Feedback or Suggestions Forum?

Most forums have a Feedback/Suggestions forum, but in Managing Online Communities by Patrick O'Keefe, he advises against having such a forum.

Do you believe it is a bad idea to have a Suggestions forum?

 

Personally, I think some sort of feedback mechanism is vital to the growth of a website. Especially a community based site. I'd prefer it as a publicly accessible mechanism like a forum as opposed to something like email. With a forum, your community members can respond to feedback and you get more ideas.

 

Not at all...it's the members forum as well..so all suggestions are welcome IMHO...

 

I don't think it's a bad idea having such a forum, it tells you what your members think needs improving on your forum/site, and it can help you gage the general interest in a new section or feature.

 

It comes down to.. do u really want "suggestions".. and are u going to take them into account when making changes to a board? I know a lot of admins that dont want suggestions based on the sites look.. but do want to know if anyone is incurring any errors..

people on boards can be whiney..
"i dont like this color.. or that color"
you should do this with YOUR site.. or THAT
id try to stay way from that kind of stuff
its hard to keep everything in a positive light

 

Duhneiz's point is similar to what P. O'Keefe explains in his book. On page 45 (in my version) he says that there are two main reasons that people usually have a feedback section: they either had a user with a problem or a user with an idea. In such cases he explains "most of the topics either needed my attention or approval in some way, could be fixed only by me, or had me as the first person to respond." After he deleting the suggestion forum he says people contact him directly through a link that is prominently displayed on every page of his site.

I love the idea of being able to get more ideas from the users since having what keeps them happy keeps them coming back to the forum. However, at the same time I would hate the feedback section to turn into a "whine-fest" or draw additional attention to any parts of the site that don't function correctly. Have you seen any ways to get ideas and constructive thoughts while minimizing the help desk aspect of these types of forums?

Thanks!
RR

 

i hate the "the font is serif" " i hate orange and blue together" type of stuff...
most people dont know the difference between constructive criticism and criticism

 

To be fair, you could argue that anything could be used to whine, people in general will do that in any situation where they're allowed to, not just feedback/suggestions forums. However, does he consider the benefits that allowing users to actually discuss suggestions rather than sending them in private offers? It's sounding more and more like the PMs vs posts argument.

 

im just the type of person who wants things done my way

 

When feedback is only via PM or email I think you lose the ability to gauge the communities input as a whole. If one person says they don't like say...the color scheme..and no one replies in a reasonable amount of time to agree then you know it's a personal taste issue, but if a majority of the regulars all chime and say they hate the colors then you know it's time for a change.

 

Ditto. That's exactly why I like the idea of a feedback/suggestions forum. You just can't tell this stuff via things told to you via PMs or email.

 

Suggestion Forum: Help Desk Concern

gnatster - good advice. Although it seems like common sense, it wasn't something that I thought about right away. This beats getting a PM, having to evaluate the request yourself, and then doing a poll or something to see what other people's thoughts are on a specific request. Thanks.

As for the "help desk" concern I had earlier, I found another site that has a "help desk ticket submission" system. You click a "help" button and fill out their form and an administrator/mod gets back to you. Implimenting something like this would help to steer people away from registering their problems in the suggestions forum. Is this something that you guys have seen before? Any thoughts on its effectiveness?

Thanks,
RR

 

That is about like your boss at work telling you he/she is too good to talk to you. It sound snooty, rude and snobish to me.

Oh course I have a feedback and suggestions forum. Why wouldn't I? Its called a "community" for a reason. And in a real community, everyone is able to post their opinions.

 

I claim that my website is made by Sport fans for sport fans - and so welcome all feedback and suggestions. I think any website should have it as it is important for websites to grow and your members could visit other websites and see some key features you are missing that they may like and they could recommend to you and could make sure your forum continues to grow.

 

I have one, and I have also broken it out in to a "Forum is broken/how do I?" subforum for the "My sig stopped working" kind of stuff.

As for the suggestions, if they say something like "I think you should use a different red", I just pointblack tell them that forum design is not democracy, but if they want to pay for a year of hosting, I will make them a skin.

 

This is exactly why I like having a Suggestions/Feedback forum. Also, one member's idea might incite other good ideas from another member, like a snowball effect.

We have a Help Desk-like system here, too: http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/contact-staff/

Members can only see their own threads, but staff members (currently only Administrators) can see and reply to all threads.
This works very well for reporting posts, asking account-related questions, etc.

 

yeah, a lot of my forums do-but i make it clear that only constructive criticism is allowed: "this forum sucks" isnt very good feedback. and also i let them know that the suggestions they might have might not be accepted, because most other members disagree with it, or it is impractical or pretty much impossible (requesting something on a forum that i cant find a mod for, or is likely to not get used), but i also do listen to every suggestion and think about it.

 

We used to have one but decided to make a contact the staff forum like you have here. We were getting trolling in there on an almost daily basis so decided to make the change. We could bring it back in the future, were seeing how it goes.

 

I am great believer in keeping the community happy. I have three poster service oriented forums. Maybe I'm putting a bit of work on myself but I'm playing the long game. I want a happy community who will stay loyal to the site and if they feel that the staff value their input, well that's a good start imho.

1. Feedback - Exactly what you expect, moans, whinges, genuine ideas and the occasional pat on the back for someone.

2. Helpdesk - for posters who don't understand how certain aspects of forums work and have a specific issue that they need help with. Not everyone is good with using FAQs. A gentle push in the right direction is usually all that's needed and the personal response from a staff member is a good way to start a poster/site bond.

3 Forum Requests - posters can suggest a new forum on the site that covers a certain topic such as Celeb News or whatever and if there is enough user support on thread to show that the forum could be viable then the forum gets created.

 

There's two types of feedback:

1. excellent ideas - had people to give some ideas that really did work. I'm a great admin (and extremely modest as you can see ), but sometimes my members give me some excellent points. Why not give them a plce to 'air' these ideas?
2. useless ideas - we do have the occassional 'capt. obvious' who's posting something so that he doesn't shut up.

How do I deal with these: I have the news/feedback in a category. I don't waste 2 categories for these and they do see a place where they can get their input. When I receive an idea there, I thank them and, if the idea is good, it gets implemented, if it's not the case just yet, I thank them again and tell them it's under 'advisement'.