Do familysearch employees actually read the ideas posted to the 'ideas' forum?
I see a lot of ideas, suggestions, etc that have never been responded to.
Do familysearch employees read the ideas? If they do, why don't they respond?
I would like to know if it is worth my time to suggest ideas, as I see a lot of great suggestions posted, with no response.
Answers
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Jeff
I am just another 'lowly' User/Patron ...
Short Answer: 'Yes'.
And, the reason, there are very few responses, in the "Ideas" ('Feedback') Section is that: THEY ARE TOO BUSY
It is as simple as that.
We have been advised of this, in this; and, all previous, 'iterations' of the 'FamilySearch' "Feedback" Forum.
One thing to be aware ...
There are, MANY; Many; many, 'competing priorities', in "Family Tree" (and, the OTHER Parts) of 'FamilySearch'; and, there are Very LIMITED Resources (eg. Funds), available, to 'FamilySearch'.
Plus ...
"FamilySearch' (formerly: The Genealogical Society of Utah - Over x150 Years ago); being, part of the Church, has been providing, this FREE Service, to ALL around the World, for many years.
Brett
ps: I KNOW they DO; as, I have 'seen' things "Changing", slowly; but, they are.
.
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Yes, it is worth your time to post ideas.
It is also worth your time to comment on ideas posted by others, and to upvote the ones you want to see implemented.
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Thanks for the responses.
I don't think it is too much to ask for familysearch employees to respond with a simple message like 'thanks for the idea, we will consider it'. It's hard to imagine they only have time to read the ideas, but no time to type a couple of words.
If they don't respond at all it seems unlikely that the idea made it onto a list to be worked on.
Since the 'my cases' feature has disappeared there should be people available to respond to this forum which took its place.
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Even those (like me) who have been with FamilySearch for many years (and were regular users of the former forum - getsatisfaction.com) still remain unsure of the best place to post on this "Community" platform.
On the one hand, we are told "Ideas" is meant to be the successor forum to getsatisfaction.com and to post any reports of bugs, other technical issues and suggestions for site enhancements to that part of the Community platform. On the other, it has been made clear that the "moderators" (largely Support staff, who have been assigned to Community and can be volunteers / missionaries or employees of FamilySearch) primarily monitor the "Q and A" section of Community.
So, whilst it often seems more appropriate to post to "Ideas", I would advise to post to "Q and A" if you require an immediate response to your query. Whatever the nature of the question or general comment, the moderators will attempt to answer it straight away, or "escalate" anything more complicated to the most appropriate FamilySearch team.
I do believe that, in time, Community will evolve and become just one section - i.e. no more sub-sections for Q and A and Ideas. Even some of the "Groups" (notably one for Indexing matters) have been wound up, and I find the ones of which I am a member (especially the British Isles and England groups) are hardly being used. I believe most of these Groups could be easily integrated into Q and A, where many members of Community are already posting their "country / subject specific" queries, and have been for some time.
The last suggestion might not be popular with many members, but I feel Community really does need further "streamlining", in order for members to have their queries both noticed and promptly addressed.
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Jeff
Those responses that one received in 'FamilySearch' "Support" Cases, were ONLY from 'FamilySearch' "Support" (Personnel), usually, at "Level" One; and, usually, although, polite, did not really mean, that one's suggested enhancement, was actually passed onto, those in the 'Design' and 'Development' Teams of 'FamilySearch'.
I know, I often had to, literally, force, the lower "Levels" of 'FamilySearch' "Support" (Personnel) [due to their inexperience], to pass "Support" Cases, up the line to their next "Level" of "Support" (ie. Line Manager; and/or, Supervisor); especially, regarding problems/issues that needed addressing/fixing; and/or, suggested enhancements.
"Official 'FamilySearch' Representatives" (ie. Product Managers; and, Programmers/Engineers) often participated in the previous 'iterations' [ie. OLD 'FamilySearch' ("GetSatisfaction") 'Feedback' Furm] of the 'FamilySearch' Forums. They sometimes participate in this "Community.FamilySearch" Forum; but, not often.
Honestly, "Official 'FamilySearch' Representatives" (ie. Product Managers; and, Programmers/Engineers), are really busy.
I KNOW that "Official 'FamilySearch' Representatives" (ie. Product Managers; and, Programmers/Engineers) DO monitor the, "Ideas" (ie. 'Feedback') Forum, of the "Community.FamilySearch" Forum, or, are at least aware of the "Ideas" (ie. 'Feedback'); as, I have 'seen' things "Changing", slowly; but, they are.
Whereas, just DO NOT always expect a TRUE response from an "Official 'FamilySearch' Representative"; unless, you just want a 'feel-good' response.
Just my thoughts.
