Loading Profile...
Unsatisfied with Get Satisfaction Template
The template for discussions here at "Get Satisfaction" are insidiously controlling, and corral discussions into certain formats to satisfy people-management needs of the company itself, and engender and constrain thinking modes that fit Internet forums-culture that are not conducive to free and democratic thought.
1. The mandate to use only "one or two paragraphs" in a discussion -- this should not be predetermined.
2. In comments to comments, the text is rendered lighter, and all the points,
even if spacing is inserted, smushed together, to ensure that they get less read -- there is nothing that says comments to comments are by their very nature less relevant, and that's a pre-termination by Get Satisfaction about the meaning of discourse that is too intrusive.
At the very least, they need to enable spacing within comments to comments to make them legible and not pre-determine their relevance through font/layout decisions.
3. For some reason, on some parts of the discussion, a window of only 2 lines open to decrease the liklihood of typing more than two lines, and on others, a whole window opens to encourage the typing of paragraphs. This seems like some pre-determination of user behaviour and again, management technique to corral discussions.
4. Another pre-determined intrusive template is the notion that one "has to pick a product or service" but Get Satisfaction *itself* isn't among them; one is also urged to adopt a silly MMORPGy happy face. These are cultural artifacts.
1. The mandate to use only "one or two paragraphs" in a discussion -- this should not be predetermined.
2. In comments to comments, the text is rendered lighter, and all the points,
even if spacing is inserted, smushed together, to ensure that they get less read -- there is nothing that says comments to comments are by their very nature less relevant, and that's a pre-termination by Get Satisfaction about the meaning of discourse that is too intrusive.
At the very least, they need to enable spacing within comments to comments to make them legible and not pre-determine their relevance through font/layout decisions.
3. For some reason, on some parts of the discussion, a window of only 2 lines open to decrease the liklihood of typing more than two lines, and on others, a whole window opens to encourage the typing of paragraphs. This seems like some pre-determination of user behaviour and again, management technique to corral discussions.
4. Another pre-determined intrusive template is the notion that one "has to pick a product or service" but Get Satisfaction *itself* isn't among them; one is also urged to adopt a silly MMORPGy happy face. These are cultural artifacts.
I’m confident
Follow this discussion to get notifications on your dashboard.
-
Inappropriate?Hi Prokofy,
It's our mission to foster open conversation around products, services and companies in a way that leads to productive outcomes. There are many places to have discussions online, each with their own goals. Our service, Get Satisfaction, is about creating a trusting, mutually respectful environment for people inside and outside companies to work together towards common ends. If there's a "thinking mode" we're encouraging, this is it.
The design of our pages reflects our focus on specific user goals (i.e. answering questions, solving problems, suggesting ideas) *in addition* to unstructured discussion. We certainly appreciate the design feedback you've provided, but I want to explain some of the decisions so you don't think we're trying to be "insidiously controlling." Perhaps if you understand our goals you'll appreciate why we've made the decisions we've made, and why they generally work well.
Here are specific replies to your numbered items:
1. We do not limit the amount of text that can be used in a discussion, but we will review the copy around the input area to see if this could be clearer.
2. We have four topic types--Questions, Problems, Ideas and Discussions--and the first three have specific outcomes and hence tools we're providing. For Questions the outcome is one or more answers. Under each reply in a Question topic there is a button:
This allows the community to vote up the best answers to a question. In order to support side comments that are not being proposed as answers, we have broken out comments in both form and function.
You could say that this is "controlling," but it serves the very specific outcome we're after here, which is to produce answers, while still allowing for open conversation.
Nonetheless, we are actively refining design styles to enhance legibility, and your input there is helpful.
3. You're right that the comment input form is much smaller than the general reply form. We wish to avoid Question topics becoming overloaded with lengthy off-topic discussions. But that doesn't mean we don't want those conversations to happen: to the contrary, we encourage participants to start new topics where these related (or unrelated!) discussions can be developed.
