What feature is missing from EX?

[CommunityAdmin]

You may be a part of another online community and have grown to like things on that community that you haven't seen here.  What is that feature that you would like to see here? Pick from the list below or add your own.  Then tell us more about what you like about it and how you envision it being part of BecomeAnEX.

-Mention another user
-Micro blogging
-Quoting other's comments
-Live Text/Video Chats
-Reply by Email
-Wikis
-Polls
-Photo Albums

[CommunityAdmin]

@Guilia

Great Ideas about Live Video/Text Chats.

Google Hangouts and Microsoft Skype and other free services are getting easier to use. Certainly at times of Bonfires and other select times the benefits of having a live chat tool would help immensely.

Great examples of polls! Like your questions!

Spell Check.  Most of the time your browser should check within the text to underline a word you are spelling wrong or give you an option in the toolbar to perform a spell check.  The formatting options are limited and something in the pages is blocking Chrome/Firefox with assisting in spell checking. Thanks for pointing that out.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Jackie 012515

Most other community platforms I have seen do give you an idea of who liked/high five/kudo'd your comment or post. So that's something that very likely could happen.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Shawn

Yes I think it would be good to be able to post your personal milestones on other social media sites you participate in, if you choose to do so. Giving you the control to do so is important as you may encourage others to start their quit and also help others understand your accomplishments and effort to be nicotine-free!

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Sarah

Yes I agree Group Private messaging. I've wanted it with several of the previous community platforms I have used before. It would allow me to message several people without exposing my email address to the person. Thanks for mentioning this.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Giulia

RE: Group Messaging.  

Good to know about the functionality of Ning. I wasn't aware that Ning had that functionality.  Some of the other platforms that I've encountered do and others do not.  Good to know context and your frame of reference with your past experience. Saving time is always important. 🙂

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Elvan

This is the only community platform that I have worked with that doesn't notify you on any discussion/question/blog if you comment on it.  It's odd to me that you only get notifications if they are commenting on your blog.  Would love to get more notifications on anything I participate in. Certainly giving someone to have the control of getting an email and/or an on-site notification so as not to innundate them with too much.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Legend

RE: Following Content you participated in. Yes I think this is one of the most frustating things about the community for me. It creates a steep learning curve and people don't just "get it". Thus the reason we have the tutorials and the FAQs that explain how the site works. Certainly not as user friendly as it could be. 

RE: Follow/Unfollow content you participate in. Agreeably at times there are discussions that have a lot of activity and some people may or may not want to continue to get notifications. Being able to change the subscription to a group, friend, discussion area as a whole would be nice in addition to being to unsubscribe from a particular topic/discussion.

RE: Group Notifications.  Yes it is odd that notifications in groups don't go out to anyone but group owner.  In this case I didn't get notifications that people had replied to this thread even though I created this group. 😞

RE: Popular Groups.  There isn't a lot of structure to the current site so you're not really able to get a snapshot where the activity is or isn't happening and it's hindered by the lack of robust notification system. I only envision it getting better from her. Based on my previous experience with multiple different communities it will be an improved experience for you overall.

RE: Videos. Most contemporary community platforms allow you to embed and/or upload videos to your posts. I'm looking forward to potential for this as well!

RE: Groups. Agreed there are some groups that no longer have a group owner for a variety of reasons. I'll need to find out which ones may need a new group owner (may need volunteers 🙂 ) and others that have members that can be absorbed into a similar active group that already has an active owner. I'm evaluating the options available to us.

There are a lot of groups 634+ at this time with many duplicates.  I'm looking through the groups right now and seeing where we can potentially consolidate duplicate groups and eliminate ones that have no activity.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

@Shawn

I hadn't thought about some people just creating something to get a badge.  I'll be on the lookout for this as I evaluate the groups.

Interesting concept and concern about wanting to limit who sees what. For those used to the Facebook approach where you can choose your level of privacy based on the content you are posting. I certainly am comfortable making somethings more public than others when posting to social media. I think the draw to the community for people unsure about being able to join is seeing the real struggles that people share on the site. If that was all closed off so you couldn't see anything unless you  joined might prevent a lot of people from joining who just want to lurk for a while or even forever. 

Hopefully with a more robust Group system and the use of both public and closed groups, the level of privacy desired by most would be achieved. Certainly I'll look to see what options we have that might give more granular privacy controls for each thing you author. Undoubtedly as you restrict your content to certain people, it may restrict the number of interactions you receive from it.

Great feedback!

Mark
EX Community Manager

[ShawnP]

@ mark....we still would have the same interactions here on site like we do now. i know from others that i talked to in the past, they didn't blog because of the privacy. Then we had some that would blog and give out personal info that we had to remind them it was a public forum. It would be nice to be able to have that choice between public or loggined in users only.

[Leeza]

Some people would like to use the blog for journaling some info for their eyes only so they could refer back to this info in the future.  It would be great if that privacy option woulld be available as an option when blogging.