30 April 2009

2009 RiotACT site survey

| Jazz
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[First filed: April 28, 2009 @ 17:24]

Over the past few years, RiotACT has undergone a number of changes, some good, and some (in retrospect) not so. Here in the RiotACT HQ bunker our aim is to continuously improve RiotACT so it’s the best it can be for our community of users – that’s you! However, as much as we might think we can, we can’t do this in the isolation of the RiotACT engine room.

This is a shout out – we need to hear from you! (and be brutally honest, you know we can take it). This is your chance to tell us what you really think, as RiotACT would not be as varied and vibrant as it is without your input. We’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions for RiotACT’s future.

Thanking you in advance for your time to participate in the survey. It should take you around 10 minutes and any personal information you provide will not be provided to any third parties and only be used for the purposes of making RiotACT the best it can be.

Click Here to take survey (or follow the link from the site survey ad when you see it). It should take you roughly 10-15 minutes

Cheers,

The-RiotACT team.

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Hey, goodie!! That’s excellent news!

Its similar to the one i have in mind too granny.

Absolutely, but premium membership is no different from registration or readership in terms of risk. It would be good to have some easy way of exchanging personal information such as identity and contact details in privacy offline. Ant’s idea may be more the type of thing I had in mind.

Granny said :

It’s a safety issue for me, peterh.

understood granny. what I meant is that for some of us, ie me, people will find out who i am – it isn’t that hard, but having a group of premium members who would like to catch up offline, tee up events, etc and not put it into the diy wotzon would be a benefit.

It’s a safety issue for me, peterh.

Continuous partial improvement over an undefined schedule = infinite development

(I have previously heard someone refer to such a thing as “Your infinite-amount-of-money Project…”)

You’ll just have to wait and see wont you 🙂

Not everything will get a run this time round but i’ve got to draw the line somewhere or we’d be forever in development.

Clown Killer2:05 pm 29 Apr 09

How about a ‘nutter’ function that when selected randomly capitalises your post?

ant said :

Some kind of personal mail, like on UBB-style forums, woudl probably achieve granny’s aim better than IM (whenever I get a new computer, I spend hours turning off that horrible window messenger or whatever it is, it won’t die). Whirlpool’s got it, and I don’t think their software triggers workplace filters?

it doesn’t.

editing comments is a good idea, but you would need to time limit the edit so as to ensure that the thread flow was continued.

neanderthalsis1:26 pm 29 Apr 09

I notice one of the possiblilities for premium members was to edit your comments. Smart thinking that man.

For those of us who type before engaging mental spelling and grammar checkers or are in the midst of a frothing at the mouth rant, it would be a godsend to be able to come back and coreect appalling spelling.

Some kind of personal mail, like on UBB-style forums, woudl probably achieve granny’s aim better than IM (whenever I get a new computer, I spend hours turning off that horrible window messenger or whatever it is, it won’t die). Whirlpool’s got it, and I don’t think their software triggers workplace filters?

Maybe make it a Premium Member feature… I’d pay for that. 😉

Agree with those points Jazz.

All we’re asking for is the option to select from a few different themes, incase we don’t like the default that you’ve chosen. 😉

Granny said :

A “who are you, really” thread wouldn’t suit me at all.

Ah, but granny, you could still be able to chat with those of us now living behind the wall of content filtering, without waiting till we got home…

To each their own fox. some love it , others hate it. Any changes we make here will undoubtely annoy some people while winning fans elsewhere (cept perhaps encouraging more positive and constructive comments rather than abusive rants, I’m afraid i’m going to invoke executive privilege and overrule if you want more rants).

One of the main reasonse we’ve stayed with WP and not gone to a forum based software is that forum software is usually blocked, and many news sites which arent are on WP and similar open source platforms.

A “who are you, really” thread wouldn’t suit me at all.

I agree with the use of a better WP theme and upgrade to the CMS. I’m one of those picky web people that can’t stand pages without a clear IA and content flow. Not to mention ones that don’t validate easily.

Not a fan of the IM idea though

now that FB is recognised as social networking, and is being blocked accordingly, I think that an IM system would impede the growth of this site.

a members lounge type arrangement would be better, and the threads could include a “who are you, really” thread – for those of us who want to remove the anonymity…

Oh whatever that thing is … you know!

Instant messaging could cause it to fall foul of Government ICT Security policies, and cause a blanket ban on things, though. 😐

I like to support the site, but also do find the extra features helpful. I would be willing to pay an extra $50 a year for some of the upgrades mentioned in the survey. If the value added is valuable enough to somebody, they are happy to pay for it.

I mean, if Jazz said to me, ‘Hey Granny, if you give me fifty bucks I’ll get you instant messaging,’ I’d go, ‘Cool! Too easy!! Thanks.’

Improvements do cost and I’d miss the site if it wasn’t there when I woke up tomorrow.

Ok cool. Thanks for the info guys!! 🙂

#37 motelychick,

THe motives vary for those people i’ve personally spoken to about their premium membership. Some do it (as peterh said) to help the site keep ticking over & faciliate improvements (unfortunately we dont have a rich benefactor prepared to lay down wads of cash for us to make changes & keeping RA running is slotted in around family and day job commitments). Some get it for the membership pin. Others for a marker on what comments havent been read – which is something i personally use a lot. And yet more for the competitions we sometimes run which are usually valued at far more than the membership price itself.

FYI, We’re about 70% through an upgrade of the underlying (wordpress) platform to the latest version which will introduce a few minor changes (such as threaded rather than flat comments) & we’ll be using a lot of the feedback from the survey to make some changes to both functionality and content as we finish off the remainder.

Premium members WILL be getting some extra goodies (and I thank them for their patience in us developing those)

Jazz said :

lol, Not a fan of wordpress grundy?

