [instead of having to scroll down to them].  The other thing would be to make the link "to add as friend" a little larger.  Us "baby boomers" need larger print!   :)
Oh, and maybe if there was a way to have a red star or something next to the last three reviews commented on so you don't have to go through each one to find the new comment...  anybody else find that a bit frustrating?  Or, maybe that could be an option on sorting them... ????

I don't know if it is feasible or not but I love seeing the little green TOP 100 or TOP 500 circles in my stats... I'd love it if others could see them next to the review title.

Jo said…
Me again - do people like to see the # of votes they get? Maybe it's just me (and Bob) but my lack of votes - like two- on many reviews - makes me very nervous and somewhat upset. Maybe people just don't like the subject matter i.e. my future daughter in law's dog's pink purse or I'm just not one of the popular kids.

What do others think?

---

I don't really think much about the Helpful Votes one way or the other.  When you consider the thousands of visitors the VP website must get on a daily basis, it doesn't seem like 20 votes are any more impressive than 2 votes, statistically speaking.  (BTW, Jo, you are one of the most popular kids on my Friends list!  You were one of the first to welcome me and your reviews are always solidly written) :)

Maybe the HV are helpful to others, but I'm not more or less inclined to read a review because of them.  They're just not on my radar much at all.  I read reviews if they're something I'm interested in or if I enjoy the writer's work.  It's nice when my review gets top votes but I don't feel bad when they don't. 

I do like having access to the number of reads and the site rankings.  I do check those each day to see how I'm doing overall.  I think those numbers mean more to me than the Helpful Votes.

I'd like to be able to see more than 10 of my reviews at a time on my profile page.  I go back and look at the various categories and items that I've written about several times each month. 

Aside from that, I'm very happy with the profile pages. 

I like the profile page a lot. There are just a few things that I can think of. I like pics and would like to see the limit raised to maybe 15. People really can say a lot about themselves through the pics they choose.

Speaking of pics, I have tried many times to center my photo when using a new one for my icon and it won't work. Never did. I have to settle for my pic being off to the side or I have to go and crop it all up to get it right. I can only use a select few pics for an icon because the thing doesn't resize the photos like it used to when we were in beta. Would love to see that changed.

How about...

An "online now" icon that a member can choose to turn off or leave on. I think it's cool knowing who's online. That would be even cooler is we could send private messages to the person.

Or maybe just listing who's online at the bottom of the page or even a "130 people are viewing the site right now" thing. I like knowing I'm not alone.

Being even less intrusive, just putting the last time someone logged on would be nice. I like to know who's around and who isn't. Jeeze, I seem nosy!

More or different questions. Book that you're reading, etc. is a bit dull to me. Maybe have several questions we can choose from so that we can share what we want to share depending on the type of person we are.

Please find a way to let me know who is a fan but not a friend! I have a 40 person gap between who is my fan and who is my friend and I just do not know who the "fans" are that I didn't befriend. Usually I am waiting to see if they stick around and contribute. Now I have no idea who they are and my list is really big. Not as big as Jolie's, however. lol.

I guess we can use "My Favorites" as a way of marking things we want to review later. I have come across things that have been reviewed that I want to also review. I just started using "My Favorites" as a way to earmark them so I don't forget to review them. So I suppose we don't need a separate option to earmark things we would like to review later on (or that we might want to actually purchase).

I am a littttle leery of  a top friends feature. While I did that with my son and sister for months by removing them and readding them so they would be at the top of my list, I did that to keep up with them and their reviews. Now that we have immediate review alerts, I don't need to keep putting them at the top because I know immediately when they write a review. I think a "top friends" option could very well hurt some people's feelings. I would prefer a randomizer. Just randomly show three or five friends each time someone goes to my page, including me. That is what I did on MySpace and now no one is mad at me for not including them in my "top friends".

It would also really be helpful to me to automatically have a new friend added to my alerts. We would be able to change it (whether we want review alerts at all or immediate, daily, or weekly as we can now) but I forget to add new friends to my alerts and then don't get to their reviews unless I just happen to see them in the recent reviews area.

It would be cool to be able to use HTML for scribbles (Just bold and italics and such and maybe font colors). I would love to be able to add a pic of the day or something even if it's just 100x100. I just love to use icons to express my mood or whatever and the scribbles area is my place to decorate my page.

Please change the color scheme to deep purple. Just kidding. :) I am not in love with the classic blue color. It reminds me of everything. I mean...it is used everywhere on the net as the default color. But maybe give us the option of having our scribbles in a different color just for fun.

As for Helpful Votes, I did bring up keeping them private or perhaps shown to members only. I think it does nothing good to show outsiders that our reviews are only getting a couple of votes. We're big, we need to think big. I don't have a real issue with showing my HV's to the world but I also wouldn't mind hiding them to members only. Or whatever people want. I am not really hung up on numbers. I know people are busy and there are a lot of reviews to rate and mine can often slip by unnoticed by members. I have the stats to see that people ARE reading my stuff. But still, I can see that the HV's are an issue for many people and maybe we can figure out what makes most members comfortable.

This sounds like a lot but they are tiny things. My biggest issue is how to figure out which of my fans is on my friends list and I AM tags not being what I want to use for reviews and that isn't a profile page issue. I need to figure out a better way of accessing my million I AM tags and choosing ones I have already used rather than trying to remember them and only getting close. That is totally another issue.

