Revive Forum
i noted with great distress on my much-belated return that the forum has turned from a hugely active and cornerstone keystone aspect of LB and a major part of newbies' love of LB, into a nearly dead unwagging tail.
you may recall i flagged up this likelihood after the major rejigging of the website's interface (2005? 2006?). which effectively hid the forum. i warned then that this would kill the forum and in the long term would kill new sales. eliminating new-blood in any community has SERIOUS consequences.
sadly, i was spot-on.
the forum is currently cactus. new posts only very occasional. (critically) when they are posted, they are posted with language implying lack of expectation of response, and only really in one tiny part of the forum.
i can't really describe the horror of my reaction without sounding over-the-top. basically: i'm looking at the end of a company within 2 years. a company that should by rights be DOMINATING a sector of ENORMOUS interest, as witness 43folders' explosion.
PLEASE. llamas. put the forum back where people can see it. PLEASE.
a little discoverable-if-you're-hunting-for-it link buried in the where-i'm-expecting-ads-so-won't-read sidebar doesn't cut it. (i only noticed this by accident when a bandwidth slowness paused the Refresh and it was the only thing visible. i'd been answering posts on the knew-it-was-there-so-found-it forum for nearly an hour at that stage, and was quite startled to see the link)
top bar. top left or top right. where people will LOOK.
http://asktog.com/ <-- tognazzi was the primary architect on the macintosh user interface's specifics
http://goodexperience.com/
kill the Search slot (this need only be a link that people can and WILL find if they want it), kill the Downloads slot (likewise-- people will expect this in Products), put in a MAJOR toplink to the forums.
i'd suggest: full-left (people wanting to buy will Look for Products/Downloads; people wanting to search will Look for Search, typically either bottom or a clearly separate textbox). with perhaps a "What?" link immediately to its right. regain the humour. regain the human-touch your site no longer has.
we love you. we want to see you guys flitting about in private planes and landing on your private aircraft carriers so you can stroll into your private yachts lashed to their sides.
your current website design ticks all the right consultants' boxes. and fails all your target market.
critically, the shining glittering prize of your website, that was a standout advantage relative to all your competitors and had an apple-like evangelist-creating aspect about it, has died. your COMMUNITY has died. all your old previously-longstanding evangelists have faded away, even though newcomers are still citing their posts 4 years later.
marketing consultants are nearly all parasites.
you got it right the first time.
please, for your own sake and for the sake of those who love your product, go back to catering to your users, not your consultants' bandwagons.
TRUST your early instincts.
they created your genius product, after all.
actively ENCOURAGE newcomers into the forums.
actively ENCOURAGE powerusers to show newbies better ways to use your genius creation.
BOTH will feel more strongly about you as a result
A lot of misperceptions to clear up here
Hello there dear Darcy,
Thanks for getting in touch with us, and it is always lovely to have you participating here in the forums.
We love you too, while we are not looking for a private plane, aircraft carrier, or a lavish lifestyle, a boat certainly sounds like fun to me! ;-)
I have to say that there are a lot of mistaken impressions here and assumptions that are just plain incorrect that I can't just let stand.
For one thing, the doom and gloom is really out of place.
We just released the iPhone version of Life Balance. We have an influx of new people coming in through the App Store. I have to just do a happy llama dance and say a HOORAY for that! It's a new product, and Apple hasn't got everything worked out either, but it's interesting and fun to be in the mobile software biz again. I love the iPhone, and we're doing a lot of work to make that new product a whopping huge success.
(*I do want that boat!*)
That said, some of the new iPhone folks may never bother to visit our web site. I hope they do, because we have a lot to offer, but it is not a given that they found us here and then went to the App Store to buy. More likely the other way around.
The forum posts are just not the only game in town anymore as far as ways of getting in touch with us. I would say that the Community is nearly overwhelming us with communication at this point, but that conversation is spread across the multi-media map in surprising ways. It is not centralized in the forums anymore. So from your point of view, I can confirm that is definitely true and a valid perception.
Overall, across all platforms, we are not looking at decreased communication, but increased and shifted communication. There is WAY MORE communication coming in to us from many different channels. We have people talking with us through Twitter, listening to podcasts, watching the YouTube video of the iPhone demo, following along through RSS feeds, replying to newsletters, browsing the site from their cell phones, finding us through the Apple site, etc. We are building audiences in other places.
For technical support, many folks seem to prefer to post in private to our helpdesk, because it is more secure to get into details of their personal Life Balance questions.
The forums are still here for community members to answer each other's questions and to hob nob. These forums are here for you, and if you feel that they are languishing, then you can be part of the solution too. I was very pleased that you took some time to help some newcomers get started. That's all kinds of wonderful, and the posts you made were genuinely helpful.
I certainly don't get everything right. I experiment and try things and see how they do. So, if you are unhappy with the web site, or the organization of the forums themselves, there are no marketing consultants to blame. Only me. And I accept the noodle lashing as long as you accept that you may not have the full story concerning how things are going for us.
Finally, Stuart and I are in the process of reviewing and refreshing various aspects of our web site, and we welcome your ideas for things to try. I'm willing to switch things up and see what does better. These days we do have better tools available to do "A/B" testing so that we can confirm that this page works better than that page, which we are hoping will remove some of the trial and error aspects of the web design process. Well, maybe it doesn't remove the trial part... but hopefully some of the error part.
