The Flickr connection was for actual accounts...you could log into your flickr account and manage your account with Google and Facebook. Now, instead, it seems they are forcing you to have a Yahoo account. AFAIK, Flickr doesn't allow for anonymous comments. If we did the same thing, that would mean you would have to have a SmugMug account to comment, so I don't see this move by Yahoo as anything similar to the way we use Google and Facebook log in options.
I pay for this why can't I decide how people leave comments!
I am probably repeating myself, but let each of us decide whether or not to allow anonymous comments. If Smugmug is fearful of litigation, have us sign a document relieving Smugmug of any accountability for those of us wishing to allow comments without a login.
Between this change and the change to make mass captioning difficult, I am distressed at the direction Smugmug is taking.
SmugMug site => The Bakker Chautauqua
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." (Einstein)
All comments have stopped since this login requirement.
Thanks for nothing.
Have a good day. :bwg
WOW, Can't believe I missed this- guess over the years I've become too trusting of Smugmugs excellent service, they certainly did not do an excellent job of bringing this change to my attention, wondered why there were no comments, not that I got a ton before but no comments at all was strange. Perhaps it is time to start looking at other hosting sites.
p.s it seems sad that free sites such as wordpress can handle this just fine without forcing users to sign in and smugmug cannot?
Originally Posted by uketeecee
In OLD SM there were several comments a day. In new SM (which I went to in 2013) there hasn't been a single comment.
My collector friends have told me they don't wish to bother with a second login just to leave a comment.
Originally Posted by billw
And just to be clear, is the discussion about opening up commenting in password-protected galleries also over? If a member has password-protected galleries and has given the password(s) to certain people (perhaps their clients, perhaps family members who are helping with genealogy research), haven't those people "logged in"? In my case it's genealogy, and I know for sure that gramma and grampa aren't interested in getting FB or G+ accounts - one more thing they don't understand and don't want - just so they can comment on old family photos.
Originally Posted by Allen
I consider visitors that enter a password on my site logged in. They should be able to comment on those
passworded galleries they now have access to. After all, I control that password. I do not control
passwords from any other site.
Turn on anonymous comments (no log in) and at the same time toggle everyone's site to require approval of comments
in their settings. Post a message that comment approval is turned ON for their site and they have to toggle it back off
if so wanted. Include in this message that the liability shifts to them if approval is turned off.
Turn on anonymous comments (no log in) and at the same time toggle everyone's site to require approval of comments
in their settings. Post a message that comment approval is turned ON for their site and they have to toggle it back off
if so wanted. Include in this message that the liability shifts to them if approval is turned off.
Smugmug has said quite clearly that they will not allow anonymous comments. Their lack of response to my request for clarification regarding password-protected galleries says to me that they don't consider them a special case.
So, the question then is, what photo sharing sites do allow anonymous comments, or at least non-logged-in comments in password-protected galleries?
When I was at pbase we had the option to either allow or disallow individual comments. I've also had some ugly remarks left on my photos/galleries when I was there. In my profile account I could look at them and choose whether to show the comments or not. And pbase is old school!
Why can't we have this here? I'm losing client reviews! they can't say it's not doable. I'm starting to wonder if I should have gone with Zenfolio instead! But I had read reviews that the people at Smug listen to their clients, not so sure about that now.
I don't know how I feel about all this. Not long ago, I had to manually remove comment spam from several galleries. I certainly don't want to be a comment janitor, but then again, I also want to see some beneficial comments. I haven't had any of those for two years.
My Smugmug
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Guests can't leave comments without logging in.
Well, I kept wondering what I had done wrong (settngs wise) because the "Comment Cloud" cannot be accessed by visitors without logging in, and I just now found posts on the subject and learned that the comment option indeed does not work...unless people log in. (I know a pop-up explains that you have to log in to leave a comment, but like I said, I thought I had done something wrong.)
I can't even remember all the galleries I have invited people to leave comments, and now I have to go through all of them and remove my remark and change the Settings.
