Some more suggestions for improvement... (v2.11) (Feedback and General Suggestions for dooyoo)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Feedback and General Suggestions for dooyoo
Date:	05/03/01 (125 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Improves dooyoo for all

Disadvantages: Requires time and effort initially, Some ideas not practical?

With the recent update of our beloved Dooyoo, I would imagine that most opinions in this category are now hopelessly out of date. Having had time to see what’s on offer and what’s not from the revamp, I’ve decided to basically re-write this opinion with some further suggestions as to how I think Dooyoo can be improved. One or two of these points below are carried over from my last opinion on this topic as they haven’t been implemented (yet) but the majority of it should be new. As before, I have no idea which ideas of mine are realistic, and which can just not be implemented, but that won’t stop me from at least suggesting them.

** Personal Profiles**

In our personal profiles, is it possible to see how many opinions we have actually read? At the moment, it just states how many you have rated or commented on - so I would like to see an overall total for the number of opinions you have read. After all, you are told how many people have read your opinions, but you are not told how many opinions in total you yourself have read. Also, it would be nice to have a break down of what we have rated other members as far as VU, U, SU and NU ratings go.

Staying on the personal profiles, I would also like to be able to define my own display options a lot more. When viewing my own profile opinion list I would like to set the order I choose, instead of having to view by date written/changed only. I would like to be able to decide whether to display opinions based on original post date, order of usefulness, date of last read, date of last comment, date of last update, by category etc. I think that this would help those of us who treat Dooyoo seriously and not just as a moneymaking scheme, to keep a track of our opinions and how they may be doing.

Speaking of keeping track of our opinions, what about displaying the number of different ratings an opinion has as part of the overall view? I have well over 1,000 VU or U
ratings and 5 SU or NU ratings – now to find out what opinions were rated badly, and by whom (so I can update, and inform) I have to hunt through all of my opinions. These currently number 100 in order to get the information I need. This need only be implemented on member’s profile pages, so a low rating can be easily spotted, and an opinion updated if necessary.

With the “All opinions” link now seemingly out of action, it is very frustrating trying to find an opinion of mine to update, or check on. I suggest that Dooyoo either reinstate the “All Opinions” full time, or divide our opinion list into pages of 20 opinions, and give us a link to each page a la Ciao! It could also be suggested that it’s ("All opinions") only available to members on their own profile pages to help them organise their own opinions.

**Opinions in a category**

Another point that springs to mind is the default number of opinions that are displayed per category - if I want to read the 18th opinion in a category, why must I first expand the original list of 6 to 12 opinions before getting the "13-24" link? Why can't I set it to 18, or even 24 myself? This is the same as the old Dooyoo except instead of 6 and 12; it was 5 and 10. I don't understand why the first page of a topic has only half the amount of opinions as the rest of the pages. Surely, by decreasing the amount of pages, or clicks, we use to browse the site, the less congestion is on site?

**Contacting other members**

Maybe Dooyoo could also offer some small mail or message space for each member so that people can offer suggestions and constructive criticism without going to your personal e-mail account when leaving a comment may be inappropriate or undesirable. I have a special Hotmail account that is used specifically for listing here on Dooyoo. Unfortunately, some people (not many, I hasten to add, but one is too man
y!) have taken to sending mail using foul and abusive language because of some comments I’ve left or said – if Dooyoo had space for messages, then this sort of behaviour could be stamped out by the Dooyoo police. Members would then log onto their own message space (if any new messages were there i.e. comments from other users, info regarding updates etc.) otherwise, they would log onto the front page as normal. This would also stamp out the annoying feature of trying to get in contact with someone, only to find that they don’t list their email address on their profile page. Thus, a member can be notified by email every time something appears in their personal message box.

**Circle of Friends**

I don’t think that other members should be privy to your CoF, at least, certainly not the people who trust you. I do not see what advantages this would have for anyone.

**Previously read opinions**

Yet another point - highlighting previously read opinions. One icon beside each opinion that you have read would be a good idea, and would stop people who read loads of opinions from re-reading. In fact, taking this one step further - 5 different icons. A flag or star of some colour (orange perhaps?), two thumbs up (green and yellow?), and two thumbs down icons (blue and red?) could signify the ones you've read an opinion but didn't rate, read & VU'ed, read and U'ed, read and SU'ed or read and NU'ed respectively. Then, not only could you see what you've read at a glance, but how you rated giving you the choice of re-reading or not.

**Agreeing or disagreeing with opinions**

Also, having seen some of my opinions rated NU simply because someone does not agree with my point of view on a subject I suggest another set of ratings which simply say "Agree", "Disagree" or "No basis for opinion". This would enable you to rate fairly depending on your famili
arity level with the product or service in question, and not whether you think Joe Bloggs Co. Ltd make nice TVs. I don't think this rating should be used as any criteria for arranging opinions into any sort of order (like the "usefulness" rating does), but can be used as an indicator on the product in general. For example – I write a scathing opinion on an online book store, give it one star, and have nothing good to say about it, and while it is well written, and gets a VU rating, it's not typical of the rest of the opinions on dooyoo – so lots of people rate it with "I Disagree" which would indicate to anyone reading that they should definitely read other opinions in that category.

**Word Count**

And again, I'll call for the increase in minimum number of words in an opinion to at least 150 (double the current minimum) because there can't be too many things out there that can be accurately reviewed in 75 words.

**Rating System**

Another point that I've seen other members call for is a change to the rating system - instead of having the four categories (VU, U, SU, NU) could we not have a "usefulness" rating of 1 - 10? I think this would give a lot more scope to peoples ratings of opinions (although with nearly a year of Dooyoo under our belts, could it be implemented successfully?) and I also realise that my "thumbs icon" idea above would have to be re-thought to compliment the new ratings system. This could easily be accomplished by having “number” icons instead of thumbs.

**Email Updates**

On another note - being able to set preferences which enable you to be kept informed of new opinions, comments or rating. Why is there no reason we can't be kept informed of updates to opinions, especially those we have rated low? While I still believe it’s in the respective members best interests to inform anyone who has rated the
ir opinion low of an update to an opinion, why not make everything easier?

**The good, the bad...**

As for the Good and Bad opinions thing, I offer two pieces of advice: either remove it or expand it to show one opinion of each star rating. Like other users, I believe this current method will encourage members to only write 1 or 5 star opinions, but is a good idea in theory which should be examined.

**Update opinions**

Along with the new opinions, and new topics which are now handily listed on the front page, what about a category for recently updated opinions? Now, I appreciate that some people use the update option to sort their own opinion list without actually changing anything, and some updates are simply to change spelling or grammar mistakes, and these shouldn't get onto the list. There must be some way of dooyoo being able to easily differentiate between these opinions and ones which truly have been updated. These opinions can go on the list which can be displayed somewhere on site. This would also, hopefully, encourage more members to keep their opinions up to date, and make Dooyoo a more valuable resource.

**A nice touch**
What about showing which members are online, or rather, logged in? This could be done by a simple statement on the member profile which might say "This member was last online:" and then the date the member was last online, or even "Now" if the member was currently online / logged in.

**At last!**

As with my last opinion on this subject, I shall be returning to this opinion when I think of new things to add to it. Please keep the constructive comments coming. Hopefully, that wasn’t bad for you to read.

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