Hope whatever FamilySearch comes up with to replace GetSat is better than the FamilySearch Community

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Don M Thomas said: I don't even like viewing things on the FamilySearch Community pages. Hardly even go there now, and will stop completely if that is the replacement of GetSat. https://community.familysearch.org/s/...

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JT said: Yup. GetSatisfaction is far superior; I just hope they get it working again.

When I sent in this "Problem" ticket, to quote me:
"Details: When I click the Feedback button at the bottom of any FamilySearch page, and click the "Suggestion or Complement" option, I get a yellow triangle with a big exclamation mark in it, and underneath it, it says:
"Sorry, the community that you’re looking for has been retired and is no longer available. If you need help, please contact the company you're looking for directly."
It also happens when I click the "Reply" button on any email I've been getting from "noreply.familysearch@getsatisfaction.com" which stopped coming after 4:09 PM yesterday afternoon.
So what has been broken with the interface to GetSatisfaction.com ? Did some contract negotiations fail? My profile at GetSatisfaction.com says I'm only registered for Quicken support, not FamilySearch support."

They replied two days ago: "This is an existing issue which the system engineers are currently working to find a resolution." -- so maybe they've fixed it by now? Otherwise I wouldn't be here now.

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FamilySearch Moderator said: I am wondering if I could ask a favor of our community members. Please make a list of features you really like in GetSat that you would like to see in whatever new product we select. Also, a list of features you don't like in communities. This will help us come to a conclusion and select a product that many may like. Thank you!

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Tom Huber said: Hopefully, this reply will work -- I was able to reply very early this morning, but for most of the day, the system would not recognize me as being logged in.

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Tom Huber said: Okay, it is working for now.

While not part of the way this Get Sat is set up, there are three options that I like: Praise, Ideas, and the Ask a Question, which is not part of this particular discussion board.

I like that we can attach screen shots to the original feedback post as well as replies. I have a workaround for adding screen shots to comments.

I like the idea that we can add stars for both original ideas as well as replies. I would like to "unstar" a star.

I like the idea that we can add a limited amount of html code, particularly bold, italics, and underline, as well as strikethrough. I also like the idea that we can blockquote a previously entered reply or comment or use it to put in some standard text.

What I would like to see is some way to distinquish between Church-related discussions that talk about temple ordinances and related matters, and those that have nothing to do with Church-related matters.

It would be nice to be able to post the product as part of the original post, such as Family Tree, Indexing, etc.

Along with the product, some software allows grouping -- and that would be nice to be able to group discussion threads by product. Also, I think the moderators could use the ability to apply a "stocky" to any discussion that needs to be at the forefront of any product line.

Those are just some ideas.

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Juli said: Things that are good about GetSatisfaction:

- It's all one forum, with newest activity at the top, so it's easy to find and read new posts/comments
- It's easy to find what you've written or are following using your "dashboard"
- It's equally easy to find what other people have written using their profiles
- The text entry area doesn't try to be smarter-than-thou; white space stays white space, text stays text except for very basic HTML, links stay as links
- There are no infernal "expand/more" links

Things that are good about Communities:

- The search, sort, and filter capabilities are reasonably complete (assuming correct labeling/categorization by other users)
- Having all those separate groups means that I can avoid most of the LDS-specific stuff

Things that I dislike (or worse) about Communities:

- Everything is hidden behind layer upon layer upon layer of barriers: groups, those asinine "expand post" and "more comments" links, hidden nested comments, "View More" buttons, etc.
- The text entry area is constantly trying to be smarter than me, leading to unwanted formatting or link previews that I haven't figured out how to fix without deleting and starting over
- It refuses to STAY logged in
- There's a nonsensical distinction between "questions" and "posts", and responses are variously "answers" and "replies", which is all needless confusion
- Every method of controlling what it does or doesn't show you depends on other users correctly categorizing/labeling their contributions; there's no way to simply follow/unfollow a thread

Things I dislike on GetSatisfaction:

- Inability to edit my posts if someone has replied
- Search results mix decade-old and new posts, with no means of sorting the jumble
- Hidden login (the only way I know of to log back in is to post something), with no relation to what the top bar shows about your login status

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Tom Huber said: Being able to filter my contributions to this forum by those I'm following vs those discussions I've started is helpful.

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Tom Huber said: Adding to one of Juli's comments about Get Sat

Search results mix decade-old and new posts, with no means of sorting the jumble

I would love to see if any comment or reply is over six months old, that any new comment or reply is posted at the end of the discussion with maybe a separator of some sort showing that a new (related?) discussion has been started?

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Tom Huber said: I also like the idea that a discussion can be closed to further comments or replies. It would be nice if the original posting person could close any discussion they started.

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A van Helsdingen said: I disagree about editing posts after someone has replied. If someone has replied, it's better to leave what they replied to unchanged in my opinion.

