Difference between revisions of "SuggestionBox"

Encouraging Community Reviews

Making it easier

InfluenceUs is now live! On every domain page, you'll see an InfluenceUs link. We now have to write good documentation for it. Give it a try? TedErnst (talk)

Motivating more contributions

(I had given this some thought before hearing about Googlepedia.)

• Recognition. Add a section on each page that lists the top-n contributors to the page or Category. Could be subjectively designated by staff, or even better, automatically generated by a hard-to-game algorithm. Is there another place to recognize most-active contributors?
• Prizes. This could be one (or a few) "big" prizes, or a greater number of small prizes (e.g., an AboutUs t-shirt).
• Revenue sharing???

-- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 11:56, 15 December 2007 (PST)

Good idea! We have thought about how to do uncontests - since we struggle to see how we could implement a contest in a collaborative space. The idea of top - n contributors is good, also could be editors in your circle. ~~ MarkDilley | talk

Different type, templating idea?

Heya there. =]

I have somewhat of an idea/feature I'd like to see. Seeing how you guys use "popup divs" for referrals, promote company, page alerts, etc, how about adding those for the 'Login' and 'Signup' buttons? I would love that and a bit of AJax for that (or even a refresh I'd settle for) for a quick login or signup process.

--Nick^{([talk]-[HFAD]-[contribs]-[email])} 20:59, 10 January 2008 (PST)

I love the idea. Not sure where it will fall on the development priorities list. Maybe you want to add it there? OurWork -- TedErnst (talk) 23:59, 10 January 2008 (PST)

WikiPages table style

Is there a style that a user can modify to change the appearance of "WikiPages" generated tables? -- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 21:40, 10 January 2008 (PST)

Good question. I'll see if Vinh can answer it. -- TedErnst (talk) 00:01, 11 January 2008 (PST)

useful links sidebar

Please consider adding to the useful links sidebar:

1. Concerns FAQ
2. Suggestion Box

-- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 10:56, 12 January 2008 (PST)

Usability

Hello, I see that your page template reserves a large amount of space for the top banner, the menus and advertising on the right, and other acillary information. This leaves only a small amount of space for the actual content.

If I reduce my screen to 800x600, then the ancillary stuff takes up almost all of the screen, and the page title takes up the rest. leaving none of the actual content visible.

I hope you will keep these observations in mind as you continue to improve your site.

Rahul

P.S. The editing JavaScript is probably broken when used with Opera, and some of the buttons become nonfunctional. Editing works OK if I switch off JavaScript. I have not had any problems with Wikipedia, so perhaps your custom JavaScript uses some non-generic features.

I will point our designer, Vinh here. Thanks for the suggestions! TedErnst (talk) 04:35, 22 January 2008 (PST)

Influence Us badge for use on my site

I'd like to use my AboutUs page as the place were my customer's go to leave reviews. So I'd like to have a link from my site (estampeinc.com) to my AboutUs page for Estampe Auto Dealer Supplies. I see in the Help section were you offer 'AboutUs' link badges/buttons I can add to my site ... which is fine and would work. But do you offer a 'Influence Us' badge/button that would link directly to the form on my company wiki page? Or is that not an efficient approach

Great idea! We need to do this! -- TedErnst (talk) 11:02, 7 March 2008 (PST)

adult content

12stepworkbook.org Fixed. -- TedErnst (talk) 08:35, 10 March 2008 (PDT)

Different ways to add content

I like AboutUs. Really. So I hesitate to suggest features which might not coincide with its original intent. However, since I’m one of those people, it’s hard for me to resist.

• Could the default be to not CamelCase domain names?
  
  Seriously, the automatic CamelCase generator gets it wrong quite a lot of the time, and can make links to those pages problematic.
  
  

Links work, not matter how they're capitalized. We're that good. :-) Plus, CamelCase domains are much easier to read! We love them! TedErnst (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2008 (PDT)

• Bulk addition of sites to a watch list.
  
  Is that possible? I haven’t found a way to do it yet, but it would be nice to just batch-add all my domains to my watch list so that I can access them easily.
  