Along those lines, we just completed an overhaul of the web store. The web store is obviously mission critical. The store was the oldest part of the web site. The old store was designed and implemented it before there were any examples of what kinds of eCommerce layouts worked and what didn't. The new store is friendlier and more what people expect to see. So, I think that will be a welcome change.
It's an ongoing journey in a daily changing internetty world.
We try to be helpful to as many people as we can, and we do try to make things fun.
If you have other specific suggestions for how to improve the web site and make it more fun, more effective, more interesting... I'm all llama ears.
In terms of tone, I'll respond better if you are hopeful and cheerful... because well.... that's more in iTune with reality, and it doesn't make me feel badgered when I'm a hardworking llama. :-)
Thanks again for coming along on this adventure with us.... and for having faith in our ability to do even better. Hey! I'm looking for ways for us get that boat! And we know you can help us along the way! :-)
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
I think Darcy has hit a nail on the head
I used to read the forums daily, and there was usually something interesting. Now I check about once a week and it is usually a quick "nothing of interest there" and move on. Just look at how many posts have zero or one reply, that was very rare with the old forum.
Now, [i]you[/i] may be seeing a lot more communication, but we are not. Frankly, I can't be arsed to read the Twitter nonsense. It's like overhearing snatches of conversation in a gale, there is no structure, no way for public responses, etc. It just does not allow for a public conversation. Can anyone imagine Ratz's posts on twitter? It can't happen. I'm sorry, but I am just not interested in the fact that you were awake at 6 am.
Not just to pick on twitter, but I would guess that most people would prefer a single focal point for us to communicate with you and each other, rather than trying to second guess what would be most useful. One portal that works well enough is far better than lots that, while they may each work better for some individual things, are worse than the one portal for most things.
Cheers
KeithC
read my blog: http://methods-and-music.blogspot.com/
Agreed, frustrated!
My frustration is that the posts to the forum are restricted. Posts don't show until approved, which seems to take a long time. It certainly gives the impression of a dying community not a vibrant one.
I am on twitter but it's useless for detailed explanations of how to adapt and use SW packages.
I am a relatively new user of LB, less than 6 months, but the lack of activity here is pushing me to look at alternatives because I can't get basic questions answered. All the useful stuff is old, and not entirely applicable to the new revisions.
I initially chose LB because of the Palm OS synch, but it's flaky as all get out, half the time it won't work. I can't put in a bug report because I can't get a consistent set of actions to cause the problems. Instead I am moving away from using my Palm as my list manager and instead using just the desktop version and printing lists to check off.
The downsides of the poor Mac interface (well documented in other sections here) is making it hard to manage and I'm now looking again at the packages I initially didn't include because of no Palm synch. It looks like I can get very close with iCal, Omnifocus and missing synch which was something I had not looked at before.
Two + from my side
OogieM said it and I have to second it.
a) The circumstance that comments are approved before getting in sight is frustrating. Please allow users to get "quick" response. Spam could be killed within hours, or just set in 1 or 2 moderators to do that part.
b) The interface for the mac-version is functional, but ugly, ugly and ugly. Maybe I could give some contact to a really brilliant UI-designer. Macheads are visual kids, so give us the feeling of being loved :-)
Regards,
Thorsten
Wake up and smell the Web 2.0
The whole evolving web 2.0 world seems to involve more and more ways to communicate with the information tailored to different ways that people want to hear from us.
It depends on what you are interested in, and we bounce throughout. You love the forums. That's great. You share responsibility to be interesting to me and to other readers here, too.
If I hear about a project that intrigues me... I'm happy to help you get started to make it happen. If nobody is answering you... change your questioning technique!
Now, I must run and send out....the next installment of Newsletter. We've also updated the home page, release notes, download page, posted the announcement about the new Mac release, got a post to Twitter and the RSS feed!
See what I mean! :-)
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
" If nobody is answering
" If nobody is answering you....change your questioning technique! "
I don't agree : Why experts users don't try to understand with asking the good questions to define what the newbie formulate/need ?
It seems that some posts have answers ..some not .. why ? lottery ?
Ironically...
Ha! Ironically... you changed how you were asking your question, and I immediately answered you this morning. Because I understood the question better.
Including some context about the situation (and being polite about it) is generally all it takes.
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
You're right .. but why
You're right .. but why don't ask to understand more if things are missing to be intelligible ?
Please don't let the newbie alone .. it was the feeling ..
( PS : You give me an answer but you didn't tell me if the task slips/glides)
;-)
Actually, I did...
Well, actually I did answer that too once I understood what you were asking.
Also, I wrote a whole blog article inspired by your post to help others to think about when to use routinely, and when to choose other techniques.
I might even turn that article into a podcast later in the week... might make a fun podcast I think!
Sorry if you feel like you were left alone. From my perspective, I have answered you in several ways, trying to probe the nature of the question.
Since english is not your first language, we all do our best to be helpful.
Best -
--Catherine--*
" The whole evolving web 2.0
" The whole evolving web 2.0 world seems to involve more and more ways to communicate "
yes .. but here it very hard to browse .. why is there no tree structure to browse ?
