activity section promotion announcements need improvement
kiheikid
Posts: 2,168 ✭✭✭✭✭
@HPWULola - i am tagging you here in this new thread in this section, in hope that you can help
in the activity section, there are announcements of persons who have recently joined (i am not writing about the newly joined) and there are announcements of persons who have been recently promoted (this is what i am writing about)
there is apparently a limit of 5 names that can be specifically mentioned in a single announcement post, and if there are more names added, what happens is that only the 5 most recent names are specifically mentioned and all earlier names in the same post get unceremoniously lumped together as part of “and xx others” where xx is the total number of names minus the 5 named specifically
it has been and remains my belief that if you all ( @HPWUTeam ) are going to honor a group of similarly-situated and similarly-deserving individuals by announcing their promotion, you should treat them with equal respect and NOT invalidate the recognition and contributions of all but 5 lucky individuals within their group by denying them the opportunity to be mentioned by name specifically in a lasting way for all community members to see
just yesterday and today, i was lucky enough to see how this all played out, as i first saw an announcement of the promotion of one person and so i said good job to that one person. later, that same post added a few more names, so i said good job to those newly added persons. and still later, even more names were added to this same post, such that the first 4 names previously listed got pushed into the “and xx others” catch-all bucket.
why can’t the existing post announcing the promotion of persons A, B, C, D, and E be left alone, by using a new post to announce the promotions of persons F, G, H, I, and J ??
that way, all such similarly-situated and similarly-deserving persons of the same class (eg, the newly promoted level 2 members class of today’s date) will remain named for all to see and appreciate
to simply add onto an existing thread results in pushing (using my example) A,B, C, D, and E into the “and xx others” black hole. their inclusion among the newly promoted would go unnoticed by most people.
please let’s do the right thing, @HPWUTeam , and include no more than 5 names per promotion announcement. if there are more names, please start as many new posts as needed to honor and recognize all the newly-promoted by specific name, rather than invalidate and disrespect those who get lumped together into “and xx others”
i used this analogy before in the activity section ... at a high school or college graduation ceremony, can you ever imagine everyone receiving a diploma but only the last 5 persons having their names announced out loud or printed in the ceremony program, while everyone else is lumped together in “and xx others” ?!?! how awful is that ! so why is what you all are currently doing any different ?!
please, do the right thing, and thank you for listening / reading.
Comments
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you can see from the example above that abiski, snoopdolphin, agiluz, clover2, gregoryjacob, and uricoddball were all only briefly mentioned before they became unceremoniously lumped together as “and 6 others” due to the later additions of fellow players promoted to level 2 on the same day or next day.
i only knew because i was keeping tabs of that successively/repeatedly amended announcement over the span of almost two days
i’m bringing this to the attention of you all, this is NOT right.
The Activity section is made by the creators of the forum sites and we on the Wizards Unite team actually don't have too much control on the settings for it. I'll pass your feedback along to the folks on their team!
@HPWULola - even if you @HPWUTeam all cannot change the settings, what CAN be done is write separate announcement posts, each for no more than 5 newly promoted persons. that is an easy thing for you all to do, with better and more respectful result for members being recognized.
thank you!
and you all can stop editing/revising existing posts to add new names ... instead, please just start a brand new activity post to announce promotion of those new names — simple, right ?
thanks
Of all the things that the HPWU team has to work on, this seems more like a distraction. This isn't a problem that affects anyone's game play or ability to access the forum. So any time spent by a staff member addressing this will be time not spent on an actual issue.
Honestly, I wouldn't even know that these announcements existed if you hadn't started asking for them to be changed. I just have a hard time imagining that people are feeling alighted or treated badly because their name wasn't listed on the activity log for long enough.
@MtPollux - the point is not asking someone to change settings if they don’t know how. the point IS to stop jamming additional names into an existing post and just start a new post announcing the names.
that does not take away time spent putting out fires, since they already are taking the time to make the announcements in the first place.
and the point IS entirely about respect and easily avoiding the lack of respect, in case anyone missed THAT point.