That's all. I guess I am thinking of our profiles as more of a "community" feature to show who we are, our personalities, and our styles. I really enjoy profile pages and I am all for any cool changes. But I am perfectly happy without them too.

njchicaa said…

I'd like to be able to see more than 10 of my reviews at a time on my profile page.  I go back and look at the various categories and items that I've written about several times each month. 

Aside from that, I'm very happy with the profile pages. 

---

Ditto!

"do people like to see the # of votes they get?"

That's a good point jo.  Not b/c I dont like to see it, but b/c it takes up a lot of real estate.  If they removed the # of votes next to each review, you would have a longer space to fit the review title and possibly allow for more reviews per page.

"and maybe if there was a way to have a red star or something next to the last three reviews commented on so you don't have to go through each one to find the new comment"

Hey Meri, do you ever go to the Comments link (on the top of your profile page).  It shows all comments on all reviews sorted by date so you can easily see AND respond to comments without having to go to the review.  It's one of my favorite things here :)

Meri said…
I like the profile page but if I could change anything it would be to make the reviews more visible on the main screen [instead of having to scroll down to them].  The other thing would be to make the link "to add as friend" a little larger.  Us "baby boomers" need larger print!   :)
Oh, and maybe if there was a way to have a red star or something next to the last three reviews commented on so you don't have to go through each one to find the new comment...  anybody else find that a bit frustrating?  Or, maybe that could be an option on sorting them... ????

---

Meri, the easiest way I've found to see the latest comments is to click on the "comments" tab near the top and to the left of the profile page. This will give you the latest comments with or without your own comments on the page.

Katrena and vivasuzi-  I figured it out!  For some reason I had checked the box that included comments I had made so when I would click on it I only saw my comments. [apparently I comment more than others  :)]  THANKS.

Cross off that suggestion then... 

Jolie said…

hey everybody-- a few others things to consider:

1. What do you want to see privately for yourself?

One thing we have thought about here is an orientation like:

My Friends (with all your friend related activity, people you may want to befriend)

Definitely.... I like the idea of being able to "watch" someone I'm considering adding to my friends list, or someone who has just started to see how they are doing.

My content (all of your reviews to browse, suggestions of things to write about, etc)

My profile (photos, extended questions, settings, etc)

 Would that be helpful or no?

Love them all!  Great ideas

 

2. What do you want to see pubically?  Do you want to control what others see?

What do you think is most important for people to see?

I think what we have already and some of the suggestions that were already made are great for people to see.

Would you want to customize the page or for us to just lay it out for you?

Lay it out for us... I think the consistency of the profile pages is nice.  People know what they are going to find on the page and where to find it.  I think it gets too much like myspace once the option gets out there to customize.

Do you want/need a blog on your profile page?

That might be nice... I know some use their scribbles like that so it would be cool to have a designated place for stuff like that.

---

I sort of like the profiles as they are now, but if tweak you must, please consider these points:

Keep it simple and easy to navigate/read. Nothing bothers me more than a page that's too full of bells and whistles.. If you must add stuff, please keep it elegant and not too cluttered.

 I think the size of the helpful vote boxes by the reviews could be made smaller, assuming you decide to keep them in public view.  I'm trying to make up my mind on whether Helpful Votes should be viewed by the general reader as public data or kept strictly as in-house between VP and the reviewer, sort of like the stats counter in our profiles.

 Making more than 10 reviews show up on the profile might be good, but something would then need to be removed from profile pages or resized to make 20 (or whatever the default number ends up being) reviews appear on profiles.

 

Suggestion:  If you design the new Profile page and decide you can't put more than 10 reviews on the page, maybe you can add a way to see more reviews on another tab (next to comments, etc).  Then on that "Reviews" tab we could see like 100 reviews in a long list that's sortable and can page through 100 at a time.

The main reason I want this is b/c I sometimes forget if I reviewed something OR there are times my friend asks me about a product and I want to be able to quickly locate the review to send it to them (I avoid telling ppl directly, trying to pull in more members :-D)  Currently, I try to sort by I AM tags but often forget which ones I used on THAT review.  SO, all that said, having a way to see a lot (100 or so) per page would be helpful to me.  Whether or not you want the public to be able to have a view like that is totally up to you.

And this is just a "worth a mention" but some sites out there I've used have let me drag and drop things on my own page.  Think like My Yahoo does and how I can put something in left column, middle, right, etc.  I would tihnk it's awesome if I could drag my friends to the right, move my comments to the middle, whatever I wanted.  This could be just for "my eyes only" OR something that the public sees when they come to my page.

Just an idea, like I said, worth a mention, but I know it's probably a hard one to implement!

Hey Vytas,  I thought of something else but it's related to Stats so I'm not sure if that's included in the profile.  So disregard me if it's not related :)

But if it is..... would it be possible to have maybe one more drill down option in stats?  For example, right now you can filter on time period (30 days, etc) and category but for some people who have tons of reviews in one category that might still return a huge number of records.  Would it be possible to add another field for further filtering, such as date review was written or a search field to type in the name of the product?

Thanks! Bugg

(BTW, Jo, you are one of the most popular kids on my Friends list! You were one of the first to welcome me and your reviews are always solidly written) :)

Ohhh thanks:) You made my night!

I'm kind of new here at Viewpoints, but would like to throw in a few things.

 1) I would love to add some music to my page, at-least one song!

 2) It would be nice if we had our own type of backgrounds to choose from so everyones page does not look the same.

Other than that, I love what is!

I was wondering if you could make our profiles easier to read. By that I mean like show a list of the titles of our threads and where we posted our comments to, especially in the community message board? That way I can see where I last posted a comment by clicking on the link on my profile instead of trying to remember where. :)