#1. I am not giving my password to anyone who could accidentally mess up anything in my galleries.
#2. I have been with SM for years and always allowed comments on the galleries where I wanted comments....never once anything obscene, or the likes. My site is for family and friends and there are passwords to keep unwanted people from wandering in.
If comments are not allowed, why is the Comment option still listed? Why were we not notified of this? If I have something to say about the photo, it's in the caption, not the comment cloud.
This is VERY VERY disappointing. Surely there is some code that could override the current "must log in" rule.
DeeRich, the idea is not that your visitors would sign into your account using your password, it's that they log in using their own SmugMug or Facebook accounts. Pretty annoying either way when galleries are already protected by a viewing password.
If comments are not allowed, why is the Comment option still listed? Why were we not notified of this? If I have something to say about the photo, it's in the caption, not the comment cloud.
Comments are allowed if they are enabled in the gallery. You should be able to use Bulk Gallery Settings in the organizer to disable comments in multiple galleries at once. (I know, I know, you want to allow anonymous comments (so do I!), but...)
DeeRich, the idea is not that your visitors would sign into your account using your password, it's that they log in using their own SmugMug or Facebook accounts. Pretty annoying either way when galleries are already protected by a viewing password.
Google accounts can also be used to log in and leave comments.
>>> note to smug <<< Please remove this restriction! If I look back at comments from legacy many of the commenters on my site were not logged in anywhere.
I've been meaning to post this for a while now. I used to be a big fan and advocate of SmugMug, and originally I was very excited by the new SmugMug overhaul, but I ultimately decided that it is not for me, and I am leaving to program my own site. So far I have already succeeded at getting the major aspects programmed, and I'm having a lot of fun doing it.
There are several reasons for leaving, but the biggest for me has been this comment debacle, and particularly SmugMug's attitude that they know better than us what we really want on our site. Note that the change in comments was not because of some technological difficulty. Some user apparently received some very nasty comments, and so Papa SmugMug decided to take it away from everyone. We aren't given the choice, because SmugMug of course knows better than we about what to do with our own site. The truth is that our own sites hosted through SmugMug is not really our own sites. We pay them to be granted the privilege to do it their way. Fine I say, I'm leaving to make a site that is truly my own site. If I want a feature, I'll just program it myself the way I want it. That solution won't work for everyone, but my point in posting is that this comments issue is the final push I needed to leave.
DeeRich, the idea is not that your visitors would sign into your account using your password, it's that they log in using their own SmugMug or Facebook accounts. Pretty annoying either way when galleries are already protected by a viewing password.
Gotcha! Thanks for explaining. (Still don't like it either way.)
Originally Posted by uketeecee
In OLD SM there were several comments a day. In new SM (which I went to in 2013) there hasn't been a single comment.
My collector friends have told me they don't wish to bother with a second login just to leave a comment.
Originally Posted by billw
And just to be clear, is the discussion about opening up commenting in password-protected galleries also over? If a member has password-protected galleries and has given the password(s) to certain people (perhaps their clients, perhaps family members who are helping with genealogy research), haven't those people "logged in"? In my case it's genealogy, and I know for sure that gramma and grampa aren't interested in getting FB or G+ accounts - one more thing they don't understand and don't want - just so they can comment on old family photos.
Originally Posted by Allen
I consider visitors that enter a password on my site logged in. They should be able to comment on those
passworded galleries they now have access to. After all, I control that password. I do not control
passwords from any other site.
Originally Posted by uketeecee
In OLD SM there were several comments a day. In new SM (which I went to in 2013) there hasn't been a single comment.
My collector friends have told me they don't wish to bother with a second login just to leave a comment.
Originally Posted by billw
And just to be clear, is the discussion about opening up commenting in password-protected galleries also over? If a member has password-protected galleries and has given the password(s) to certain people (perhaps their clients, perhaps family members who are helping with genealogy research), haven't those people "logged in"? In my case it's genealogy, and I know for sure that gramma and grampa aren't interested in getting FB or G+ accounts - one more thing they don't understand and don't want - just so they can comment on old family photos.
