Uservoice

[Guest]

Before I begin sharing my thoughts on uservoice, I want to make it clear that I am going to present this in a very biased way so be prepared for a more critical than usual post from me.

 

The uservoice was setup to help keep track of everyone's suggestions so we can better reply to them.

- Mrloud15

 

In some respects I do believe that this is a very good reason for creating a uservoice. In the past there may have been concerns about not receiving an admin response while posting on the forums, whereas this tool would help to receive recognition and possibly a more timely response. Uservoice could have felt like a direct connection between yourself and the admin teams respectively. My opinion is that it hasn't been effective.

 

To my knowledge, there are four uservoice pages that we can submit ideas to; Creative, PvE, Survival & the Head Admins.

 

Generally I see inactivity from the admin teams in terms of responding to the ideas submitted. This is not intended to be a dig at those individuals and could be for a number of reasons such as entirely new teams of admins in place whereas previous curators would have been more aware of the uservoice. However the reason I believe that is leading to this inactivity, is the format of uservoice itself.

 

For example (and I'm piecing together a small narrative of what I have seen upon there), someone creates an idea with the head admin uservoice, assuming that is the best place to share the thought. The idea could then be closed as it is not in the correct uservoice and it may be more appropriate for a creative admin to respond. This idea could then either be re-submitted to the creative uservoice or passed on from admin to admin (which removes the purpose of the uservoice entirely).

 

Or, an idea could be submitted via the forums. Our publicly viewed discussion board for all members of the community and staff teams to contribute. When I raise an idea on the forums, it doesn't get closed after the first admin response (whereas uservoice's format tends to lean towards closing as a way of filtering completed submissions). Instead an idea such as this one which has been the highest rated / voted idea for around a month now would generate discussion amongst ourselves. Ideas can evolve as we refine them instead of stopping at the original post. Then once an idea has progressed enough, we're in a place where a Survival admin can respond, alongside a PvE admin without the need to go from pillar to post.

 

The Long and Short of it all: Please bring back full use of the forums for discussing ideas. It's a centralised location that we spend money and time on maintaining. Possibly a sub-forum for suggestions or a suggestion tag that we can add to our topics to help our admin teams be able to respond when appropriate.

[roastnewt]

I completely agree with the above.  I've also noticed that forum threads are more likely to be "hashed out" over multiple posts, with people bringing up upsides, downsides, implementation issues, etc.  A uservoice suggestion just sits there for months until an admin responds.

[schererererer]

I also agree. We're moving toward unifying methods of feedback and discussion, and uservoice was ultimately too detached. I admit that sometimes I even forgot its existence. Look for a new suggestions/feedback section soon.

[kittypuppet]

Look for a new suggestions/feedback section soon.

I was about to suggest adding a suggestions/feedback subforum, but you beat me to it.

Maybe give it its own section of the forums?

[Mumberthrax]

Just for reference: https://nerd-headadmin.uservoice.com/forums/276723-general-suggestions-feedback/suggestions/7340306-as-an-alternative-to-uservoice-create-a-subforum
 

As an alternative to uservoice, create a subforum for suggestions/polls.

I know that there was once talk about integrating feedback and suggestions into the website, but since that project may still require some time before it is up, I propose an interim solution of using the nerd.nu/forums for feedback/suggestions, specifically a single subforum (or one for each section, c/s/p/e/nerd). This way you don't have people making multiple accounts to vote on things like on uservoice, it's all integrated into a service players are already using, it's easier to see when new content is created than to add a separate website for people to check.
The voting part would be different, yeah. Not much can be done about that without modifying the forum software, which i don't advocate. Easy thing to do would be to require that each suggestion have a poll with very simple agree/disagree/undecided options, and if a post lacks such a poll then a staff member can fix it.
Uservoice is nice, but I don't think it is really ideal. Ideal would be the plan previously mentioned to integrate stuff like this into the website, but using the forums would mitigate some of the problems uservoice suffers from.

Mumberthrax shared this idea  ·  March 26, 2015

under review  ·  April 12, 2015

Edited May 11, 2015 by Mumberthrax

[schererererer]

Suggestions Subforum is here!: https://nerd.nu/forums/forum/35-suggestions/

 

The uservoices are now deprecated in favor of this section of the forums.

[Guest Former Staff]

I can't stand the new layout! I'm joking of course, it's going to take a little getting used to but it looks refreshed and I'm glad to see the suggestions sub-forum.