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I hate this new help "forum" system
Does anyone other than me have problems with this new 3rd party interface?
It sucks!
As poor as the old pbwiki Forums were, at least they were navigable, & usable.
Why, since the employee/responders are still the same, did pbwiki go to this system???
It sucks!
As poor as the old pbwiki Forums were, at least they were navigable, & usable.
Why, since the employee/responders are still the same, did pbwiki go to this system???
I’m pissed off
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Inappropriate?Do you have any specific frustrations about GetSatisfaction? We ran it by a large number of users and pretty much everybody we trialled it with found it a huge improvement. It keeps our staff much better in touch with users, lets us automatically suggest answers to people in need, is *far* more active than our forums ever were and is far more effective in getting people's questions answered correctly and timely.1 Comment
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ok this is 1st time back to check out site ... first thing I see that really displease me is "so & so" replied "n months ago" .... put a REAL date in there! "n" number of months ago has absolutely NO relevance in tracking, pbwiki did it so much better ... and I STILL HATE THIS INTERFACE!
Navigation (as promised by pbwiki) is no better, I'm still having difficulty following threads, I can't flag threads, etc, etc.
Again, why did pbwiki abandon ship to some 3rd party just for convenience?? You haven't done a thing here (that I can see) that really helps us poor users. Shame. -
Inappropriate?Yes, my frustration is that it's not only difficult to navigate the "Get Satisfaction" site, but that it's cluttered with every other organization that they've seduced. All that left hand c__p on the left hand side of the screen is of absolutely NO help to me (as a user needing help). And I truly miss the the "categorization" from the old Forum site.
Big Question ... why is your staff better able to answer questions here than they were at the old site. Doesn't make sense!!! (or is it just that you had lousy help before?)
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Inappropriate?Piney,
We'll be getting a cleaned, gutted, and skinned version of Satisfaction in the next few weeks that should minimize the other random stuff you see on the help site. We're also exploring integrating our authentication so you don't have to have a separate account here.
Those issues you mentioned notwithstanding, I really do think Satisfaction provides a much more usable and satisfying experience than forums. And we're getting literally several times more users engaging here than engaged on forums, so the numbers feel like they support that.
But your feedback has been heard; we'll work on getting a cleaner version in your hands pronto. -
Inappropriate?sounds great ... as long as you can make the threads more visible & easier to navigate.
Otherwise, be sure to find a way to put a "sticky" somewhere that's always visible no matter on what page a person in need of help is, so they can find where to go next. (Get my drift?)
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Inappropriate?I also think it is too difficult to use - there is too much overwhelming on the page - not enough help/information/instruction as to how to go about using it.... etc....
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the feedback - as David mentioned, we're working towards a new reskinned version of our community and I think it's going to resolve a lot of the issues that you've mentioned.
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?Another benefit of Get Satisfaction (speaking as one of its creators) is that we're actively refining it based on user input, so it's just going to get better and better. The more specific you can be with your suggestions the more we can address them. Thanks!
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?I find your help forum cumbersome and time consuming. pbwiki has changed so much since I last used it, so I have lots of questions. I spent way too much time in the past week getting 'lost' in the help forum.
I'm an educator, and there is no way my students will be able to navigate your help area.
Maybe you can look at Oracle's 'Think,com' help area. It's very clean and simple.
I’m frustrated.
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Inappropriate?Care to make some of those "numbers" public? Not that we don't trust you, but it sounds vaguely "touchy-feely". -
Inappropriate?Pineywoodsgal, you are not alone. PBwiki loves Get Satisfaction, and that's all that matters. As for the rest of us - good luck trying to find a thread you posted in a couple of weeks ago.
LOL - even now, there are 10 users online in the old forums. I seem to recall a commitment by some PBwiki staffer to migrate all the useful threads from the old forums over here - is that ever going to happen? -
Inappropriate?Shirley, I'm sorry you're having trouble getting the help you need.
I notice that you haven't actually posted any questions (with your current username anyway) yet. You're right though, we have changed a lot and our new community area will only improve as folks start to ask more and more questions.
As an educator, you may also want to head over to educators.pbwiki.com where we're putting together a resource for other educators like you.
