Thanks to everyone who came up with a suggestion for improving the site. There's quite a few to go through, so grab a cup of coffee and let's get going..
Member: Bonsai
Suggestion: Replace "Member of the Month" with "Thread of the Month" decided by admin and mods, with a prize for the winner.
Initial Feedback:
Nice idea, the only difficulty I can see is in choosing which thread wins. Last month (January) alone we had 418 new threads posted. Perhaps if we limited it to only those threads that received a 5 star rating and choose between those it would be easy enough. As always we'd want to make it as simple to manage as possible, because we're pretty stretched as it is. Also the MOTM award will be back this month, and continue from last month where we left off.
Member: Suggy
Suggestion: Update the voting system so that you can see who voted for you, and switch from numeric system to textual rating.
Initial Feedback:
Although you can see who voted for you with there's 3 or more votes (I think), you can't see what rating they gave you. I think is the preferred way to do it, after all knowing what vote you were given would only I think encourage the rating system to be used to praise though who praise you, and marked down those who rate you poorly - tit for tat style. Also I think members would be less likely to vote particularly where it was a negative rating, simply because they wanted then want to be targeted by the person they voted for. Textual ratings are an alternative, but I think most people are used to rating thing numerically, whether out of 5/10 or 100 - and it's often best to keep things simple, as Mr.Charts earlier said.
Member: EK1
Suggestion: Pay a nominal fee (say £10) for using T2W
Initial Feedback:
At the present we don't have any plans to introduce a fee for accessing the site. We may however consider a premium membership at some point in the future but we would first need to consider providing sufficient value to make it worthwhile.
Member: neil
Suggestion: Keep one thread for the bored and attention seeking to indulge in a cathartic release of trivia, jokes and matters not catered for on existing forums. Call it the "Sin bin" or "Ego Dump"
Initial Feedback:
I think this has been suggested in the past. At the present time I don't think there's sufficient reason to introduce it. My concern would be that it even though it would be clearly shown what purpose it served, I can only think it would raise tensions and cause conflict. We have the lounge forum for the off-topic, talk about anything threads - and that seems to be fairly popular with trivia, jokes etc.
Member: Quercus
Suggestion: A system whereby anyone can be a member, but only paid up members could post to improve quality of posts.
Initial Feedback:
Interesting idea, though inevitably it would cut the activity on the site. Every forum needs to be active to attract new members, and encourage participation - so I think its probably too drastic a step to take. Although I have seen it done on other forums.
Member: Bigbusiness
Suggestion: Invite only T2W forum for quality posters, decided by the moderators.
Initial Feedback:
It's a possibility although it becomes difficult to manage because constantly you'll need to decide who should and shouldn't be allowed in, and setting up access for each person takes a little bit of time. When you've got 1,500 new members a month I can see this taking up lots of time, unless there was some way to automate it - ie, members who have posted 100 time, with a member rating of 3 or above automatically gain access.
Member: Glenn
Suggestion: Faster access to the facility for putting someone on my ignore list.
Initial Feedback:
Good idea, and now set up - ignore button appears at the bottom of each post.
Member: jimbo888
Suggestion: Ability to search by post's id
Initial Feedback:
Should be easy to add this to the search page, as skim pointed out you can already do this manually by replacing XXX with the post id on this url:
http://www.trade2win.co.uk/boards/showthread.php?s=&postid=XXX#postXXX
Member: Boy
Suggestion: Messages posted on all threads to be at the top of the thread. I think that would be in descending order.
Initial Feedback:
I'd have to agree with bonsai, I believe the majority of people prefer to read top to bottom - although it would be nice to give users the option (although I'll need to investigate the feasibility of it).
Member: FTSEBOY
Suggestion: I think that the Private Messages and e mails box should have more emphasis on the Home Page,
Initial Feedback:
I concur, we could probably do more to highlight this. Particularly on the forum home page, since we updated the look of this page it's become more difficult to see if you have a new pm. It used to light up a pound sign and flash the background of the pm table cell. I'll definitely be looking into this.
Member: TheBramble
Suggestion: View all new posts since last visit, if you then mark all forums read, it might be that some new posts have appeared since viewing the list but before pressing mark all forums read - a way to catch these.
Initial Feedback:
Hmm, I see what you're getting at but can't think of an easy way to catch those. How about using the "View Latest Threads" feature from the Discussion drop down instead.
Member: Bonsai
Suggestion: Notification of news item and AFX news added.
Initial Feedback:
I believe you're referring to the ShareCast new feed. I'm not actually sure how popular this is and was even considering dropping. I think sites need to concentrate on what they're best at and there are plenty of good financial news site out there, I think our members are savvy web users and would rather use one of them. Would be interesting to hear what other think.
Member: ColinRiche
Suggestion: The ability to search for phrases eg. "Trading Seminars" rather than posts with the words "Trading" and "Seminars"
Initial Feedback:
We could switch from our existing system of searches to a more advanced one which would achieve what you suggested - I can see a real benefit in this, and therefore it's likely to be implemented soon.
Member: ColinRiche
Suggestion: Make "Location" a required field for new member registrations
Initial Feedback:
It's funny you should suggest that as I had actually made this a requirement myself the day before you suggested it! Great minds and all that..
- so any new member who joins you'll see their location. I'd encourage all existing members who haven't added their location their user profile, to do so now..
http://www.trade2win.co.uk/boards/member.php?s=&action=editprofile
Member: ColinRiche
Suggestion: The post a reply page should include the following:
Allow deletion by moderator - default checked
Allow deletion by other members - default unchecked
Automatically delete after 2 days - default unchecked
Initial Feedback:
Interesting idea, giving members more control over deletion - there are various technical and security issues in implementing this that I'll need to consider first.
Member: ColinRiche (Further suggestions by Bonsai)
Suggestion: Existing Member Voting System should be replaced by a 1-100 point system that would be used determine trading competence rather than how helpful or valued members are.
Initial Feedback:
Again another interesting idea which could perhaps even supplement the existing rating system. I'd need to consider the implications and concerned like those raised by Trader333, and also it might require a fair bit of technical work to implement. But I'll look into it further.
Member: Salty Gibbon
Suggestion: In the " Financial Diary" could you please include dates AND TIMES of important USA economic data releases and other relevant announcements
Initial Feedback:
We currently don't have this information at hand to provide it in the diary - but I think this information is often vital to trading and therefore it would be extremely useful to add it to the site. I'll look into the various sources where we can acquire this information.
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The winner of the best suggestion will be announce in the next few days, and will receive a bottle of champagne. Thanks again for your feedback, there are plenty of good ones to add to our list and keep us busy with.