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Adrian Bruce said: Following a thread is something that was raised over in the Community. Here, there is a simple "Follow" icon to press. Over there - there isn't - 3 solutions were proposed in the Community - liking, bookmarking, and following a topic (not a thread, following a topic that has been marked against a thread - or not).

My comments were:

"Seems to me like FamilySearch need to add a Follow-a-thread facility to the Communities.

- There are many threads that I disagree with or am neutral about, so it doesn't make sense to Like them.
- Bookmarking isn't what we want - the idea is to get the notification to come to us, not for us to go to a dozen different systems (we are interested in lots of systems, not just FS Communities) to see notifications there.
- Following a Topic depends entirely on someone always tagging a thread with an accurate topic in the first place. Not a good place to be in."

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Paul said: Whilst I agree with most of Juli's points, there is also the position on GetSat whereby you can either "comment" or "Reply to This Topic". If other users have also "commented", my direct response to, say, Juli's post could still be separated from it by several other posts! So, are the two options really necessary?

On the matter of editing, I agree with AvH. It could make a complete nonsense of someone's response to my remarks if I were then able to completely change the wording of that post. It is very annoying if, say, I have made a comment I want to retract, but cannot do anything about this if someone has added an immediate response. I guess that just highlights the lesson of making sure you are happy with your piece before clicking on "Comment" / "Reply".

Overall, I by far prefer this forum to the other. However, GetSat does have its faults and the format could be improved. In particular, I would like:

(1) It made easier to search on a past topic - e.g. to narrow down on search results by using quotes ("....") perhaps. The current "search" facility produces far too may irrelevant topics - and in no particular date order, either!

(2) Easier adding of text in italics / bold, to save on overuse of upper case.

(3) A "negative" option to go alongside "good point" - something like "dislike", "bad point" - possibly "disagree". Some of the posts are rejected as being a bad idea by several other participants, but there is no clear way this can be highlighted.

I'll add more points later, if I've overlooked something at the moment. But I must say I missed this forum whilst it was down and can't see I would ever be so comfortable in using the Communities one on a regular basis.

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Adrian Bruce said: Also:
Can FS change the terminology of Answers and Replies in the Communities?

Extracted from a previous post in the Community on another topic to highlight it...

One of the reasons that I dislike the way the Community software is set up is that the terminology is odd. It's different from other Q&A systems that I've seen and therefore confusing. It's also ambiguous in language terms.

Someone sets up an initial Question. That's OK.

First level responses to that are Answers. That's logical. But then responses to the First Level / Answers are termed Replies..... Now that really is off the wall as far as I'm concerned. In my general mental model of such a dialogue, Questions have first level responses of either Answers or Replies - don't mind which. Additional responses to the Answers or Replies (i.e. 2nd level responses) are then, in my mental model, termed as Comments.

That's how it works with GetSat - first level responses are Replies. Second level responses to the Replies are Comments.

On StackExchange first level responses are Answers, second level responses to the Answers are Comments. (Basically, we're told on StackExchange that Comments might be deleted so don't add informational payload into them. Put it in Answers.)

The commonality to those two is that Replies and / or Answers are top level - second level and lower are Comments. Having Replies as Replies to Answers, as in Communities, is really, really odd.

Can it be changed so that second level and lower are described as Comments? This would be a more natural way of telling people where to put text.

In addition we appear to be able to go down in levels of indentation. Replies to Replies are shown at a 3rd level of indentation. But Replies to Replies to Replies appear to stay at the 3rd level of indentation and not go to a 4th level. I'm in two minds about this ability to reply to replies and have the indentation follow. I can see lots of cases in GetSat where I'm effectively commenting on a comment but with bits in between, it's not obvious. On the other hand, if I can't predict where the indentation goes, I'm uncertain of its value. Do we really need 3 levels of indentation?

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Adrian Bruce said: Getting an overview in GetSat v. the Communities.

Looking just at the Community Feedback group, the first screen doesn't have a single post on it - half the browser data window on my laptop is just taken up with a heading, including a light bulb icon that seems to take up about a third of the browser data window.

Then just 8 threads appear before I hit "View More". Each thread appears to take up pretty much a full "screen". Overview? Forget it.

I can see 13 threads on GetSat without scrolling (Your Mileage May Vary depending on your screen size and browser zoom).

This is symptomatic of a general tendency in FS User Interface to make excessive use of white space, bold text, large text. White space can be added vertically or horizontally - in all cases potentially excessively. The Communities are typical in that respect.

While I'm talking about formatting - the Communities are excellent at being able to format text without needing to write "some HTML". That's a definite plus for them.

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Adrian Bruce said: It appears that my description above of Question (the starting point) and Answer (first level responses to the original) may be inadequate. You can either Question or Post. Questions have two parts - effectively a summary and detail. Posts only have detail.

