what about community features?

Is there a plan to grow thurrott.com as a community? I think contributions from community members are really made difficult by the absence of a system to track what we write in comments and on the forum, lack of notifications etc. Basically now the only way to follow-up on a discussion is to remember where it was and go back and check. Especially when discussions happen under posts and then these posts are pushed down over time on the home page, interesting discussions die out because we can’t find them anymore. This seems to discourage community participation by design. It’s unclear if this is the purpose or if it’s something that will be fixed. I think it would be fair to tell the community explicitly what is the plan.

Conversation 7 comments

  • simard57

    21 October, 2019 - 2:27 pm

    <p>there is the notification Bell icon just under your username but is has not worked well for me – seems to take forever to load and I have given up on it</p>

    • Vladimir Carli

      Premium Member
      21 October, 2019 - 3:14 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#482433">In reply to Simard57:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Notifications stopped working many months ago. In the user page there is a page where one can see everything that they posted and I was using that, but that stopped working too</p>

      • simard57

        22 October, 2019 - 10:07 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#482450">In reply to Vladimir:</a></em></blockquote><p>recently I was looking for that page – how is it found?</p><p><br></p>

        • Vladimir Carli

          Premium Member
          22 October, 2019 - 6:15 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#482616">In reply to Simard57:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>it’s in your account page but it’s not working right now</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    21 October, 2019 - 3:31 pm

    <p>Bingo. I’ve submitted multiple tickets for notifications but the fix is always temporary. My sense is there are perhaps larger site changes across the BWW family that have to be addressed first.</p><p>I’ve previously suggested a few ideas to improve engagement, but I’m not a site master so I have no idea how feasible any of them are. I’d like articles to also appear in the forums as a new topic, with associated comments below. This would keep conversation going even after an article is bumped off the front page.</p><p>I'd like to be able to @ people in replies so you can expand the conversation.</p><p>I’d like to quote multiple replies in my own reply. This is a great feature in a lot of forums.</p><p>It would be nice if you could hide some commenters and follow others.</p><p>Maybe some of these forum features/controls could be part of Premium, delivering additional value and maybe making it bit more sticky. Or maybe they’re free and drive more engagement, which then translates to more Premium members. Either way, I think community engagement needs to be part of the strategy for a modern blog now that advertising has dried up. </p><p>I can only hope that at some point Paul or Brad will address this stuff in a “state of the site” posting.</p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    21 October, 2019 - 3:32 pm

    <p>Sorry for not responding more quickly.</p><p><br></p><p>I'll raise this issue in our next weekly meeting. Short version is we're a bit overwhelmed by the updates we're making to our sister site, Petri.com, right now, but the focus will switch to Thurrott.com in 2020. So we should be able to do something, for sure.</p>

    • Vladimir Carli

      Premium Member
      22 October, 2019 - 6:16 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#482456">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>thank you</p>

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