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Inappropriate?If it's a topic you posted a few weeks ago, you can find it by clicking the "You" link in the top navigation bar. Your dashboard has all your topics handily organized in one place. We're definitely going to make the navigation clearer.
In the coming weeks we'll be aggressively releasing improvements to every aspect of the interface, so just keep the specific suggestions coming and you're likely to see your issues resolved quickly. In particular, we're working on innovations to help people find what they're looking for more easily.
Mr. Fawkes and others: if you could provide us examples of what you were looking for but couldn't find we can keep that in mind when testing out refinements. You can add suggestions here. We're working our tails off trying to serve you well.
I’m a positive thinker
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Inappropriate?"Your dashboard has all your topics handily organized in one place."
I have 73 posts. Rather than listing them concisely, by topic, they contain huge blurbs, and are spread out over 14 pages. That's not useful to me.
As for suggestions for improving Get Satisfaction: That's quite the sore point. PBwiki has always taken the stance that they will let their users solve their difficult problems, rather than doing the work themselves. Hell, I've actually seen PBwiki employees post questions asking how to do something in PBwiki, hoping that a customer will answer! Customers come here to get answers, not be unpaid employees. It's hard enough working around that, trying to get things done in PBwiki. I have neither the time nor the inclination to help another company do their jobs for them. Presumably, that's what you pay your employees for. This "Web 2.0" notion of getting your customers to do your work for you doesn't sit well with everyone. I can just envision getting an assignment from my boss, then asking him "well, how would *you* do that?"
I’m just sayin'
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Inappropriate?Let's continue this off-topic discussion over here.
I’m happy to give feedback to the companies whose products and services I use.
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Inappropriate?Excuse me, Ms. Muller, but the "topic" here is "I hate this new help forum". Mr. Muller specifically asked for examples of *why* we hate your product, and I provided them. I'm not sure how you consider my reply "off-topic".
I’m shocked and appalled
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Guy, you're RIGHT ON!! Go, dude, keep blasting!
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Inappropriate?I understand, Guy Fawkes. However, since the conversation has diverted to the Get Satisfaction service in general and is now less about PBwiki's use of it I think it would be a good idea to move it over to the Satisfaction area so as not to distract from PBwiki trying to help their customers with their core product.
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Sorry it's taken me so long to reply (I started the thread), but Guy is totally correct and you are side-stepping. This whole entire thread is NOT about "diversion to Get Satisfaction" but about the lack of pbwiki itself in providing the right kind of customer support!!! (I meant to post this "n" months ago, but here it is today. Deal with it. The old pbwiki forums, for all their problems, were SO MUCH BETTER!!!
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Inappropriate?Wow. Just wow. You *really* don't get it, do you? This topic has nothing to do with "PBwiki trying to help their customers with their core product", no matter how hard you try to make it so. It's about "problems with this new 3rd party interface".
I’m hopeful that this is not a typical response
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Inappropriate?If I may correct the record, Mr. Fawkes, I didn't ask for reasons why anybody hates anything, but rather, how we can improve the experience for everyone. The latter is a productive discussion, whereas the former just makes us feel bad :(
The issue you brought up instead was whether community support *in general* is exploitive. I can understand how Amy considered this to be a distinctly different topic, but certainly one worthy of discussion. -
Inappropriate?No one "makes" you feel bad. If that's how you choose to deal with criticism, then you are free to do so. But, as an adult, you are free to feel however you please. Please don't blame others for your choice.
N.B. - *This* reply is probably off-topic, but, as Get Satisfaction lacks the "private messaging" feature provided by more mature/robust forum engines, there's no place else to post it. -
Inappropriate?Appropriately, "Thor" has wielded the banhammer upon me. Apparently, "kindness" is a requirement for using Get Satisfaction (and, by extension, getting support from PBwiki). I wish all the PBwiki users the best of luck.
I’m outta here.
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Inappropriate?You've been banned? I've been watching your replies and agree with them entirely. The whole point of this thread, since I started it, was to let PBwiki know that their original forums were 110% better than this one. It seems they didn't want to implement Captcha or banning, so there were lots of post problems. Now here were are, forced to use this system with both captcha & banning. Go figure. PBWiki, re-implement your own system!!