Originally Posted by Allen
I consider visitors that enter a password on my site logged in. They should be able to comment on those
passworded galleries they now have access to. After all, I control that password. I do not control
passwords from any other site.
and seemed receptive to the idea of allowing non-logged-in/anonymous comments in password-protected galleries. He is apparently "(Product Manager / DGrin Admin, SmugMug)".
So, those of us who still care about this, make your voices heard! Resurrect this thread, and comment on that page!
How many times do we have to say it: when we have given someone the password to one of our password-protected galleries, they have effectively logged in by using that password. We have given them that password for a reason - which is often so that they can comment on the photos. It might be a client saying which shots they like, or it may be a family who doesn't want to share their photos with the world but would still like to hear what family members have to say.
How many times do we have to say it: when we have given someone the password to one of our password-protected galleries, they have effectively logged in by using that password.
I get it, but there are still a lot of us (I think) that just want plain old anonymous comments back, period.
Originally Posted by uketeecee
In OLD SM there were several comments a day. In new SM (which I went to in 2013) there hasn't been a single comment.
My collector friends have told me they don't wish to bother with a second login just to leave a comment.
Originally Posted by billw
And just to be clear, is the discussion about opening up commenting in password-protected galleries also over? If a member has password-protected galleries and has given the password(s) to certain people (perhaps their clients, perhaps family members who are helping with genealogy research), haven't those people "logged in"? In my case it's genealogy, and I know for sure that gramma and grampa aren't interested in getting FB or G+ accounts - one more thing they don't understand and don't want - just so they can comment on old family photos.
Originally Posted by Allen
I consider visitors that enter a password on my site logged in. They should be able to comment on those
passworded galleries they now have access to. After all, I control that password. I do not control
passwords from any other site.
I didn't see a quick way to download to do an analysis, but the vast majority I saw as "completed" were with single digit votes. The under-review max votes is 271 and averages 121. The above is at 220 so far. The top one (from 2009) is 1755.
Again, not a statistical analysis, but there seems no correlation between votes and what gets done, unless perhaps it is a negative correlation.
I didn't see a quick way to download to do an analysis, but the vast majority I saw as "completed" were with single digit votes. The under-review max votes is 271 and averages 121. The above is at 220 so far. The top one (from 2009) is 1755.
Again, not a statistical analysis, but there seems no correlation between votes and what gets done, unless perhaps it is a negative correlation.
Sad. I've tried not to notice this. I'm glad the Stats thing is getting fixed, because that was ridiculous. But yes, this mess with comments is equally miserable, & has tons of support & no good answers from SmugMug (why can't we simply choose how much control we want over comments?? I mean, even the simple step of letting us approve comments before they go public... sheeesh, how hard is it? And few people would simply opt not to comment because of it...) Anyway, yeah, it really feels like movement on wanted / needed changes is simply glacial these days, & the Feedback Forum being the only place to ask just feels hopeless. [ETA: as a pathetic example, a comment of mine has been waiting for approval since Nov. 5 in the FF !!]
Sad. I've tried not to notice this. I'm glad the Stats thing is getting fixed, because that was ridiculous. But yes, this mess with comments is equally miserable, & has tons of support & no good answers from SmugMug (why can't we simply choose how much control we want over comments?? I mean, even the simple step of letting us approve comments before they go public... sheeesh, how hard is it? And few people would simply opt not to comment because of it...) Anyway, yeah, it really feels like movement on wanted / needed changes is simply glacial these days, & the Feedback Forum being the only place to ask just feels hopeless.
Although i'm going to disable new comments on this forum and redirect Feature Requests to our UserVoice page, I did want to take a quick second and respond to your concerns over UserVoice and let you know that we completely agree that something needed (needs) to be done. We are listening, we’re working to fix the silence, and we’ve already implemented a few things. We still have a ways to go but I think you’re going to like the steps we’re taking.
