The instructions were long, we were trying to avoid confusion, apologies if that made it more complex. The software is pretty smart and will easily ignore the quote marks if present, just ignore those. All you have to do is add your suggestion in the format presented just below "soylentnews.org" (or anywhere within that block).
To be blunt, you guys did a shit job on this. The entire process has been a convoluted mess. First there are issues in getting the message about what is going to happen when. Then there are the issues in people knowing to go to a page to change a setting so they can get an email with more instructions to submit an idea in plain text or heaven forbid the servers or admins freak out and melt. Then who the hell knows what comes next.
This level of overly engineered/complex crap is bad.
You created an overly convoluted solution when you already had the freakin tools to reach a solution.
First you just had to have a thread calling for submissions with a clear cut off date. A good 2-3 week window should have done the trick. Bumping or pinning the thread if need be. Then lock tread when submissions closed and edit summary to reflect that. Next have admins narrow it down to top choices that are available and not something horribly offensive or trademarked. Open new thread to let people vote. Here you have plenty of options to explore in collecting a vote: People could vote by commenting in the thread and only count votes of logged in users. People could be given a link to a poll only logged in users can see that only lets one vote per user. You could have set up a survey like with survey monkey and ask for people to vote there (maybe also ask for their uid).
The point is: there are simpler and easier ways to do this. And by simpler and easier I mean for the users. This really seems like you guys were trying to automate this and create less work for yourselves and instead created this mess.
The point is: there are simpler and easier ways to do this. And by simpler and easier I mean for the users>
Simpler would not necessarily be better. This is not as easy as you think. Most votes require simply choosing between a few options. This one requires submitting suggestions from users, paring down a long list, and making a final decision. We explored all of the options you've outlined actually. Let me explain:
We wanted to keep submissions private to avoid domain-squatting, so leaving domain suggestions as comments was out. We avoided a slash poll as they are unreliable (read the text below the results of every poll) and this is important, we'd have been criticised if we used that. 3rd-party solutions would have required handing thousands of user's email addresses to a third party, something we are not comfortable with (yes, that's how survey monkey works, we looked into it).
I admit we have communicated poorly and handled some details poorly. Still 512 people managed to sign up, we've contacted those who've claimed they were unable and we are including them too. We've been working night and day to make this happen, we all have real jobs and are not getting paid for this. Sorry if it's not up to your standards but I ensure you it's not out of laziness.
Thank you for taking hte time to respond and explain.
just and FYI I've used survey monkey in the past and know others that have. It doesn't require you hand over a bunch of emails. (you can if you want, but don't have to). You make a simple survey. It gies you the link or the option to embed it in your site. Who ever looked into it didn't look hard enough. The only email required is the suvery creator's when they first set up an account. To ID people in the survey just make a required question that asked for their soylent UN/UID or mail out the survey link yourselves.
I'm looking through the docs and a solution that would work in our situation is not obvious or simple, though I don't deny it's possible. Thanks for the explanation, it could be something to look into in the future. In this case though we'd still have had to email users ourselves (non-trivial with thousands of UIDs), and need some way for users to indicate that they'd like to opt-in (and might still be in a similar predicament with people frustrated that they did not do so in time). Furthermore, this solution would have required hundreds of dollars and use of a third-party, both of which we were trying to avoid.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday April 14 2014, @03:05PM
The instructions were long, we were trying to avoid confusion, apologies if that made it more complex. The software is pretty smart and will easily ignore the quote marks if present, just ignore those. All you have to do is add your suggestion in the format presented just below "soylentnews.org" (or anywhere within that block).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmoschner on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:25AM
To be blunt, you guys did a shit job on this. The entire process has been a convoluted mess. First there are issues in getting the message about what is going to happen when. Then there are the issues in people knowing to go to a page to change a setting so they can get an email with more instructions to submit an idea in plain text or heaven forbid the servers or admins freak out and melt. Then who the hell knows what comes next.
This level of overly engineered/complex crap is bad.
You created an overly convoluted solution when you already had the freakin tools to reach a solution.
First you just had to have a thread calling for submissions with a clear cut off date. A good 2-3 week window should have done the trick. Bumping or pinning the thread if need be.
Then lock tread when submissions closed and edit summary to reflect that.
Next have admins narrow it down to top choices that are available and not something horribly offensive or trademarked.
Open new thread to let people vote.
Here you have plenty of options to explore in collecting a vote: People could vote by commenting in the thread and only count votes of logged in users. People could be given a link to a poll only logged in users can see that only lets one vote per user. You could have set up a survey like with survey monkey and ask for people to vote there (maybe also ask for their uid).
The point is: there are simpler and easier ways to do this. And by simpler and easier I mean for the users. This really seems like you guys were trying to automate this and create less work for yourselves and instead created this mess.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:20PM
Simpler would not necessarily be better. This is not as easy as you think. Most votes require simply choosing between a few options. This one requires submitting suggestions from users, paring down a long list, and making a final decision. We explored all of the options you've outlined actually. Let me explain:
We wanted to keep submissions private to avoid domain-squatting, so leaving domain suggestions as comments was out. We avoided a slash poll as they are unreliable (read the text below the results of every poll) and this is important, we'd have been criticised if we used that. 3rd-party solutions would have required handing thousands of user's email addresses to a third party, something we are not comfortable with (yes, that's how survey monkey works, we looked into it).
I admit we have communicated poorly and handled some details poorly. Still 512 people managed to sign up, we've contacted those who've claimed they were unable and we are including them too. We've been working night and day to make this happen, we all have real jobs and are not getting paid for this. Sorry if it's not up to your standards but I ensure you it's not out of laziness.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by jmoschner on Friday April 18 2014, @05:03PM
Thank you for taking hte time to respond and explain.
just and FYI I've used survey monkey in the past and know others that have. It doesn't require you hand over a bunch of emails. (you can if you want, but don't have to). You make a simple survey. It gies you the link or the option to embed it in your site. Who ever looked into it didn't look hard enough. The only email required is the suvery creator's when they first set up an account. To ID people in the survey just make a required question that asked for their soylent UN/UID or mail out the survey link yourselves.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday April 18 2014, @05:36PM
I'm looking through the docs and a solution that would work in our situation is not obvious or simple, though I don't deny it's possible. Thanks for the explanation, it could be something to look into in the future. In this case though we'd still have had to email users ourselves (non-trivial with thousands of UIDs), and need some way for users to indicate that they'd like to opt-in (and might still be in a similar predicament with people frustrated that they did not do so in time). Furthermore, this solution would have required hundreds of dollars and use of a third-party, both of which we were trying to avoid.
(Score:1^½, Radical)