Brett
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Even those (like me) who have been with FamilySearch for many years (and were regular users of the former forum - getsatisfaction.com) still remain unsure of the best place to post on this "Community" platform.
On the one hand, we are told "Ideas" is meant to be the successor forum to getsatisfaction.com and to post any reports of bugs, other technical issues and suggestions for site enhancements to that part of the Community platform. On the other, it has been made clear that the "moderators" (largely Support staff, who have been assigned to Community and can be volunteers / missionaries or employees of FamilySearch) primarily monitor the "Q and A" section of Community.
So, whilst it often seems more appropriate to post to "Ideas", I would advise to post to "Q and A" if you require an immediate response to your query. Whatever the nature of the question or general comment, the moderators will attempt to answer it straight away, or "escalate" anything more complicated to the most appropriate FamilySearch team.
I do believe that, in time, Community will evolve and become just one section - i.e., no more sub-sections for Q and A and Ideas. Even some of the "Groups" (notably one for Indexing matters) have been wound up, and I find the ones of which I am a member (especially the British Isles and England groups) are hardly being used. I believe most of these Groups could be easily integrated into Q and A, where many members of Community are already posting their "country / subject specific" queries, and have been for some time.
The last point might not be popular with many members, but we have been told Community is still a "work in progress" and I believe it really does need further "streamlining", in order for members to have their queries both noticed and promptly addressed.
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Q&A and Ideas have very different application, in theory, hence different operation. Q&A can be Answered and closed. Ideas can be Upvoted.
Ideas are most effective when they stay open, without any indication of acceptance or rejection from staff, so they can accumulate Upvotes, or not. (IIRC, one of my Ideas posted here got taken up almost immediately. I received a message that it was being implemented, and it left the board.)
Q&A, in contrast, need visible response by someone, but the response can come from another contributor, moderator, or admin. The response can even come from the original poster; sometimes we answer our own question.
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In Groups, there is both a "new discussion" and an "ask a question" option. In other words, a part of Communities has features of both Q and A and Ideas, meaning that these functions are not just easily combinable, but already combined.
Given that it's impossible for a user to tell whether his or her problem is due to user error, a bug, or a missing feature, and given that this impossibility applies whether the question is generic or specific, I really don't consider the attempt at separating Q and A, Ideas, and Groups to be sustainable. As has been pointed out, more and more research questions are being asked (and answered) in Q and A, because it does not require navigating the Groups section or joining any groups.
I said this already a few months back: Communities needs exactly two categories, "Public" and "LDS". That's it. Any further breakdown is bound to fail, because if a user knew how to categorize his problem, he wouldn't need to ask a question: the help center would have already coughed up the relevant article.
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Some contributors are pretty good at differentiating between user error, bug, and missing feature. Some are totally new to the concept of triage and might learn something from seeing it done here.
Can't moderators move topics around, put them where they belong? I think they should do that more.
The difficulty I am seeing is where should bug reports go? They don't really fit in either Q&A or Ideas.
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To return to the question posed by @JeffLuke, hopefully my answer was clear: good practice is to leave feature requests "hanging" to see if/how the user community develops them. Let them mature or die on the vine.
It is very apparent to me that FamilySearch has adopted the Agile Manifesto or something like it. So I know any vision I or anyone else here expresses may be taken up.
Likes and Upvotes help great ideas rise to the top of the engineering to-do list.
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Other than a couple of FamilySearch employees who made it clear they were answering getsatisfaction posts on the side and in addition to their real responsibilities, my impression was that posts there very rarely got any "official" response. But every few months there would be some type of response that all posts were seen by someone and either dismissed or sent to the proper team. I am willing to assume the same is going on here, unless you are going to maintain that the purpose of the Ideas section is like the suggestion box in this old cartoon:
I guess it would be possible for the people behind the software of this Community to add a feature that posts a random pick of a set of canned answers of "Thank you for your idea," or "Your post has been forwarded for consideration" to every new idea post, but I'm pretty sure that FamilySearch employees have no interest in getting into a debate of why or why not the idea is a good one or discussing future plans that may or may not incorporate the idea.
Regarding incorporating the ideas posted here into the programming, I have seen plenty of examples of where that has occurred, usually not in the form first presented and often by a major update that made the complaint that led to the ideas being completely moot. But usually the improvement came six months to a year later. Design, presentation to a test group, programming, testing for bugs, reprogramming, final testing, and release takes a lot of time. The quickest I have ever seen this occur was in response to the outrage that erupted in getsatisfaction when the temple icon colors were simplified and ordinances shared with the temple turned the same green as available ordinances not shared. Even then it took a couple of months for the shared ones to go from just green to green with a clock. There were responses to those discussions from FamilySearch personnel, mainly along the lines of "this change is for the better and you will get used to the icons being the same," leading to not very polite counter responses, until one day the green clock icons appeared.
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