4. If I understand your issue correctly, you wanted to associate your feedback with Get Satisfaction when you were posting from another company community, correct? In any case, we agree with you that this should work better, and are working to make it as easy as possible to post about any product from anywhere.
As for the "MMPORGy happy face," we provide the "Satisfactometer" (as we call it) to allow people a clear way to express their emotional state, and a quick way for companies to gauge the mood of their community. You don't have to use it, of course, but many people appreciate the opportunity to add that extra dimension.
Once again, we aren't trying to be all things to all people, but rather provide a solution to the specific kinds of issues people have around their products and the companies that make them. Because of this focus, there are a lot of carefully designed interactions here that allow signal to rise above noise.
I hope this helps!
I’m appreciative of the feedback
-
Inappropriate?Thor,
I think one of the problems you face here with this template is a that you have pre-determined and become set about your notion that "discussion" or "debates" are similar in content and form to "getting help" or "asking a question" or "tech support". They aren't. So that's why discussions are particularly poorly served by this sort of template, that privileges some points over others, even making the typeface lighter (I had never seen that, and it is darn creepy).
While threaded discussions may feel like an iron-clad coded technical tree to you, in fact they are organic, meandering, and human-powered, not machine-powered. That means that interesting thoughts can show up not just in some "main part of the tree" but in a comment to a comment.
By smushing the paragraph into mush and making the typeface lighter, you're pre-determining the importance of the content by drastically interfering with the user experience. Don't do this. All content made by users should be clear, and should have equal visibility as to typeface and paragraphing space.
By breaking out comments to the smushed-up lighter paragraphs because you believe they "don't answer the question," you're failing to see that the answers/tech support mode engineers are setting on the public just doesn't *work* for democratic public discourse in *discussions* that may be conceptual or thematic in nature, not dominated by a "question/technical problem" with a "answer/tech support" solution.
Another problem you face is a pre-determination that each and every problem or discussion works toward some positive outcome. Some won't. Some may merely be discussions that people have to try to bring clarity in their own minds about the usage of a product or its features, and may never "go anywhere". And that's ok. No need for false symmetry and pre-cooking happy little tree outcomes.
The idea that questions should be "voted up or down" is pretty creepy, too. I realize this is fashionable socmedia social engineering, but users simply ignore it much of the time -- that's how they protest. Such systems are gamed or used arbitrarily and don't mean anything. A question hasn't somehow become intrinsically "better" just because Heather got her little girlfriends to come and plus her up.
Re: the ability to move to the right forums. Some features of the forums *about* Twitter in fact are functions not of Twitter but Get Satisfaction, and it helps in clarity by being able to swiftly pick it out of the product picker and move to the right forum.
The happy face stuff is really Sesame Street. We're adults here and don't need emoticons forced on us as an option for each post.
And you're wrong that we "don't have to use them." You've stacked the deck. By putting out a message that a post has less value unless we mine the depts of our teenage emo selves and find "how we feel," our question is not as valid, it has a "medium" value instead of a "high" value.
That leads to inflation in the system as people game it and pretend to be happy just to boost the visiblity and franking of their question in your mechanistic system.
Remember, you are in beta. That means you can get criticism and change things.
That means you don't accept as set in stone all kinds of little narratives you as a company tell yourself, like "Because of this focus, there are a lot of carefully designed interactions here that allow signal to rise above noise."
I'm here to tell you that you've created unnecessary noise and static on the line in people's comments section by smushing their paragraphing and making type lighter. Those comments-to-comments need to count equally. And I'm here to tell you that forcing happiness or sadness on me in the process of rating my question are an unacceptable noise from the media coder.
Media should mediate, and not get in the way.
Prokofy -
Inappropriate?Thanks again for your feedback. We are actively refining the design every day based on the input from all our participants. It's at the heart of what we do.
-
Inappropriate?http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/sg-zhit'.html
Looking forward to hearing from other customers and not just the mods.
EMPLOYEE