What can other companies learn from this

http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-9593-ips-40-diagnostics-usage-reports/
After some "drama" they just decided to to not implement/remove it from ipb4.

Did they just wast their time developing this feature, because they removed it again?
Did they overreact as they announced that they'll remove it (just because of some comments in the blogpost)?

IMO i would have loved to have this feature.
And the most important question is: What can other companies learn from this?
Should they include the users into the planing process?
Should ideas & implementations be presented ASAP to collect feedback?

 

Lately everyone is pretty sensitive to issues concerning privacy because of NSA with PRISM and the likes. If your forum theme is controversial then I understand why the board owners are against this kind of feature, whatever the intention of IPS.

 

We are leaving on a capitalist world. Every company has a value and storing that much data adds huge value. I wouldn't opt-in for a feature like that.

 

I think your 2nd & 3rd questions answer your 1st.

 

Not sure

I'm interested in other peoples minds about this.
Several people know that i'm one of the "i want/need a roadmap" jerks and it feels sometimes like nobody else is able to undertand why somebody wants a roadmap

All i got as reply is "why do you need one, why should the company share one, wait for the official HYS threads"

And wouldn't including the clients ASAP and better feedback collecting & handling prevent as from such scenario?

 

Personally, I think it's a good idea. I would've opt-ed in.

That being said perhaps IPS would've alleviated some paranoia if it was an explicit opt-in vs. the opt-out mentality. It's a double edged sword though. As a developer you know most people won't bother looking to opt-in to anything because they're too lazy to read. So making something opt-in is automatically going to cut your dataset by at least 50%.

Privacy fears are probably at an all time high so it's just bad timing for IPS. Nowadays not just the conspiracy theorists are worried about their privacy. Since most anonymous data isn't so anonymous. <-- There is a newer article from Ars on the topic that I read last year but that's what Google turned up first.

As an aside: I took the browser test last night (https://panopticlick.eff.org/) and was surprised to see just how unique my browser fingerprint is. Even if you diable cookies, JS, etc you browser fingerprint is still probably unique enough to track you.

 

Stick to the system of "If you need help you need to come to us." That way it is entirely voluntary on the part of the customer. The truth is if a customer wants help they have to provide that information anyway, whether it's automated or by a support ticket, or via phone support, or in a help forum. It's no different. But there is an illusion that it's different. The illusion that the customer is in control of his or her information is important.

 

IPS changed to the current and terrible editor from their own that they developed. Most unwanted change ever.

I didn't ask for it and I would have burned down all of the Internet to have not gotten such a change.

 

this, nice thought

 

Just a thought: Don't some forum software packages "phone home" anyway? I'm pretty sure vB did this at least in the past so they could slap people that were pirating their software?

 

In theory, but most pirates just edited out the callback mechanism anyway. So it didn't do much.

 

Right. Legitimate users probably wouldn't have given it a second thought though, so their software was calling home to the makers of the software without their knowledge. (probably) How is this much different?

 

Feature should have came disabled with the chance to opt in .

*shrugs*

Funny how companies bend when a handful of people cry.

-------------

I got sick of 5 people crying about PMs during our giveaways. They continually posted about how they hated spam and there was no need for mass PMs to promote and the forums were doing it all wrong, we were idiots etc.

Out of the people who voted on the poll, 12.98% of those said not to PM them:
http://www.rccanada.ca/rccforum/showthread.php?t=198198
68.7 said to keep pming them.
18.32 said they didnt care.
131 people voted. Over 10k were messaged. No one really cared.

So for the sake of showing how it affects giveaways, we didn't PM on the next one we had. Results were interesting.
An average of 4x less user replies and 5x less views on the giveaway. People cried they didn't know about it. Some of those original complainers said "they didn't care", were "better off not knowing" and or suggested we find better methods so they would know next time.

I knew what would happen, most admins would. Not promoting its a surefire way of some people missing out.

My point is, there are a ton of people who are completely happy with the way things are and there is always a group of people who want to feel empowered by complaining until change takes place.