It's not really looking like web 2.0 forum .. ( or use phpbb : well done and famous you know ;-)
You're missing it Catherine
I completely understand what Darcy and others are seeing here. When I first discovered LB, I was excited by such an active user forum filled with great tips and suggestions. Ratz is a name that comes to mind who used to spew incredible amounts of handy tips that I would process and use liberally. I realize you and Stuart are very busy, but I really do believe the forums were the real lifeblood of the product, users helping users. It certainly helped me get started with forming my brain around the software. To downplay the fact that the forums are now stagnant in favor of saying how there's now podcasts (have you looked at the dates on those?) and Twitter posts ("more hotsync tests") is really shooting Llamagraphics potential in the foot. It FEELS like a dying product, whether it is or not, due to there being 3 posts a week. It would be great to get them active and in the forefront of support.
" It FEELS like a dying
" It FEELS like a dying product, whether it is or not, due to there being 3 posts a week."
I agree..
Llamas are social animals!
>"while we are not looking for a private plane, aircraft carrier, or a lavish lifestyle, a boat certainly sounds like fun to me"
does that mean i can borrow the plane?! oh, go on
i promise to bring it back in the same number of pieces as you give it to me in. (no kits, please)
>"For one thing, the doom and gloom is really out of place... iPhone"
i really am most sincerely relieved and happy about this (your continuing commercial success)
.
ah but wait a moment:
>"Overall, across all platforms, we are not looking at decreased communication, but increased and shifted communication. There is WAY MORE communication coming in to us from many different channels. We have people talking with us through Twitter, listening to podcasts, watching the YouTube video of the iPhone demo, following along through RSS feeds, replying to newsletters, browsing the site from their cell phones, finding us through the Apple site, etc. We are building audiences in other places."
humm! this is both a response/solution/alternative, and the problem. and i think the key is in your last sentence. "We are building audiences in other places."
as DaveyDave said: "You're missing it, [Llamas]" -- you guys've got caught up in something (many things), and are missing the point of the resultant effect on one of your old key USPs. the one that took impressed/interested newbies and turned them into evangelists.
see, the KEY thing about the forum, is that it's NOT an audience. it's a COMMUNITY.
a living, breathing, active, excited, interactive community.
it's NOT an audience. just as apple's vital community is not an audience.
the forum wasn't about you communicating. it was about you participating in (and guiding and encouraging) a busy self-sustaining discussion.
twitter is just text tv.
people slumped in chairs watching a video of a party is not the same as a party.
youtube, newsletters, podcasts: all the same.
passive recipients. one-directional. broadcast shout rather than conversation. by the leader rather than the army.
but key problem in terms of muddling your (Llamas') perspective: they are VERY time-consuming for you guys. "increased communication", from your perspective, even as we all perceive reduced communication.
and humans have a nasty tendency to measure Importance by Effort, rather than Effect.
(and —heh— that's in fact LB's USP: helping manage time so big things don't swamp important things. hey, have *i* got a product for *you*! ;)
the web2.0 meme has a lot of wonderful things, a lot of wonderful benefits, but that's not to say they are relevant to an older question. the older question of getting people INVOLVED, and getting other people pitching in to encourage newbies and solve simple problems (which further takes load off you, adds time to your day, without effort: delegation). consider that the single most powerful improvement to modern hospitals, discovered after extensive research, is: better food. seriously: better food. next most important: doctors & nurses washing their hands. groovy robot doctors and wunderbar new scanners and tests: benefit but minor. food and soap: several orders of magnitude more important.
simple and old doesn't mean outmoded. i have several wonderful computers but i still have and use daily a pen. horses for courses.
just because someone invents a hammer and it becomes popular, doesn't mean that everything i see turns into a nail.
.
napoleon led france to utterly dominate europe not by being a leader but by encouraging the masses to pitch in. in fact, a startling amount of the time, he overruled himself with his citizens' preferences, even where he disagreed with them. the net result had such fundamental human resonance it has literally shaped western civilisation today. when i managed large teams, i frequently described my job as "getting people keen, getting them pointing the right way, then getting the hell out of their way." and the results often had other managers angry at me for the sheer contrast with their own far more effortful efforts.
the old forum encouraged the masses, and they dragged in newcomers and got them excited and keen and turned THEM into evangelists too. utterly viral.
consider now by contrast this heart-breakingly lonely plea for help:
http://www.llamagraphics.com/drupal/forums/introductions/best-way-get-st...
Best way to get started
Hello All, my name is Todd. I am just getting started and wanted to introduce myself. I am a husband and father of four great kids. I am a turtle, living in a hare's life. Busy family life, busy work life. I am looking for a better version of myself and this looks interesting. Nice to find you all.
Question: what is the best way to get up and running. Call support? What do you wish you knew when you started that you now know?