But I think they requires them changing settings that they don’t know how. It seems to me the whole announcements section is automated. I wouldn’t be surprised if they really had nothing to do with it. HPWU Lola said they don’t have control over it. Just like with the auto filter settings on here when you type something that the website seems inappropriate. Whoever created the forum site itself designed the announcement section and can change it.
I agree with @MtPollux. I honestly didn’t even see them either until you brought it up a few times. How many of those people who are being “promoted” also don’t even know their name is being “announced?” There are much more important things for the HPWU team to worry about.
i’m just bringing this issue to the attention of @HPWUTeam and @HPWULola that what they might think is honoring and recognizing everyone being promoted is actually only honoring and recognizing the very last 5 people they list because everyone else they think is being mentioned in fact falls into the black hole of “and others”. if they intended that, then shame on them. and if they did not intend that, then there is an easy fix - manually mention the newly promoted in groups of no more than 5 per post, or turn off the bot doing this until it can be done properly.
one key to building and keeping a loyal customer / player base is to treat everyone in similar situations equally. they are now on notice that they have not been doing that. the fact that they might have so many other projects to attend to is a problem of their own making — do it right or don’t do it all.
with all due respect, you-who-do-not-care can continue to not care, but you do not answer for @HPWUTeam and @HPWULola and don’t need to make excuses for them.
i am hoping they actually do care and are more ept (or at least less inept ) than “jeez, sorry, we work for a company of programmers but we cannot find the settings or the off-switch”
This isn't something the HPWU team has come up with to honor new or promoted members. This is a packaged open-source forum platform called Vanilla Forums, and the activity feed is part of the core functionality. I don't say that because I want to make excuses for a team of developers I don't even know personally. I say it because I understand how stuff works. I don't even know why they chose to include the activity feed in their site navigation, because it isn't meant to honor or congratulate anyone. It's just a log of forum activity, and it has nothing to do with one's progress or achievements in the game. But here we are, with people arguing that we all deserve to be honored for each and every mundane task we complete, including logging in to a message forum or commenting a certain number of times. Meh, whatever. To each their own I suppose. Still, if you're not satisfied with how this forum platform works, it'll probably be more constructive to complain to THAT development team, not this one.
@kiheikid as others have already pointed out, Lola's answer above indicated that the activity posts are based on software settings that the team doesn't have control over - i.e. not something actively done by a member of the team. So all of your requests for someone to change it amount to you asking for someone to devote their time to changing this instead of working on something else.
If you do not want other forum members to engage in an on-topic discussion on your post on a public forum, perhaps consider contacting support directly with your suggestions.
Thank you all for the insightful discussion. To provide more explanation, this isn't a section of the forum that we on the team ever interact with or post on. It is created automatically as a forum log. I actually was caught by surprise when I saw that so many players were using this section to communicate, congratulate each other, and welcome new players! However, there is nothing I can do to alter the formatting of that page. I appreciate you all using it to help us create a welcoming community, but if it seems that it is causing more distraction than help we may choose to hide this page altogether.
I appreciate everyone's feedback and I have passed your message along to the site creators.
@HPWULola - thank you for the follow up and explanation.
i believe that @HPWUTeam should do something right, or not do it at all. if you do not have the time to “call the building super (forum developer)” to have them fix it, then perhaps hiding the activity section, until you do have time, would be a sensible alternative. i have to believe that, now that you @HPWUTeam have been made aware your system disrespectfully takes away the identity of members who should be recognized and honored for the occasion, you all would not knowingly or willfully countenance that practice to continue. prove me right, and either fix it or hide it. to allow it to continue unchanged, knowing what you now know, is no better than manually disrespecting all of your members other than the last five in through the promotion door that day. and if that is the case, then shame on [you].
thanks, lola
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ps- if there actually were a mechanism to directly report issues other than a stupid bot that already says not to expect a reply, i’d use it ... but we have the horns of a dilemma here ... either report in public and know lola is responsive but invalidators will pile on, or use the stupid bot with no hope of reply and all the usefulness of shouting into a knot in a tree.
LoL