Several months ago we implemented some changes here on DGrin that started this entire process. DGrin, which was largely user supported, now has a rotation of Support Heroes monitoring and responding to questions, comments, and concerns. I was hired to spend some of my time supporting you and our other customers on both DGrin and on UserVoice. As a SmugMug customer for 7 years before joining the team, I too was frustrated by the silence and I vowed to change that.
The Product Team has already implemented a few new processes to use our feedback forums more effectively:
- We now have a weekly rotation where each Product Manager is responsible for approving, responding, and managing the submitted ideas. The moderation queue of comments and ideas now sits at nearly 0 at all times. Each idea is reviewed, approved, merged, and often even commented on.
- We have altered the entry point for the Feedback Forums to highlight “Hot Ideas” instead of “Top Ideas”. We’ve found that the total number of votes for an idea can sometimes be misleading. Old ideas have more time to garner votes and that’s often why you will see the oldest ideas have the most votes. Focusing on the ideas that are currently the most important can help tell us which ones are actually most important.
- We are trying to manage the bloat of duplicate ideas and merge them into one idea. We are updating the status and commenting on these ideas as we merge them.
- We are actively responding to new comments as they come in.
- We have implemented a new “Not at this Time” status, similar to “Planned”, “In Work”, “Under Review”, and “Completed” so we can be transparent and let you know that we’re not currently working on it, although one day we might. As people ask for status on topics I’ve been updating them with this setting. At some point I would love to go through and mark all the topics, but with nearly 2,000 ideas I’ve only had time to start marking the ones that people ask about.
- The Product Team met with the Customer Service reps at UserVoice to ask them for lessons learns on how to manage our system better. We came away with a number of useful tips. We’ve also upgraded our UserVoice software so that we can use some of their new tools to better gauge which features you really want.
- We’re going to eventually implement a new voting feature where we can stack 2 ideas against each other and find out which ideas are actually most important. For example, if we compared FTP Uploading vs. A Better Shopping Cart Experience, we may find that you want a better shopping experience far more than FTP uploading, even though FTP uploading is the #3 requested item.
- We’re also working with the UserVoice team to press upon the need for better searching, allowing us to merge ideas faster, reduce bloat, and prevent duplicate ideas from being submitted.
The Feedback Page (UserVoice) is tough for us because we have to balance our strategic direction with requests from you guys. We do actively use the UserVoice voting results as a way to help us make decisions on what products to work on next and how to prioritize them. UserVoice, though, isn't the only tool when we make decisions as we conduct focus groups, look at data from how our users use their SmugMug page, and how features fit into the direction we want to go.
With that said, we as Product Managers, love UserVoice because it gives us some data that we can use when making decisions on what products to work on next. Hopefully you've noticed that we've been more active and we're trying to do a better job managing the feature requests. If you have any ideas, I'm going to leave this thread open for a week or so before locking down this entire forum. I'd love to hear any suggestions on how we can make UserVoice work better.
ETA: as a pathetic example, a comment of mine has been waiting for approval since Nov. 5 in the FF !!
In the last month or so we've been approving requests and comments (including your comment) within a few hours, if not in less than an hour. It looks like somehow "this comment requires moderation" was pasted in when you created the comment. We're not allowed to edit your comments so I couldn't remove it to get rid of the confusion
Good luck on all the requests that used to be screened here. A lot turned out to be just some customization.
In the last 2 months there has been only 15 active threads in this forum on DGrin, with only a very small number of them being new posts. Contrast that to UserVoice where we have 300 active ideas and at least 15 new ones per day. It's a much more active community than the forum here. I want to avoid the confusion of where to post requests; it's confusing for our customers to have 2 places to go for requesting features and confusing for us to have to look in multiple places.
We have seen a few posts on UserVoice where their requests could be solved by some simple customization, to which we've referred them to dgrin successfully. It should work out
I went thru about 11 pages of new requests on UserVoice yesterday and found hardly nothing
worth reading. So much garbage I gave up. No discussion of any kind that I could find. I commented
on a couple then my comments disappeared. If discussion is allowed, any delay of getting posts
accepted will kill it. Plus there is absolutely no exposure of any active discussion.