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Inappropriate?Private Messaging was one of the better features of PBwiki. When "HELP" didn't or wouldn't provide answers, I often got help from other users thru P.M.
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Inappropriate?Hm. I'm sorry that GetSatisfaction isn't, well, satisfying you. As I may have mentioned, we'll be rolling out a more integrated help system (also powered by GS, but with PBwiki skinning, integrated authentication, etc) in the next few weeks. I really hope that helps to address the issues you've had. We really are just trying to provide straightforward and affordable support for our users.
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Inappropriate?How can you affect anything that's here on Get Satisfaction?
It's the original PBwiki Forums that are what we need back again! -
Inappropriate?For the record, Guy Fawkes has not been banned. If he had, he would not have been able to log in and post his reply.
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Inappropriate?For the record, I was told: "So in the event you do participate on the site again, I need to ask you to show the kindness to others that you'd expect returned." I neither expect nor desire kindness in this context, and I am both aware of and comfortable with my tone in this discussion. I interpreted that statement to mean "do not return with that attitude". It was a civil, gentleman's banning, to be sure, but the intent was clear: "This is Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, and we aim to keep it that way."
If he was not asking me to leave unless I play nice, then I apologize. -
Inappropriate?As a reminder to everyone, we do have a set of community guidelines, which we encourage everyone to follow: http://getsatisfaction.com/community_... -
Inappropriate?I am surprised no one from Get Satisfaction linked to their recent blog post about their upcoming features.
These new features include a better search process (already implemented, thank you guys, it's awesome!), merging topics that have the same question, deprecating old topics that are out of date so they don't confuse people looking for information on a new version, and I remember hearing something about private messaging, which may be further down on the roadmap.
Coming at a problem or issue with anger, frustration and hatred is often the least constructive way to solve it. We try to be as positive as we can when trying to explain and fix things, but there's only so far any of us can go if no one's willing to put aside their emotional reactions and listen to anyone else.
And I know I'm not the only one who thinks this. -
Inappropriate?Hello everyone.
I signed-up to get satisfaction.com about 8 hours ago. From what I could pick up just reading some of your replies in this particular topic-thread, it sounds like getsatisfaction is a fairly new site. If that is correct, then I'm afraid it really will take more time for the site to do a better job supporting people in finding the help they're after. That's just how collaborative sites are. Of course, the improvements you're planning to make the site easier to navigate/find help will also help a lot.
But I believe the thinking behind the site (a collaborative help system, if I may style a description) is the right way to go. It will (eventually) be richer and more helpful, and will be all these more quickly, than any traditional "me company, you customer" help desk could ever hope to be.
It is not exploitative because (a) users who contribute to the site do so knowing full well that their contribution is meant to and will be re-used by the site to help others, and (b) any user can always choose not to contribute and simply take what they find useful with no ill effects to their standing as a site member.
Now, so as not to be accused of being "off-topic" I agree with the orginal observation that the interface is cluttered and makes it difficult to find what you may be after. A better (read simpler) search function is a must. An auto-generated context-sensitive list of suggested links might also help.
More power to getsatisfaction! Keep up the good work!
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Thanks so much for your thoughts and suggestions, Rene!
Get Satisfaction has been around for about a year, however, PBwiki has only recently started using it as a replacement for their forums so they are still working on getting their customers up to speed here and porting valuable content over from their forums.
A "collaborative help system" as you called it is a good way to describe it. There are several companies that have been using Get Satisfaction for quite some time now and have had great success with helping their customers and creating vibrant communities where the customers also help each other -- Timbuk2, Twitter, HubDub, Joby, Pownce -- to name a small handful.
We are constantly evolving the interface and features of Get Satisfaction to best suit the needs of our users and feedback like yours is truly valuable to us. If you have further input as you dig deeper into Get Satisfaction we'd love to hear it over here as that's where our whole team is participating and your input will be sure to be heard.
I’m listening
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Inappropriate?Still a fair amount of clutter... and the biggest problem for me is that it's too hard to quickly read the new posts. With only six topics to a page, I have to load the next page way too often - I usually give up after two or three pages.
Is this something that can be customized by each user? -
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