Posts ought to also have a summary and a detail.

First level responses to Posts appear to be labelled as Comments. Second level responses - i.e. responses to responses are labelled as Replies. This totally inverts my mental model of Replies being "above" Comments.

Can anyone justify having different models for Questions and Posts?
Does anyone use or take advantage of the difference in a meaningful way? How many Posts are really Questions and how many Questions are really Posts?

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MaureenE said: I belong to a Forum called the Great War Forum, which is about the First World War.
https://www.greatwarforum.org

It is run by a company registered in the United Kingdom which is a not for profit company operated entirely by volunteers.

From a user point of view the Forum appears to be well run and it is straightforward to make a new post, or reply to an existing post. It has more features when you are logged in, but you can read posts without being logged in. When you are logged in there is an item at the top of the webpage Activity/All GWF activity which is a list of all the recent posts. If you are not logged in, you can click on the various subforms, and scroll down the list of recent entries.

It says on its Home page " Powered by Invision Community". Googling, I get the link https://invisioncommunity.com

As the Great War Forum does not have advertising, presumably the Invision platform was considered cost effective.

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Jeff Wiseman said: For GetSatisfaction.com, within a forum/community it is extremely easy to scan for new topics and updates to them. In the following example, I can see 20 topics at a time:



And within a topic, different discussion threads are clean and obvious:



But, as opposed to 20 topics visible in GetSatisfaction.com, I can only see at most 2 in the community pages. And there is clutter, clutter, clutter galore. The concept of simple, clean lists seems to be forsaken, just as is occurring in the FSFT (e.g., what used to be nice compact and easy to scan lists such as source lists, watch lists, etc. have expanded to use white space much less carefully and loading too much information into the lists resulting in the physical length of those lists now being many pages long instead of just several lines)



For Communities it is a complete nuisance that you have to store an image for every message that you have ever created that contained an image. 98% of the time these images are just one-offs. They are only necessary to explain something in a message that text is inadequate for. But if you ever delete any of those, it will automatically be yanked out of your original messages. It should NEVER be possible to partially corrupt an archived message from a distance like this. If I EVER need to reuse an image that I used in a message, I can pull it off of my desktop or copy it from the original message I created. Supporting images like this creates unneeded clutter on the web page and gives the ability to inadvertently corrupt archived messages that you don't want to lose. In a forum for discussing technical issues I see no significant advantages for handling images this way.

In a social media forum where you want to share selfies and family photos of vacations to everyone in the world, then maybe it has some value, but not here IMHO.

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Chas Howell said: 0. IMO, Overall GetSat functions better than Community. I think it would be or would have been better for FS to start with the GetSat Model over Community Model and build from there.

1. Newest activity at the top with the Titles showing on the first screens like GetSat does. I can easily eye scan the Titles, then choose the ones that interest me at that time without scrolling down several screens.

2. Like the Title/Summary box format of GetSat and the way you “Reply to This Topic” and/or “Comment”. Community is too layered in types of responses or comments.

3. I want basic Text formatting ability- BOLD, Italic, Underline & ability to add links & screen shots.

4. Community- As mentioned and more eloquently stated by others, the expand, hidden nested comments, view more buttons, etc. drive me nuts. It is such a waste of time & effort just to see what you should be able to see without digging for it.

5. Highly Desirable- have a separate group or flag or something for Temple/Ordinance related discussions. That would be a courtesy for non-interested users as well as a more streamlined experience for the interested.

6. Stay logged in, use the same setting as FS account, click to stay login in for two weeks.

7. Desire easy ability to Follow/Unfollow a tread

8. Ability to- Add show # of stars/likes to help gage the quality or interest in a question, comment or topic

9. GetSat displays so much more info on one screen than Community. Really gee so much scrolling. Please Display Substance Over Visual Fluff.

10. Thanks to all of you for posting. I appreciate your ability to articulate issues so well! And thank you Anonymous FS Moderator for asking for the forum’s opinion!!

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Adrian Bruce said: And I would never have guessed that deleting the file would foul up the post containing it.

Re that Communities layout - the 3 column layout seems to have been a favourite at one time. I couldn't understand why since if the 3 columns are important, the scrolling loses track of important visibility, and if the 3 columns aren't important, they waste space. It is possible to make 2 columns work if one column is very narrow - I've never seen a useful 3 column layout - sweeping statement, I know.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Re: #5
Good idea, but not sure how it might be best implemented.

First of all, FS likes to have such discussions involving theology minimized in the forum, but because of questions involving all of the ordinance work viewing and controls in the FS tool, discussions inevitably get started. Unfortunately, it usually happens somewhere inside of an exiting topic. A flag system might work but I don't know how effective is.