Thanks, Todd
posted 6mths ago.
an archetypical LB user. the Llamas' archetypical target market.
not a single response.
he's probably departed. disheartened, baffled, a bit embarrassed by the lack of response. he may or may not have paid for a licence but he's very unlikely to stay with you.
another example of the same syndrome:
>"For technical support, many folks seem to prefer to post in private to our helpdesk, because it is more secure to get into details of their personal Life Balance questions."
back when the forum was active, people would post all SORTS of quite personal LB questions to the forum. to the point that i not infrequently stared in wonder at the sort of personal stuff that was being posted on a public website.
but put yourself in the shoes of someone with a problem NOWADAYS: you almost certainly won't even SEE the forum, and if you DO find it and look, you'll see almost no activity. and that's assuming you take the time to click through every topic -- in the normal case, most people now will see a page that prima facie suggests this app (or at least, this forum) is all about ADHD or similar.
"i don't have ADHD, i just have a software question. and nobody's here anyway. time to go find the tech.support link"
.
>"And I accept the noodle lashing as long as you accept that you may not have the full story concerning how things are going for us."
fully acknowledged. (and apologies if you thought i was being negative -- please believe i want the opposite. you've seen my contributions over the last 9 years. evangelist, me.)
but please very importantly bear in mind that perceptions are important. and if someone as LB-evangelical as me can come away in despair, what's that doing to prospective new users?
and it's not just me. as DaveyDave said:
"It FEELS like a dying product, whether it is or not"
this is the Take-Away Message for the Llamas. (only) 3 people responded to my post, but each vehemently underlined what i said, even (or perhaps: especially) the relative newcomer, in terms of the impression they got and in terms of their concern and sense of waste.
.
>"Stuart and I are in the process of reviewing and refreshing various aspects of our web site, and we welcome your ideas for things to try. I'm willing to switch things up and see what does better."
yeeHAW!!
well listen, here's an idea: how about you try putting the whole design "in-play" for 6mths? (or maybe longer. 12mths? keep your options open)
but make it interactive! get the forum itself involved in redesigning it! twitter about it and point people at the topic! do a podcast and a youtube video! put it in your newsletter! you KNOW we've all got only the best motivations for it, and in fact even the process of the discussion will tend to reinvigorate the forum.
ie, create a new top-level topic -- eg "We're thinking about redesigning our website. Thoughts?" (and... put a toolbar link to the forum so newbs can see it, even if only for the interim redesign period. newbies are an important segment!)
you're bound to get various silly suggestions, and mono-eyed insistences. but a touch of judgement is all that's necessary.
likewise, maybe stick in feedback topics re the new "channels". eg "PodCasts -- how valuable?" "YouTube posts -- how valuable?" etc. or perhaps "PodCasts -- do you listen?" "YouTube posts -- do you watch?". you may discover that the volume of listeners/watchers are one- or two-shot only. that's certainly been the experience of most business efforts i've seen so far.
basically, rather than trying to second-guess everyone, ASK everyone! :D
less stress, less effort, and guaranteed a result at least as good as the status quo.
even if the end-result turns out identical, you will know you're not shooting in the dark -- your people will have spoken, in chorus with your self!
and even in your asking, you will help reinvigorate the forum.
waddya reckon, Catherine, Sam^H^Htuart, Scott? worth a shot? hell, it's all been so static for so long -- could be fun just to mix it up a bit again, yeah?
And...
well, so long as newbies/casual-visitors can see it.
i reiterate that i regard the PRIMARY problem is that the forum is now effectively invisible.
.
but the more i think about it, the more i agree with OogieM's (newcomer!) further point: the "moderation" lag has a further "chilling effect". it feels like a little smack on the nose each time.
"yeah, whatever. we'll get back to you."
(oh god, did i make a typo? did i express myself badly? i'd better just check it and... oh. oh. well. maybe i'll come back tomorrow. *forgets*)
.
per KeithC:
>"I used to read the forums daily, and there was usually something interesting. Now I check about once a week and it is usually a quick "nothing of interest there" and move on."
And who is smacking whose nose?
Actually, I was using the word audience rather loosely to refer to a place where YOU also have an audience and reputation to build and responsibility to be fun and interesting.
As far as nose smacking goes, it would be my nose rather than yours that generally gets the worst of it around here.
:-) or rather :*)
Best -
--Catherine--*
:*)
>Actually, I was using the word audience rather loosely to refer to a place where YOU also have an audience and reputation to build and responsibility to be fun and interesting.
aka a Forum
;)
>As far as nose smacking goes, it would be my nose rather than yours that generally gets the worst of it around here.
yeah, the "piggy in the middle" admin/moderator always gets the worst of everything, and the sense of humour/appetite for "great new ideas!" drains away hella fast. frankly, i'm gobsmacked you've coped this long without a serious break.
but do please bear in mind my notes (and the unanimous agreement by other forumers) that the current communication-mechanisms strategy tends to dramatically exacerbate the drain on yourselves, yet has a "chilling effect" on precisely that creation of "a place where YOU also have an audience and reputation to build and responsibility to be fun and interesting" that you're desirous of achieving.
on the upside, the changes i've suggested here are very-low-effort to do (twiddle the template, post a new discussion topic, twitter about it (once? daily during-first-coffee copypaste start-of-day?)), plus they're self-limiting in terms of catastrophe/egg-on-face if you make it clear they're A/ temporary B/ an experiment C/ intended to be user-led thereafter.
then, it's up to US! slackers that we are. use it or lose it! (again)
cheers
darcehole
(minor thought)
actually, switching off Moderation of posts would also lower the hassle/drudgery factor for you guys too.
again: do so only as experiment. spam behaviours vary dramatically over time, and our work site (for example) currently gets NO spam. you might get lucky. you might discover after a day that it's a really bad idea. but time-wise it won't really cost you more than a couple of minutes to find out.
and you can always switch it back on again in future if the spambots trip over you again.