I went thru about 11 pages of new requests on UserVoice yesterday and found hardly nothing
worth reading. So much garbage I gave up. No discussion of any kind that I could find. I commented
on a couple then my comments disappeared. If discussion is allowed, any delay of getting posts
accepted will kill it. Plus there is absolutely no exposure of any active discussion.
That's exactly what I worry about. I have a comment from Nov. 4 that is still "Awaiting Moderator Approval". I even mentioned it here. The active discussion doesn't flow to the top very well, either, especially on the little stuff that's sometimes as important as the big stuff because it's some needed change that's been around for so long.
In fact, that to me is the largest issue-- the problem of getting smaller improvements implemented whether they're discussed or posted here on DGrin or on UserVoice. If I have such a limited number of votes, my votes at any given time (&, observably, most other people's) always go to the most important changes needed, and my own ideas as well (but usually only one vote per idea of my own). The problem, then, that never gets solved is: the myriad of little improvements that would hardly even take any real work on the part of SmugMug... but which just never happen.
These little but greatly needed improvements often look unpopular, even though practically everyone, if asked, would say "yes, I really want that". In many cases, they'd even say, "yes, that's been irritating me for years". But these ideas look unpopular because we have such a limit of votes & can't spare them for the little stuff. Or because they're often listed as separate little ideas, even when they may be part of a large "package" of changes.
Example of such an idea: "when arranging, or organizing, or deleting, or doing any other behind-the-scenes in-gallery work, I want to have all possible choices in front of me as to how my thumbs are identified (i.e. number, caption, file name, marked hidden)" This is something that's been needed forever, yet I see ideas like it in bits & pieces in UserVoice, & so the whole package we need just doesn't get impressive numbers of votes. I feel if SmugMug could find a way to work on all these little irritations in high volume & really listen between the lines, it would improve everything about itself--- user numbers, dedication, lowered need for "Help", better reviews, reputation, & even gallery quality. I'm not sure how UserVoice could be changed to help the above (beyond giving people more votes), but if that's the way we're going here...I sure hope some of you wise guys do have bright ideas that would improve the timeline on improving those long-term minor irritations here.
Originally Posted by uketeecee
In OLD SM there were several comments a day. In new SM (which I went to in 2013) there hasn't been a single comment.
My collector friends have told me they don't wish to bother with a second login just to leave a comment.
Originally Posted by billw
And just to be clear, is the discussion about opening up commenting in password-protected galleries also over? If a member has password-protected galleries and has given the password(s) to certain people (perhaps their clients, perhaps family members who are helping with genealogy research), haven't those people "logged in"? In my case it's genealogy, and I know for sure that gramma and grampa aren't interested in getting FB or G+ accounts - one more thing they don't understand and don't want - just so they can comment on old family photos.
Originally Posted by Allen
I consider visitors that enter a password on my site logged in. They should be able to comment on those
passworded galleries they now have access to. After all, I control that password. I do not control
passwords from any other site.
If you want an anonymous commenting system, remove the login requirement. We don't need to add anything new. We just need to remove the problem. Turn anonymous commenting off by default and allow us to turn it on if we want it. Why is this such a big deal?
The only difference is what server the comments are stored on. Maybe you can ask Baldy to comment on what the real issue is here. I can only imagine a lawyer suggested this is a way to minimize liability. There's no good "usability" reason for allowing anonymous comments through a 3rd party content block instead of straight in the smugmug comments system. Maybe there's another solution, like required moderation of anonymous comments?
If there were "anonymous comments" (no FB,G+,SM login) your users will still need to enter 1) Their Name and 2) Probably their email. Since they're going to enter 2 pieces of information anyways, would it be acceptable if it was 1) email address and 2) password?
If there were "anonymous comments" (no FB,G+,SM login) your users will still need to enter 1) Their Name and 2) Probably their email. Since they're going to enter 2 pieces of information anyways, would it be acceptable if it was 1) email address and 2) password?
