Not a problem. This site is for our members. Whenever I hear a suggestion from one member, I always assume that sentiment represents the feelings of many...so don't ever be afraid to share your thoughts.
Believe it or not, we have what I'll just call a panel that reviews all of the ideas that come up. Everything gets written down (even when I'm driving and have ideas lol) and then we go through each of them and discuss the merits, drawbacks, benefits, and whatever else we can think of.
Where we are at today is the result of excellent teamwork, good judgement when it comes to managing a board, and a strong committment by all of us to analyze everything that's being offered out there on the net and find a way to do it better here on ECCIE. I hope that's what we have accomplished so far.
Goin Postal-I like your feedback. Keep it coming. I've got some similar feelings about the left-side column...actually im mixed. I would think the majority of people out there like it, and do care about the info and stats presented.....but im not completely sold on it being displayed on every single page. It's quite possible we may turn off all of the modules except the Main Menu everywhere except the front page where it makes most sense. But as I say, I gotta run it by the panel so we can get a few different perspectives on it.
As for the pixel sizes and such, those are not defaults. I felt it important at the beginning to expand those so we have some large attachments/images to look at. Point me to the specific issue regarding this and I'll see that it's addressed.
And now finally, the review form. Our goal: simplicity. After tons of thought and discussion, we decided that we actually did not want to have too many blanks and fields to fill in....we felt it would make it more cumbersome for the writer and confusing for the reader. Over the past year I've looked at hundreds of different review boards out there (even small local ones) and lots of different takes on the review form. Believe me, there are some forms out there that get pretty damn detailed, FAR more detailed than what we offer....but in those same cases I have seen some sentiment from membership that the ultra-detailed review forms were "overkill" From the writer's perspective, we want it to be his choice whether it's super-detailed or not..we don't really want to force him to go through a barrage of questions, check boxes, dropdowns, on just about everything under the sun, many items being irrelevant to most readers. Everyone's pressed for time these days, and a good review can be completed on the current form without a 45minute or more committment from the review writer. From the readers perspective, we want them to be able to easily access the info they need without even having to think too much about it. It's no secret our form is similar to that on ASPD, and that's for good reason. We feel it best represents what the hobbyists who are reading WANT to know and NEED to know about the session to make an informed decision.
That said, I really, really like the idea of a Public Comments section where the review-writer summarizes details of his session on topics NOT pertaining to private activities. (scheduling, was the incall a mess, etc. etc.) And then the ROS section becomes a section which discusses only aspects of the session pertaining to the private activities.
I think that idea is pretty cool, and will discuss it with the others.
One thing to note on the review form. For the end-user, it's impossible to see all of the aspects that go into having this review form the way it is, and having it posted in something like 95+ different forums. Unfortunately, it's not like we can go to one master template, make a change, and it applies globally to every form. The change will have to be made to each form, in every forum. 5 per city, in lots of cities....so my point is that something that sounds like a simple modification may take something like 20-30 hours to actually get done. A solution for this is to get our developer to write a script of some sort that will do just that...take one change and apply it across the board. It might be something I consider, because while the need to modify the review form doesn't come up all that often, it sure would make for a much easier task if we decide it's something that needs to be done.
Keep the suggestions coming, and if anyone else wants to chime in on the left hand column, go for it! We want to know what you think.
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