New user: I had no trouble finding this forum
On April 3rd, 2009 Darcy said:
>well, so long as newbies/casual-visitors can see it.
>i reiterate that i regard the PRIMARY problem is that the forum is now effectively invisible.
Well, I had no trouble at all finding this forum. I just downloaded the trial software a couple of days ago and am now trying it out. The forum link is all over the documentation. I would have had to have been blind not to see it.
The users arguing in this thread doesn't make me really want to come back to this forum, much though.
No offense. I'm just saying...
Kind regards,
Arielle
Thanks for taking the time to chime in...
Thanks Arielle,
I sincerely appreciate your perspective, because you could have just bounced away without commenting.
No offense taken. I agree with you!
There's lots of ways to get people talking around the web site. It is possible the forums are not the best way to do that anymore.
The forums need to be fun and interesting, especially for the readers and lurkers out there, or the forums should be replaced with other ways of conversing.
Certainly it is not an attractive prospect for me to make the forums more prominent if they are driving people like Arielle away.
We want Arielle to at least stay with us on the web site as a whole and to view it as a positive encouraging resource.
So, how do we keep Arielle from fleeing the forum?
That is the question to ponder folks.
best -
--Catherine--*
´bout the forum.....
Fleeing the forum?? Nah, is that a way to go? Maybe... maybe not...
In my point of view there is one thing that could be better... that WE ALL take care of the newcomers.. not just the Llamas... I mean, if there is a newcomer with a question and I got the solution on that problem, I would probably give an helping hand... but the Llamas to should be more active in solving problems...
And IMHO is that a question asked in the forum - rather as a private mail to the Llamas, is a good thing.. ´cause we all could read about a problem and we could read the answer from the Llamas. NEXT time we eventually bump into this type of problem, we all had read the solution and maybe we are able to solve the issue all alone..
But I do feel that the forum is "dying"... and this has been my feeling for a long time ago...
Reasons???
Well;
** has the oldtimers got a new planningtool? Paperplanner? (god forbid :-)) but I´m on that to.. and it´s rather cool.... actually.
** is the oldtimers tired of the development of the planningtool (LB)?
** is there only evangelist left as registerd users, who don´t need any help and are the few poor soods named newcomers - who dare to ask questions, quickly "silenced to death"?
I´m sure that you guys out there could add stuff to my list.....
I don´t know what´s happened.... only that there is a not so active forum....
and the question about to twitter or not to twitter... I don´t personally read the stuff, as one of the other guys said.. I don´t care if you woke 6 am... Twitter maybe could be a tool for keeping in touch with friends, but not to your customers...
my few cents...
//Popeye
I visit too irregularly
I visit too irregularly these days to comment on the health of the forums (I visited a lot as a newcomer, and regularly as a beta tester), but I will respond to Popeye's comments about Twitter.
First, my disclaimer. I don't tweet and don't have a twitter account. Having said that, I do like seeing developers tweet - it gives a sense of the person/people developing the software that I am using (or, at times, considering using). And, to follow on the discussion above, it helps build a sense of relationship with those people - that they *are* people, not faceless "corporate coders". Catherine's tweets give a sense of who she is and what matters to her. Her posts demonstrate she is living what she is selling: life balance. On one level it's honest "walk the talk", on another level it's marketing. On both levels, it works.
So I believe that Twitter can be a useful tool for keeping touch with customers. Not for all people or all businesses, but for some it is very effective indeed. I consider Catherine and LB to be in that "very effective" group.
absolutely
>and the question about to twitter or not to twitter... I don´t personally read the stuff, as one of the other guys said.. I don´t care if you woke 6 am... Twitter maybe could be a tool for keeping in touch with friends, but not to your customers...
twitter is a great broadcast announcement tool. but a poor engager of community interactivity.
twitter can and will replace the forum when every newcomer automatically twitters back at every LB-related twitter, and/or can then later at their leisure later easily read through all LB-specific twitter posts, gathered by thread.
nb: this functionality is not supported by twitter nor do they ever intend to.
>In my point of view there is one thing that could be better... that WE ALL take care of the newcomers.. not just the Llamas... I mean, if there is a newcomer with a question and I got the solution on that problem, I would probably give an helping hand...
a question asked in the forum - rather as a private mail to the Llamas, is a good thing
quite. and in fact this is a major point.
if you look back 5-6 years(!!), this was overwhelmingly the norm. the community welcomed and encouraged (and hence inveigled ;) newcomers, independently and gladly handling repetitive questions that were near driving the llamas up the walls. indeed, these were great opportunities for no-longer-newcomers to start to flex their LB muscles. and they would get immediate positive feedback about how good they were getting when new-newcomers thanked them for their immediate and apposite response, which only bound them (both) even more tightly into the community, and the product. while at the same time making the llamas' lives lower-effort/lower-stress.
