Discussion re Petition 2 October 2020 at 8:33AM edited 2 October 2020 at 8:44AM in Compers Chat Corner 74 replies 3.7K views

sleepyjones

Dunno if this has been mentioned but 
It just occurred to me (thinking specifically about the advents) that it might be hard to tell which days you've entered.
If you give a thumbsup on a post at a 10am and then return at 6pm, it'll be difficult to tell if you've Thumbsedup already since it only shows you the last 10 or so people ... it'd be good to have "You've Thumbsed up this" marker or something.  Bit late now, but one to note for future updates

BootsMullery

sleepyjones said:

Dunno if this has been mentioned but 
It just occurred to me (thinking specifically about the advents) that it might be hard to tell which days you've entered.
If you give a thumbsup on a post at a 10am and then return at 6pm, it'll be difficult to tell if you've Thumbsedup already since it only shows you the last 10 or so people ... it'd be good to have "You've Thumbsed up this" marker or something.  Bit late now, but one to note for future updates

If you are unsure if you've clicked the "compliments" button, if you click and the number goes down, you had already clicked, if the number goes up, you hadn't.
Generally, this has been included in the list of problems as:-

"Users are unable to see if they have liked (Comp-limented) a post if more than a handful of people have done so

Ability to see who has liked (Comp-limented) a post"

Blulu

Nice one Sleepy. I agree with both comments. I would say that this point has been included in the list, but it's fine to 'double check'. I also agree with Boots point about clicking to see if the number of thanks goes down by one. You can do this any number of times on the same post to make sure it's genuinely your click that is affecting the number. But that's not really the way we want it to be. It will be much better if they can make it so that it is clear and easy to see when we have thanked a post.

MSE Laura is hoping to get back to us fairly soon with an update, over the next week or two perhaps.

Blu XXX

Blulu

Update from from MSE Laura, received a few days ago.

She said the team have looked at each point we raised. They are planning to work on the Search facility early next year. They are also in the process of doing something around us being unable to filter/sort using skipped/entered markers, hoping for some sort of update early next year too. She mentioned that they are thinking of setting up some user interview sessions next February re posting, quoting and general Forum usage. To me, this all sounds very positive.

She also specified a few things that they are not planning to change/address, at least not in the near future. I will quote what she said on this:

• Posts are not numbered: we have reviewed our decision to not number the posts, but will not be reinstating them at this time for reasons that affect the forum as a whole. We are looking at ways we can make it easier to link to specific posts. At the moment, you can right click the date and time on an individual post to copy a link to it…but we plan to make a more obvious way to do this soon.
• Ability to keep a list of 'friends' or frequent contacts for PMs: this is a feature that we have actively decided to not include on our new Forum.
• Allow functioning email links and weblinks to be copied: there are security reasons as to why we have intentionally not allowed this that affects the wider forum. We’ve investigated how many competitions this would impact, and the number was very small, so we are not planning to review it at this time.
• Ability to easily post a functioning email address: there are similar security reasons why this currently is not possible and we won’t be revising this right now.
• HTML coding is lost when users edit posts, and additional post formatting options - colours, font size, underlining, expanded emojis: for security and accessibility reasons, we have to be cautious around what people can add to our website so we need to be careful with HTML. However, if there are specific things you think could be useful, let us know what the goals you are trying to achieve are. We will also pick this up in the interview sessions we have mentioned in February.
• Min. characters in a post needs reducing: unfortunately to stop spammers and scammers from being able to use programs to automatically post build, we do not plan to change this. 
• Spam restrictions make it hard to post comps: this is part of our spam strategy which has a lot of work going into it at the moment. We will revise these, but currently it’s there to protect the forum.

She assured us the competition board is an important area of the forum as a whole, and that the team are committed to improving it.

It does sound to me like they are trying their best for us, and plan to involve us and gather our opinions in improving 
the functionality of the forum, including our comping 'bit'.

Again, thanks to all of you who signed the petition and have commented.

Best wishes

Blulu and Rahven

libra10

Thanks Blulu for the update.

cornishpasty1

I've been hanging on in here in the hope that things would get back to normal, but sadly I see no recent changes, how much longer is this going to take?

Rahven

Yeah it would be good to know what's going on. I'm hoping someone from MSE can give an idea of timescales?
I don't have any updates since the last one posted here I'm afraid: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6204908/forum-update-re-changes#latest 

libra10

It's now a year since the upgrade!
I don't think we will see much improvement in the future.  Not optimistic.

cornishpasty1

I think I've finally given up the ghost on this comps forum as I have seen NO changes at all!!!!

mjm3346

cornishpasty1 said:

I think I've finally given up the ghost on this comps forum as I have seen NO changes at all!!!!

After they have brought back so many of the competition time features that were missing when the forum first changed - oh yeah forgot that is none of them so far.