Your logic is correct: 2=2. However you are missing the point that it is not about difficulties of entering information and amount of such. It is about not willingness to share and/or associate a facebook, google, etc. account information. Hence the word "ANONYMOUS" comments.
Comments
The Flickr connection was for actual accounts...you could log into your flickr account and manage your account with Google and Facebook. Now, instead, it seems they are forcing you to have a Yahoo account. AFAIK, Flickr doesn't allow for anonymous comments. If we did the same thing, that would mean you would have to have a SmugMug account to comment, so I don't see this move by Yahoo as anything similar to the way we use Google and Facebook log in options.
Facebook
Google+
Twitter
Photo Blog
Between this change and the change to make mass captioning difficult, I am distressed at the direction Smugmug is taking.
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." (Einstein)
WOW, Can't believe I missed this- guess over the years I've become too trusting of Smugmugs excellent service, they certainly did not do an excellent job of bringing this change to my attention, wondered why there were no comments, not that I got a ton before but no comments at all was strange. Perhaps it is time to start looking at other hosting sites.
p.s it seems sad that free sites such as wordpress can handle this just fine without forcing users to sign in and smugmug cannot?
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co
My Smugmug Site
Turn on anonymous comments (no log in) and at the same time toggle everyone's site to require approval of comments
in their settings. Post a message that comment approval is turned ON for their site and they have to toggle it back off
if so wanted. Include in this message that the liability shifts to them if approval is turned off.
My Website index | My Blog
Smugmug has said quite clearly that they will not allow anonymous comments. Their lack of response to my request for clarification regarding password-protected galleries says to me that they don't consider them a special case.
So, the question then is, what photo sharing sites do allow anonymous comments, or at least non-logged-in comments in password-protected galleries?
http://billw.smugmug.com
Zenfolio allows non-logged in comments.
Why can't we have this here? I'm losing client reviews! they can't say it's not doable. I'm starting to wonder if I should have gone with Zenfolio instead! But I had read reviews that the people at Smug listen to their clients, not so sure about that now.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Well, I kept wondering what I had done wrong (settngs wise) because the "Comment Cloud" cannot be accessed by visitors without logging in, and I just now found posts on the subject and learned that the comment option indeed does not work...unless people log in. (I know a pop-up explains that you have to log in to leave a comment, but like I said, I thought I had done something wrong.)
I can't even remember all the galleries I have invited people to leave comments, and now I have to go through all of them and remove my remark and change the Settings.
#1. I am not giving my password to anyone who could accidentally mess up anything in my galleries.
#2. I have been with SM for years and always allowed comments on the galleries where I wanted comments....never once anything obscene, or the likes. My site is for family and friends and there are passwords to keep unwanted people from wandering in.
If comments are not allowed, why is the Comment option still listed? Why were we not notified of this? If I have something to say about the photo, it's in the caption, not the comment cloud.
This is VERY VERY disappointing. Surely there is some code that could override the current "must log in" rule.
DeeRich
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
Google accounts can also be used to log in and leave comments.
>>> note to smug <<<
Please remove this restriction! If I look back at comments from legacy many of the commenters on my site were not logged in anywhere.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
There are several reasons for leaving, but the biggest for me has been this comment debacle, and particularly SmugMug's attitude that they know better than us what we really want on our site. Note that the change in comments was not because of some technological difficulty. Some user apparently received some very nasty comments, and so Papa SmugMug decided to take it away from everyone. We aren't given the choice, because SmugMug of course knows better than we about what to do with our own site. The truth is that our own sites hosted through SmugMug is not really our own sites. We pay them to be granted the privilege to do it their way. Fine I say, I'm leaving to make a site that is truly my own site. If I want a feature, I'll just program it myself the way I want it. That solution won't work for everyone, but my point in posting is that this comments issue is the final push I needed to leave.
Gotcha! Thanks for explaining. (Still don't like it either way.)
