Easier access to FamilySearch
All, I received the following from a patron I sent a welcome message to. "Thanks for your welcome message, which I got for the Pennsylvania and Maryland Groups. I saw information about the Family Search Communities in a blog (I do not remember which one now). This is not an easy resource to find. This morning I got to it by choosing reply from the welcome message that was e-mailed" Really need to encourage a more user friendly/easier path to find the Community world. Perhaps one of the options on header bar of FamilySearch - to assist the growth of Community to better facilitate help to all those working to Search Family..
Comments
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I'm sure this must be one factor that provides a reason why relatively few FamilySearch users are visiting the Community section. However, I don't see that the GetSatisfaction.com and previous Community platforms were any easier to find, yet participation was far greater than since the revamped version of Community appeared.
I agree that it would be helpful if there could be more prominent links to here from elsewhere on the FamilySearch pages, but believe a user survey would be helpful in order to find out why many former, regular and loyal users are no longer participating in this new forum, either.
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I generally like to advise people to periodically click on everything, every link, every link disguised as text, every icon, and every icon disguised as an image, to see what it does now. Particularly after any significant update. You find surprising things such as the fact that the link to this community can be found on every single page of FamilySearch. And it is located in a pretty logical spot. What is the community for? To help each other. To get to it, click on the help icon on any page and there it is:
(My survey answer, although I a trying to stay active here, would be the initial problems with disappearing post - the first few days half of mine were vanishing, the clumsy navigation - needing to click five times to get to the actual full list of discussions, and the long time it took me to realized that if you ever want to get back to a post you once saw you had better bookmark it or you may never be able to find it again.)
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I agree with what Gordon says. Except.... My personal head-space can't cope with the Community being in Help! My head says "Help" is stuff written by FS and that's what the Community isn't...
I'm not saying Gordon's wrong by any means - just that different people's brains work differently and dual-path access isn't such a bad idea, by any means.
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