I would hope that topic titles would be spelled out well enough to discern from them what is going in in the threads. But obviously, that is a challenge too.

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Mark Mitchell said: Thank you for providing an example of some things that work for you.

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Mark Mitchell said: Thank you for all the good feedback. It is being read and applied to the next solution. Please note that this community will eventually go away because the vendor is discontinuing it. We are working on bringing up something that is equally enjoyable. We appreciate you patience while we work to get there.

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David Newton said: At least we know that it's going to happen this time!

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David Newton said: One feature of Getsatisfaction I do not like is that when you are not logged in (say you haven't posted for a while and your login expires) it does not default to going to the first page of posts. That can be read whilst not logged in, so personally speaking I see no reason not to default to showing it for every user, not just those logged in.

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Adrian Bruce said: Speaking personally, I've always felt that this forum was on borrowed time because there is absolutely no reason for FS to have 2 platforms for forums. So I'm not fighting against GetSat's demise - but I do want the new platform to do what's needed. Hence my posts above.

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Robert Wren said: In response to unnamed "FamilySearch Moderator" request above:

"I am wondering if I could ask a favor of our community members. Please make a list of features you really like in GetSat that you would like to see in whatever new product we select. Also, a list of features you don't like in communities. This will help us come to a conclusion and select a product that many may like. Thank you!"

Here a post containing MANY suggested improvements, started about 2 years ago in this forum, perhaps it might help:

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

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Robert Wren said: Interestingly, this change of ownership appears to have happened in 2015:

https://getsatisfaction.com/corp/abou...

"Apr 8, 2015 - “Get Satisfaction's vision is to enable a world where customers achieve ultimate value with their brands. We upgrade outdated one-to-one support"...

"Sprinklr is the most complete enterprise social media management technology in the world, purpose-built for large companies to drive business outcomes and manage customer experiences across all touch points. Called "the most powerful technology in the market", Sprinklr's fully integrated social experience management software powers more than four billion social connections across 77 countries. Headquartered in New York City with more than 750 employees globally, Sprinklr is revolutionizing customer engagement for almost 800 of Fortune’s top enterprise brands, including IHG, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, and Virgin America, and partners like Accenture, Havas, and Razorfish. For more information, visit sprinklr.com or tweet us at @sprinklr."

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Chas Howell said: Mark, I think there is a suddenly here, you use the word Community in reference to GetSat FamilyTree whereas most users here would use the term Forum. To me a forum is a tool focused on the task or object (how to improve FS, how do I do such & such, how is FSFT intended to work, what are the underlying policies) versus the term Community that is (my opinion) more focused on the participants (how do we get more participation, how to improve the experience, how do we socialized or bond). There is overlap but also I think maybe a difference of approach too. Just thinking out loud, that could account for some of how the differences in Community vs GetSat developed. Thank you for your post and for being willing to help choose the best tool for our use.

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Juli said: This is one of the many cases where I wish I could go back and edit, exactly *because of* later responses. Other forums solve the possible disconnect between comments and edited posts by using simple time/date stamps ("edited [date] [time]"). Users can further help keep things clear by using phrasing like "edited to add".

What I wanted to add was in the negative column for GetSat: the categorization of topics as "idea" or "praise". A bug report is neither of those. This is a very similar failing to the Community's artificial and unnecessary question-versus-post distinction, and the simplest (and in my opinion ideal) fix for both problems is to not categorize contributions in this way at all. Everything should simply be a post or a response to a post.

Another thing I remembered: a major fault of the Communities is the inability to zoom in on attached images. This makes for a perpetual chicken-and-egg conundrum: I don't know whether I want to commit further energy to a question without committing to downloading the image.

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Adrian Bruce said: I think of most of the immediate answers in GetSat as being community provided, so I don't see any distinction for my part.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Isn't terminology wonderful? A Community could have multiple forums in it. From the dictionary: a forum is "a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged". Each group in the community could be viewed as a separate forum. And yet get satisfaction's site which supports multiple corporations refers to each of these corporate sections of their database as a "Community".

Traditionally, any discussion group for a specific topic has been referred to as "forums". Those forums can, but aren't necessarily part of a larger community. The equating of forums and communities seems to be another "casualty of casual references" :-)

FS's use of the singular term "Community" (e.g., in the help menu) is appropriate because the different groups that it houses cover widely different subjects although they are all related in some way to FS's mission. Those groups could all be considered forums. However, the "FamilySearch Community" on GetSatisfaction's collection of "Communities" could be considered a forum because it is focused on a single issue, i.e., the feedback and discussion of issues relative to FS's website and associated tools.

Anyway, the result is that from FS's viewpoint, the GetSatisfaction.com/familysearch site would be referred to as a forum, but from GetSatisfaction's viewpoint, it is just one of many different communities that it hosted on its servers.

How's that for an opinionated statement? :-)