DeeRich
www.oursite.smugmug.com
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co
My Smugmug Site
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co
My Smugmug Site
Last week "aaron" showed up on this SmugMug feedback page
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co
and seemed receptive to the idea of allowing non-logged-in/anonymous comments in password-protected galleries. He is apparently "(Product Manager / DGrin Admin, SmugMug)".
So, those of us who still care about this, make your voices heard! Resurrect this thread, and comment on that page!
How many times do we have to say it: when we have given someone the password to one of our password-protected galleries, they have effectively logged in by using that password. We have given them that password for a reason - which is often so that they can comment on the photos. It might be a client saying which shots they like, or it may be a family who doesn't want to share their photos with the world but would still like to hear what family members have to say.
http://billw.smugmug.com
I get it, but there are still a lot of us (I think) that just want plain old anonymous comments back, period.
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co
My Smugmug Site
The top five are from 2009.
I didn't see a quick way to download to do an analysis, but the vast majority I saw as "completed" were with single digit votes. The under-review max votes is 271 and averages 121. The above is at 220 so far. The top one (from 2009) is 1755.
Again, not a statistical analysis, but there seems no correlation between votes and what gets done, unless perhaps it is a negative correlation.
Sad. I've tried not to notice this. I'm glad the Stats thing is getting fixed, because that was ridiculous. But yes, this mess with comments is equally miserable, & has tons of support & no good answers from SmugMug (why can't we simply choose how much control we want over comments?? I mean, even the simple step of letting us approve comments before they go public... sheeesh, how hard is it? And few people would simply opt not to comment because of it...) Anyway, yeah, it really feels like movement on wanted / needed changes is simply glacial these days, & the Feedback Forum being the only place to ask just feels hopeless. [ETA: as a pathetic example, a comment of mine has been waiting for approval since Nov. 5 in the FF !!]
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Although i'm going to disable new comments on this forum and redirect Feature Requests to our UserVoice page, I did want to take a quick second and respond to your concerns over UserVoice and let you know that we completely agree that something needed (needs) to be done. We are listening, we’re working to fix the silence, and we’ve already implemented a few things. We still have a ways to go but I think you’re going to like the steps we’re taking.
Several months ago we implemented some changes here on DGrin that started this entire process. DGrin, which was largely user supported, now has a rotation of Support Heroes monitoring and responding to questions, comments, and concerns. I was hired to spend some of my time supporting you and our other customers on both DGrin and on UserVoice. As a SmugMug customer for 7 years before joining the team, I too was frustrated by the silence and I vowed to change that.
The Product Team has already implemented a few new processes to use our feedback forums more effectively:
- We now have a weekly rotation where each Product Manager is responsible for approving, responding, and managing the submitted ideas. The moderation queue of comments and ideas now sits at nearly 0 at all times. Each idea is reviewed, approved, merged, and often even commented on.
- We have altered the entry point for the Feedback Forums to highlight “Hot Ideas” instead of “Top Ideas”. We’ve found that the total number of votes for an idea can sometimes be misleading. Old ideas have more time to garner votes and that’s often why you will see the oldest ideas have the most votes. Focusing on the ideas that are currently the most important can help tell us which ones are actually most important.
- We are trying to manage the bloat of duplicate ideas and merge them into one idea. We are updating the status and commenting on these ideas as we merge them.
- We are actively responding to new comments as they come in.
- We have implemented a new “Not at this Time” status, similar to “Planned”, “In Work”, “Under Review”, and “Completed” so we can be transparent and let you know that we’re not currently working on it, although one day we might. As people ask for status on topics I’ve been updating them with this setting. At some point I would love to go through and mark all the topics, but with nearly 2,000 ideas I’ve only had time to start marking the ones that people ask about.
- The Product Team met with the Customer Service reps at UserVoice to ask them for lessons learns on how to manage our system better. We came away with a number of useful tips. We’ve also upgraded our UserVoice software so that we can use some of their new tools to better gauge which features you really want.
- We’re going to eventually implement a new voting feature where we can stack 2 ideas against each other and find out which ideas are actually most important. For example, if we compared FTP Uploading vs. A Better Shopping Cart Experience, we may find that you want a better shopping experience far more than FTP uploading, even though FTP uploading is the #3 requested item.
