alan's dashboard

Now that I understand things better, have turned off e-mail notifications in my getsatisfaction prefs, and use the dashboard a lot more...

I think the solution might be pretty simple. One button for "I have the problem too," and one button to toggle "Follow this topic," which would change to "Stop following this topic" depending on one's status. i.e. separate the assumption that: if you post or have the same problem, you want to follow it. or vice versa.

Now that email flood is no longer a problem for me, I want to follow some of the security issues for twitter, but I don't necessarily have them & don't want to mess up the metric (like twitter cares ;-)).

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re: e-mail notifications, a footer with directions to turn off e-mail notifications (with a hyper-link), and suggestion to bookmark their dashboard (w/ hyperlink) might help.

exador23, I make that same mistake all the time in Yahoo Mail Classic. You need to find the message in your spam folder and actually view it, as if you intend to read it. In the View Message page, you'll find a [Not Spam] button. (Sorry for the off-topic reply, Lane. I couldn't resist.) – mdy, on May 22, 2008 02:12

and yes, i realize that we should be hyperlinking the hyperlinks. :) – Lane Becker, on May 22, 2008 00:54

yup. yahoo mail, even: http://getsatisfaction.com/yahoo/prod... – Lane Becker, on May 22, 2008 00:54

oops. i know this doesn't go here, but while clearing out the last batch of notifications I accidently hit the SPAM button in Yahoo Mail Classic instead of the DELETE button. already spent 1/2 hour trying to figure out how to undo it. Is Yahoo on here yet?

working on it now. I tend to look at things holistically and dividing things into categories is a problem for me ;-) – exador23, on May 21, 2008 23:34

Aha! a worry-free solution for the time being. Thank you. It wouldn't be such a big deal except I use a yahoo account exclusively for on-line stuff so as to avoid spam in my secretive pop mail account, so no rules to direct these update notifications to a separate folder & cleaning out the floods is a tedious task. – exador23, on May 21, 2008 23:32

exador, you make a great point. we should respect the "stop following" link @ the top of the page, even when you follow on with a post. i'll talk with the guys about what it will take to make that happen.

Exador, I'm like you, I think GSFN emails me too much.

The way I deal with it is I turn off email notifications.



You may have already seen that, so I hope I'm not sounding snarky.

Something that may not be clear enough in Get Satisfaction is that when you post a topic or a reply, we start you "following" a topic. This implicit following is an important feature for most of our users, as it lets them receive relevant replies to the topic (or their reply) in their email.

For those of us that don't like to receive much email, that feature is a bit inconvenient.

Hey exador23, would you mind starting a new Idea with some of the great stuff you suggest in the latter half of this reply? We have plans to do some major work on the dashboard and your feedback is very helpful to us. Thanks again, and keep it coming! – Cameron Walters, on May 21, 2008 22:53

I would really like to see a change in the 'following' behavior for getsatisfaction.

I totally agree that the default should be to NOT receive e-mail notifications, with an option to receive them, and perhaps with further options to get a notification when an employee posts on an issue. I'd think this would lighten the load on your servers also.

http://getsatisfaction.com/satisfacti...

it's become particularly annoying when I click "I have this problem too", immediately click "stop following", read the replies, post, and then have my inbox flooded because a post apparently starts you "following" the topic again.

I would love to see my dashboard simplified. perhaps with a simple list of topics I've participated in, and a count next to it showing the # of replies since my last visit. Clicking a particular topic would then show the chronological participation ~for that topic~ that is currently splayed confusingly all over the place.

If things were done this way, I could see each topic having a check ~on my dashboard~ for whether I'd like to see updates for that topic. Or perhaps just send me text version of this simplified dashboard tracking to my e-mail once a day as a digest.

btw. I love getsatisfaction. the idea. the implementation so far. the open-ness of your company to new ideas, and your responsiveness. Huge kudos. I tell people about you often.

Well Lyle, I have no idea if you'll see this comment at all, but I hope the settings are working properly! If they are not, can you please start a topic describing in detail what settings you have, how you expect them to work, and what's actually happening? Thanks very much! – Cameron Walters, on May 21, 2008 18:21

I just signed up for a GetSatisfaction account today. Started following some of the hot Twitter topics, and then when I was getting too many emails, visited the web page for that topic and clicked the "Stop following" button. Still kept getting emails. I've now changed my account settings so that (hopefully) it won't send me any emails, period---hopefully that will do the trick!

I'm the culprit here. As Scott says, the code that used to handle following when coming from an email was recently deleted (accidentally) in conjunction with the topic page redesign. I promise we're not trying to spam you.

I'll be fixing the link in your email today. The links on the website still work properly, so you can visit a topic to stop getting updates with one more click. I'll update here when this is fixed. Thanks for catching it!

Aw, thanks motownmutt! Believe me, the pleasure is all mine. Happy to help! 8-) – mdy, on May 07, 2008 15:57

I'm not sure, but I think after it takes you back to the original topic, there's a small link on the page that re-asks to stop following. I clicked on that, and so far no more emails. Someone want to go on the panopticon TOS thread and throw some troll-bait out to test it?

Incidentally, I thought there was an option you had to click to get emails, but it appears to default to it now. Speaking for myself, I preferred to be asked before being subscribed to the thread, but others may feel differently.

As always mdy, thank you for keeping such a keen eye out. I'm constantly being re-impressed with your ability to keep up on topics, and your consistent helpfulness. It's a great pleasure.

Just piping in to say that the problem appears to still exist as of a half hour ago.

motownmutt: I've clicked "stop following this topic" 2-3 times, but still getting emails from getsatisfaction.