No, I like WP. I just dont like the theme you use with it. 🙂

I am a premium member, I pay my 13 cents/day so that Jazz and Jb have some kind of float to pay off their bandwidth, and are more likely to listen to my whines\complaints, as I also have the ability to threaten to cancel the subscription if I don’t like something.

Also, I can win (and have won) free stuff, which if I’d been able to accept all of my winnings, would have paid off the membership within the same year.

motleychick said :

Completely off topic, but just wanted to ask if anyone is on the premium package now and if it’s worth it?

There could be a bit more for your money, but it is helping RA stay alive, and i don’t mind paying for that.

Jazz said :

lol, Not a fan of wordpress grundy?

must be in the minority. done the survey. Thanks for allowing us some input.

Completely off topic, but just wanted to ask if anyone is on the premium package now and if it’s worth it?

lol, Not a fan of wordpress grundy?

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy8:56 am 29 Apr 09

Did the survey, left my comments.

RandomGit said :

Done the survey but I forgot to add another feature suggestion. Themes. I, personally, like all my panels to be bordered. A theme that does that would be ace.

It’s ok, I slammed them over their shitty wordpress theme and suggested the option of having multiple, selectable themes for users. 🙂

Apologies about the blank page, i’ll see what i can do about that.

I’ve also added a ‘prefer not to say’ option for the income question for those very uncomfortable about answering it. Please answer it though, it gives us a far more accurate overall profile of our readership. We’re not going to pass judgment on what shoes your kids wear in relation to your salary. Mine rarely wears any, he doesnt like them.

Dvaey – Yes, this time i can publish a summary of the results (although will be keeping this running for a while). We really appreciate the candid feedback so keep it coming.

That’s why Prunes are subject to moderation. You can see where uncontrolled prunes lead to.

All this over a blank page?! Sheesh! I’d hate to see what happened if somebody said you had a big nose …. Pistols at dawn?

It’s so cute when you work together – http://tinyurl.com/clmltz

We don’t want to panic the populace, however. I think we should keep this to ourselves.

I suspect it’s too late for Spam Box. He’s at the Prunes again. Sigh.

Ok, I’m an easy-going kind of old lady. Why don’t I just save us all some trouble and admit that blank pages are anathema … evil and accursed! I was wrong to suggest that anybody could or should survive them!

I thought it was the intestines.

I suspect there’s something you aren’t telling us, Spam Box. Should you be taking yourself off to quarantine? Or at least, eschewing Prunes. And Moderation.

What’s that? :sound of the penny dropping:

Oh well, hearing is one of the first things to go

Very hard to miss. Which just proves that there’s a Moderation Conspiracy. If it involves Prunes, seems it’s immune. Typical.

I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if that ood thing had happened. Surely that would be a bit hard to miss with the prunes and all?

No. In fact, I suspect it should be Moderated. As it’s not edible.

Wouldn’t that belong in the offal thread then?

Ood. Some kind of intestinal complaint, I believe. Caused by excessive Prunes.

Ood happens?

Done and done.

If I see another radio button again tonight tho, Im gonna snap.

Just out of curiosity, when the results are in, will there be a summary on here of what came out of the survey for us mere mortals not part of the ‘RiotACT team’?

Granny said :

I think we could probably all survive the terrors of a blank page if we really put our minds to it ….

OMG, alert alert!. Grow up Granny. Input was requested and then received. OOD happens, sorry it happened to you.

Oh, that blank thing! *lol*

… Don’t let it or you’ll have to run the site up all over again!

The blank screen is that bank thing where it wants to close your browser.

Ngyaahhh!! Done the survey but I forgot to add another feature suggestion. Themes. I, personally, like all my panels to be bordered. A theme that does that would be ace.

I think we could probably all survive the terrors of a blank page if we really put our minds to it ….

; )

Woody Mann-Caruso8:54 pm 28 Apr 09

Don’t get the problems about income. They don’t know who you are. Nobody’s going to say “ooh, there goes planeguy, you’d think he could buy his kids better shoes on his salary.” Better to just not do the survey than to p.ss on the results to make a point.

1. It’s very rude to force people to declare how much they earn (thankfully, with these things usually everybody is getting over $250K yet still wont pay more then 4c a week)

2. I spend 10 mins doing this and you give me a blank white page at the end? Jesus a 404 or Fail-whale would have been more polite.

1. I always randomly select an income range when not given the option to not specify. I know friends do this too. What this means is that you shouldn’t trust income figures in surveys.

2. I got the blank page too.

3. Apart from that, it seems like a well structured survey, covering nearly all the areas I want to give feedback on.

#3&#5 Smackbang &Davo111, the question is there to work out if its going ot be worth our while to develop those features and if we’ve priced our membership options right. Certainly not forcing you to have one. All of the content you get for free now (registered or unregistered) will still be free.

#1 Kaydo, point noted. we’re not really interested in individual results in that instance, more the overall mix of profiles. One question we get asked is how affluent our readers are

Survey completed as requested. Great idea.

Done the survery, the only two issues

the final question that said “how much per week would you be willing to pay for membership”. you can’t choose less than 50c a week. (lol maybe a lower option for us tight asses)

the other one was i forgot to mention online chat in a java window would be pretty cool.

kaydo said :

Also, mandatory on income range should have given an option of ‘prefer not to say’. Demographics are fun, right?

Probably a validator for how to you want to pay for premium access?

Interesting that the “how much would you pay for premium membership?” question did not include an option for “I would not pay for premium membership”!

I have also done the survey. I think it’s a great idea!

: )

Just did the survey, great idea. It ended with a blank page though, so I have no idea if it worked.

Also, mandatory on income range should have given an option of ‘prefer not to say’. Demographics are fun, right?

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