Welcome!
hi arielle and welcome to LB! i think you'll be ongoingly amazed at how capable this app is. and at how quickly and how profoundly it seeps into your life and you find it difficult to imagine going back to the old way of managing your time. it remains the only app i've paid for within a few days of using it (realised startledly about day 4 it had already become a key and CRITICAL part of me managing my day at the pace/effectiveness i needed then (was covering 5 jobs due to "restructuring")) and which i then used daily continuously for 3 years at the same pace to my ongoing benefit (and the benefit of all the people depending on me (18mths ago walked into a german central bank and saw a sea of seats and several tens of billions of dollars all utterly dependent on the stuff created by my team with the key help of LB. and i marvelled at the thought of the other several dozen clients doing the same)) and to my, even more surprisingly, ongoing pleasure. and still do nearly 10 years later (with an unavoidable several year interlude unrelated to the app or my choice).
> I had no trouble at all finding this forum. I just downloaded the trial software a couple of days ago and am now trying it out. The forum link is all over the documentation. I would have had to have been blind not to see it.
but bear in mind 99% of people will be looking for a link on the website. you're a wonderful exception in that you took the time to read the whole documentation then manually type in a cited link (and doubly an exception if you read the 60+page pdf on-screen and simply clicked).
but wonderful though that is, sadly it is an exception. would that all humans were like you.
we (the people still here and posting on this thread) we're not saying people can't find the forum.
we're saying it doesn't jump out at newcomers like it used to.
it's no longer a near-first-point-of-entry for 99% of users.
>The users arguing in this thread doesn't make me really want to come back to this forum, much though.
point taken. and apologies. no one likes to walk in on something.
but
sometimes even amongst the closest family hard topics need to be raised.
you might be reading our distress as argumentiveness. not so. there's no argument here among the users -- there are a lot of users all saying the same thing, that we're concerned that LB's old shining USP has, following a site redesign, become moribund compared to the old high-glory days. even newcomers have chimed in agreeing with the old-hands about the site's current effect on users.
check out this links' links to see what i mean about the old community; in particular note the most active and actively helpful topics are all many years old :(
http://www.llamagraphics.com/drupal/forums/introductions/hello-germany
(the content i'm alluding to is all currently hidden, in moderation. but should hopefully be visible by the time you see this.)
>That is the question to
>That is the question to ponder folks.
umm. if the forum was working as it used to pre-redesign, the sheer weight of other posts and the sheer visibility of the community and its good-feeling (including this thread!) would mean the question would never have arisen. so, no: this new question is not the question for us all to ponder. it's just a flavour of the original question.
sorry to harp on but, exceptional distraction notwithstanding, the core point raised/underlined by every other person remains the core point.
>There's lots of ways to get people talking around the web site. It is possible the forums are not the best way to do that anymore.
The forums need to be fun and interesting, especially for the readers and lurkers out there, or the forums should be replaced with other ways of conversing.
arg. thing is, this question has been pre-empted. the forums HAVE already been replaced with other ways of conversing.
and it's not working.
llamas' effort is INcreasing even as usefulness DEcreases ("It FEELS like a dying product"), as things turn into a normal 1:1 communication mechanism revolving around intra-company staff, instead of a N:N self-sustaining external-but-integrated community.
llamagraphics is not a large shop with a few dozen stray people floating around needing to have their time filled. which is what most "standard" business practices/memes are always predicated upon. (i can sell you a few "project managers" if you want them.)
web2.0 is not about adding a surfeit of non-overlapping apps; it's about facilitating previously isolated communities by replacing a surfeit of related computer interactions (with nonoverlapping communities), with a single relevant computer interaction. in this very real sense, for an app's userbase, a forum is more web2.0 than the combo of twitter + blog + podcasts, particularly since these tools are unidirectional (announcement) rather than community-interactive (conversation). they were (and remain) a community very well served by the existing tools, since such tools were designed with precisely this sort of community in mind.
python, for example, remains at the cutting edge of development and developers' skill. yet its primary user-community-interaction tool is one i used (in its original form) in the 80s: IRC. and on it you will find a glorious instantaneously interacting mob of maths PhDs, ultracapable hackers, ordinary coders, and absolute noobs. constantly interacting and reinforcing each other. with sufficient volume that any one expert's fatigue is taken up by another stepping into the breach. LB doesn't have that time-pace need, but the core point is the same. old is not bad, if it's best-for-purpose.
>Certainly it is not an attractive prospect for me to make the forums more prominent if they are driving people like Arielle away.
re UI/design, you should note that arielle weighed in on only the most visible topic, rather than the most relevant topics. that by itself for a self-avowedly unusually motivated newcomer should raise dangerflags. so let's look closer at that.
any newcomer coming in (even or perhaps especially from arielle's exceptional vector) and seeing the only obvious relevant forum topic and then seeing the only active discussion in it, then seeing it's mostly people saying "arg! it's died! can we please reverse the changes?!" is going to find that less appealing than a dozen active threads discussing how to better use the app. but that's just further underlining the unanimous key point of everyone else on this thread.