  

The default now is to add any page you edit to your watchlist, so if you're making your pages better, they're on your watchlist. TedErnst (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2008 (PDT)

• Fast, programmatic way to add “PossibleSpamSite” to a site.
  
  I’d like to be able to write a script to do this rather than have to go through the webpage when I’m doing spam analysis. I realize that this is potentially ripe for abuse—you wouldn’t want to be able to let unauthorized users edit pages willy-nilly with a script—but it would be useful to permit certain users to do so provided that they’d proven themselves responsible.
  
  

There are mediawiki bots out there that people use for various things. Please let us know if you're going to run one and we'll check it out and okay it. TedErnst (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2008 (PDT)

• Adding sites to AboutUs programmatically, with the same caveats as the last item above.
  
  In other words, it would be nice if I could have a script I could execute that would check to see if a page already existed for a site, and if not, would then add a page for it.
  
  

This is exactly how the Bot works now. If you search for a domain, you either go to that page if it exists, or it gets created if it doesn't. TedErnst (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2008 (PDT)

I'd even be willing to write an AboutUs Perl module for this kind of thing, if you folks permitted such remote operations on your end.

[Revised.]

--Mcglk 15:58, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

Website vs. URL

Why not use the name of the website instead of the URL, I mean its much easier plus thats what all other wikis do.--xgmx (T | C | D | R | DR)

Other wikis are not focused on websites the way we are. Website names can change all the time, while a url is forever. Sure, the content can change, and even move to a new url, but the old url is still that old url. We are exploring ways to include the name of the company along with the url. Hopefully we'll have something to show relatively soon. TedErnst (talk) 08:41, 28 August 2008 (PDT)

Display RSS on AboutUs page

The current RSS syntax allows the viewer to drag a feed to their own reader, but ideally it would display the feed right on the AboutUs page. Perhaps it could show the 5 most recent entries from the feed similar to the way google gadgets can be customized.

I really think this is a great idea! -- TedErnst (talk) 08:48, 28 August 2008 (PDT)

You've really got to work on your usability. I'm a designer w/ over a decade online and I find this site absolutely unusable. I have no idea how to integrate several of my sites under my user nor do the sites - which I KNOW are in aboutus.org - come up when I search for them.

I think your idea is good but the execution is horrid. I think you should concentrate more on navigation and less on self promotion on the page. If a user is logged in, then he or she really doesn't require 2 columns of YOUR ads, right? Clearly if someone has signed up, they've taken the bait.

I can't find anything on this site. None of the links make sense, for instance, if I click on "my watchlist" I go to the blank list... But is there a link to ADD? NO. So, how do I add items? Hmm? It's the same for just about every link.

I don't think your typical user will take the time to read multiple help entries to do every little thing.

I don't have the time for that.

Make your site more usable and I'll use it more. Every time I log in, I end up reading help articles for 15 minutes then leaving because I just don't have the time.

Reply on your talk page. I'm sorry that our site isn't user-friendly for you... wiki is quite a different thing and that's why you would be unfamiliar with many of the things such as your watchlist. I invite you to take our tours if you haven't already and to join us in our chat room where we can answer any questions you have. Best, Kristina (contact me) 10:13, 11 June 2008 (PDT)

Please remove

Please remove audrey j bourbonnais from your aboutus page. Thanks

Hi Audrey. Which page? -- TedErnst (talk) 08:52, 17 June 2008 (PDT)

AddToAny or ShareThis

i think you should use a better type of sharing your articles than addthis. what i'm talking about is sharethis (check it out at sharethis.com). i think it would fit better into your pages.

Say more about the benefits of switching? Are you just talking about visuals or something else? TedErnst (talk)

well, both visual and something else. visual because you can customize the color of the popup to match your site and you can choose which services (social bookmarking sites, email, blog posters, etc) to allow to show. the something else is giving visitors a vast amount of options to choose how to share the page while still not taking up much room.

Okay. We'll check it out. Thanks! -- TedErnst (talk) 10:48, 8 July 2008 (PDT)