- We’re also working with the UserVoice team to press upon the need for better searching, allowing us to merge ideas faster, reduce bloat, and prevent duplicate ideas from being submitted.
The Feedback Page (UserVoice) is tough for us because we have to balance our strategic direction with requests from you guys. We do actively use the UserVoice voting results as a way to help us make decisions on what products to work on next and how to prioritize them. UserVoice, though, isn't the only tool when we make decisions as we conduct focus groups, look at data from how our users use their SmugMug page, and how features fit into the direction we want to go.
With that said, we as Product Managers, love UserVoice because it gives us some data that we can use when making decisions on what products to work on next. Hopefully you've noticed that we've been more active and we're trying to do a better job managing the feature requests. If you have any ideas, I'm going to leave this thread open for a week or so before locking down this entire forum. I'd love to hear any suggestions on how we can make UserVoice work better.
In the last month or so we've been approving requests and comments (including your comment) within a few hours, if not in less than an hour. It looks like somehow "this comment requires moderation" was pasted in when you created the comment. We're not allowed to edit your comments so I couldn't remove it to get rid of the confusion
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
My Website index | My Blog
In the last 2 months there has been only 15 active threads in this forum on DGrin, with only a very small number of them being new posts. Contrast that to UserVoice where we have 300 active ideas and at least 15 new ones per day. It's a much more active community than the forum here. I want to avoid the confusion of where to post requests; it's confusing for our customers to have 2 places to go for requesting features and confusing for us to have to look in multiple places.
We have seen a few posts on UserVoice where their requests could be solved by some simple customization, to which we've referred them to dgrin successfully. It should work out
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
worth reading. So much garbage I gave up. No discussion of any kind that I could find. I commented
on a couple then my comments disappeared. If discussion is allowed, any delay of getting posts
accepted will kill it. Plus there is absolutely no exposure of any active discussion.
My Website index | My Blog
That's exactly what I worry about. I have a comment from Nov. 4 that is still "Awaiting Moderator Approval". I even mentioned it here. The active discussion doesn't flow to the top very well, either, especially on the little stuff that's sometimes as important as the big stuff because it's some needed change that's been around for so long.
In fact, that to me is the largest issue-- the problem of getting smaller improvements implemented whether they're discussed or posted here on DGrin or on UserVoice. If I have such a limited number of votes, my votes at any given time (&, observably, most other people's) always go to the most important changes needed, and my own ideas as well (but usually only one vote per idea of my own). The problem, then, that never gets solved is: the myriad of little improvements that would hardly even take any real work on the part of SmugMug... but which just never happen.
These little but greatly needed improvements often look unpopular, even though practically everyone, if asked, would say "yes, I really want that". In many cases, they'd even say, "yes, that's been irritating me for years". But these ideas look unpopular because we have such a limit of votes & can't spare them for the little stuff. Or because they're often listed as separate little ideas, even when they may be part of a large "package" of changes.
Example of such an idea: "when arranging, or organizing, or deleting, or doing any other behind-the-scenes in-gallery work, I want to have all possible choices in front of me as to how my thumbs are identified (i.e. number, caption, file name, marked hidden)" This is something that's been needed forever, yet I see ideas like it in bits & pieces in UserVoice, & so the whole package we need just doesn't get impressive numbers of votes. I feel if SmugMug could find a way to work on all these little irritations in high volume & really listen between the lines, it would improve everything about itself--- user numbers, dedication, lowered need for "Help", better reviews, reputation, & even gallery quality. I'm not sure how UserVoice could be changed to help the above (beyond giving people more votes), but if that's the way we're going here...I sure hope some of you wise guys
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co
My Smugmug Site
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
Your logic is correct: 2=2. However you are missing the point that it is not about difficulties of entering information and amount of such. It is about not willingness to share and/or associate a facebook, google, etc. account information. Hence the word "ANONYMOUS" comments.
tailoredportraits.com