(but can i say that i deliberately held off on posting this thread for this very reason: it could _appear_ negative)
bear in mind, arielle is not just unusual in approach (nothing wrong with that --quite the opposite, in this case-- but unusual nonetheless, the same way obama is unusual) but is one voice CON versus seven PRO, and within that: one newcomer CON versus two newcomers PRO.
granted Value of input is more important than Volume of input, but the sheer uniformity of the PRO input, not just in general but between newcomers and old-hands, should raise dangerflags.
TIME OUT! could be worth taking 5mins just now, reminding yourselves just HOW active the forum used to be. i know it startled me tonight when i went digging to help out another newcomer poster. go back to ~page20 of "Using Life Balance Effectively" and look with growing unsettlement at just how INVOLVED people used to be. and at just how newbie were so many of the posts and just how rarely they were not near-immediately answered, by the community, with llamas only occasionally having to weigh in with llama-specific notes.
back now
over to DaveyDave again for an exquisite summary of why i (so reluctantly) posted this thread but which has been so repetitively and uniformly underscored by others:
"When I first discovered LB, I was excited by such an active user forum filled with great tips and suggestions."
The current forum page:
reads like this. I have removed forum descriptions for space and the beta areas as by their nature they are only valuable during betas:
Introductions...
2 new 145 20 hours 1 min ago
Discussion
52 263 12 weeks 18 hours ago
Career, work, the gifts you bring to the world!
3 24 1 year 31 weeks ago
Clarifying your heart's desires. Goals, projects and tasks! Oh my!
2 8 27 weeks 3 days ago
Home Sweet Home
6 18 1 year 3 days ago
Using Life Balance Effectively
1034
9 new 6648 7 hours 28 min ago
Conduit Community Support
121 616 14 weeks 6 days ago
iPhone Community Support
90
6 new 338 2 days 1 hour ago
Macintosh Community Support
293
4 new 1449 4 hours 50 min ago
Palm Community Support
748 4102 2 weeks 1 day ago
Windows Community Support
332
2 new 1618 1 week 18 hours ago
So most of these have most recent posts that are getting on for six months or more old. I don't want a lot of different ways to communicate, I want one that works!
Cheers
KeithC
read my blog: http://methods-and-music.blogspot.com/
Lag of time
The lag of time beetween a written post and its appearance in the forum is just ..... a no-killer. Waiting days for postings to be displayed, come on C* and else, give that a balanced shoe to walk with.
Best, Thorsten
Okydoky...
Rearranged and simplified so that there is only ONE discussion forum.
The other topics were not deleted, they were either moved into here, or archived for reference.
Best -
--Catherine--*
Yeehaw
Catherine, you rock.
Sorry for being away-- work rose up and swamped me again. I didn't leave work till way after 9 tonight for example, and today was a good day (the end is in sight).
Was rather taken aback, and then very happy, to see the new simplified and participation-encouraging forum structure. (I do think you could still have the special-interest topics (ADD etc) on the frontpage, but down the bottom rather than uptop suggesting they're the primary focus. And I'm yet to start plowing around trying to find the other topics I posted on (relatively) recently.)
But, key point: thanks for listening, and thanks for taking the plunge with an experiment. Will take a while for its impact to be felt. But I really think you're heading in the right direction again. Thanks!
Thanks for that...
I really appreciate getting some feedback on what works and what doesn't on the web site. I mostly just guess, and try to be reasonably tasteful. That strategy doesn't always work. :-)
You've made some other suggestions that I'm also interested in pursuing.
Drupal makes some kinds of experiments very easy. Some of the other things take a little more doing, and Stuart and I will need to work on those things together.
By all means... keep the web thoughts flowing.
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
Minor Tweakage II
perhaps put Introductions after Discussion? Newcomers will not automatically want to volunteer their info/newbieness, so this subforum will always tend to be a little slower than an active Discussion forum, but Involved newcomers will immediately see their ideal intro-point immediately below the main Engagement point. Uninvolved newcomers will immediately see an active forum and have a look.
also: i'm afraid i had the same old "eh? oh god, yuck, gah (i can't even check to see if i accidentally made any mistakes despite Previewing)" reaction when my previous post (invisible) came back with "waiting for moderation".
First one is done... and my thoughts on moderation...
Introductions are now second on the list. DONE!
I'm of two minds about moderation. (or maybe three or four!)
We had some real problems when the forums were unmoderated. Unmoderated forums tend to attract trolls and nuisance posts. Bad.
If I moderate, people are on their best behavior. The quality of the discussion is much higher. Good.
It's a pain in the neck for me and you. Bad.
It makes sure that I read every new post. Good.
And so on, back and forth. Overall, I admit, it is a mixed bag.
I've considered adding in some kind of Drupal "Karma" system. I haven't quite figured out how to do it, because Drupal has several different competing systems to choose from, and I'm not sure which would be best for us. The basic idea is that you can earn points for being actively engaged, thoughtful, insightful and generally well thought of as a good citizen of the Llama community.
Darcy, for instance, would earn many points quickly! ;-)
Even with a Karma system in place, I would still have to moderate and do some edits, especially the subject lines to differentiate one issue from another because people tend to become vague and over generalize when they run into a problem. (I don't know why that is, but it is.)
In principle, that could provide a workable alternative to full moderation if that seems agreeable, and if I can figure it out! :-P
One of the things I also like about Twitter is that it encourages good behavior. If you are rude, people will drop you immediately (and they don't have to read another 140 chars you say). If you are friendly, nice, and helpful, people will follow you and make referrals.
So something like that in the forums might open the door to more immediate posting, if not a complete free for all again.
What do you think?
--Catherine--*
"What do I think?" I think...
, that you're going in the right direction. particularly if whatever Karma-ish system you settle on allows people to filter for high-karma posts. immediate re-discovery of Ratz's posts! (well, assuming we can find them all and you adminbump them to sillyhigh karma).
thanks again for listening.
re Moderation, i know the problem. verrrrry well. but i've also noticed it comes and goes in waves. a fundamental human pattern of groups. right now, the trolls have all gone elsewhere, and Moderation is defending against a non-attack but having a "Chilling Effect" on the forum. and, really quite a _serious_ chilling effect. the disincentive to post again is really quite startlingly affecting.
so what i suggest you could do is what i've seen done and have done very effectively in the past: switch OFF pre-post moderation but keep an eye on trollism/ratbagism and when it eventually creeps back in, allow a little of it, then stamp on it hard with firstly explicit warnings on key trollers per-post (just for say a week) combined with publicly immediately-visible-to-all top-level posts declaring the problem and the regretted imminence of Ultimate Sanction, secondly replacing immediately troll/ratbag posts with copypaste "[ADMIN] trolls, parasites, snipers, etc are not tolerated here. this post has been removed", thirdly if and only if (rare!) they continue just re-impose Moderation and announce the fact and the reason as a top-level post. leave it a month then relax it again and watch. 9 times out of 10 you're back to square one again, with good-behaviour all round.
i think you'll be surprised at just how effective this is, how little time/energy it actually takes, and at how the old "conversational" aspect of the forums just magically starts to return and re-foster the community.
so what do you think? while we're in "experimental" mode. give non-moderation another CAUTIOUS go for a while? see what happens?
bear in mind: it'll only take a moment to reinstate it if it goes wrong. just re-flick that switch. the Cost of the experiment in terms of hassle for yourself is ~0!
Oh, one more thing,
, if you go back to my original points, you'll remember a KEY one was: going back to the old approach of immediately hooking-in new users to the forums. not only does it make them more likely to participate, it makes existing members more likely to participate. all sorts of Social mutual heterodyning reinforcement for both sides.
tweaks to the engine are great, but if everybody's walking past the car, nobody new is going to find out.
at present, the forums are near invisible UNLESS you're hunting for them. which, by definition, only a small subset of people will do. and those people you don't need to worry about -- you had them at "hello".
it's the Majority you wanna think about catching. that you wanna think about Engaging.
so, while in Experiment Mode, can we please also throw in a quickReplace of the TopBar, so that it has FORUMS obvious? like it was back in the olden days when the forums were a foaming steaming mass of self-regenerating LIFE! ;)
Specific Layout Thoughts then Suggestions:
"Forums" has to be topleft 1st or 2nd, or topright. no argument possible. that's how humans auto-look immediately (and in that order). simple and utterly uniform empirical praxeology.
so can we safely drop a word from the topbar? to fit "Forums" in? h*ll yeah! here's how:
"Search" could be eliminated immediately. just put a standard Searchbox anywhere normal in the page. eg topright under the topbar, or in the footer. done.
but, perhaps instead consider:
"Products", "Downloads", and "Buy" have been almost near-synonyms for 10 years in terms of widely-understood-purpose-and-function-and-contents. at the moment, we have:
TopBar:
Get It ... Get It ... Resources ... Search ... Support... Get It.
any 1 or even 2 could be dropped with almost no change in understandability or usefulness. in particular, "Products" and "Downloads" are essentially identical in the interwebular world of click-to-get. so you could use either word.
but here's another idea. how about "Try" and "Buy"?
"Try" is friendly and free and encouraging. even the newbiest newb will know what it means and will (everyone likes a freeby! and a new toy!) have their interest piqued a little to give something a go that they might not have bothered with otherwise. and the "Buy" becomes then a little sharp but not unpleasant passive affable reminder that this is, fundamentally, a commercial site.
and something to remember: anyone coming to Buy will be coming _back_ to your site. so you can be a lot more flexible with that particular link. again: you have them before they start -- they will FIND the link, because they WANT the link. they've already been hooked, by the product.
so should "Forums" be topleft or topright?
personally, i keep flipping between preference. Forums topleft will grab people looking to chat, but could potentially send the message that LB is a chat community first&foremost rather than an app. and the key is to get people to try it, because once they do they're hooked. but topright is a distant 2nd behind topleft -- could be ignored. quandary, quandary; decisions, decisions.
so instead of asserting ONE, i'll just throw out some suggested topbars and see what people think.
SUGGESTION:
Try ... Buy ... Resources ... Search ... Support ... Forums
SUGGESTION:
Forums ... Try ... Resources ... Support ... Search ... Buy
SUGGESTION:
Try ... Forums ... Resources ... Support ... Search ... Buy
personally, after a lot of thrashing, i'm slowly agglutinating towards the last. the friendliness of it, combined with first encouraging newbies to grab the app and then immediately look at what people are saying/doing, is growing on me. and if you read it left-to-right, it reads like a lovely logical progression.