Dear Dooyoo (Feedback and General Suggestions for dooyoo)

Member Name: meah

Product:	Feedback and General Suggestions for dooyoo
Date:	17/07/03 (95 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 3p a read, Friendly community

Disadvantages: Bugs

I don't think many of you will remember my name - I haven't written anything on here since last August - but I've been a member of dooyoo for exactly two years today. I still read every now and again but I stopped writing after I cashed in my first £50 (they do pay) and then never got back into the habit. Recently I've been spending a little bit more time on dooyoo - it's much quieter than it used to be of course, and things are very different from this time last year, so I thought this would be as good a thing to write about as any.


Dooyoo's main problem is definitely the lack of communication. It must be very confusing for new members to post opinions and then find that half their capital letters have vanished and a load of question marks have appeared out of thin air. Then when you do start writing you can't find the link to request new suggestions. And even when you do uncover its hiding place it usually takes ages for anything to be added. I know this has put a few people off writing, and I bet it's even worse for people who have just found the site. Why not put an announcement on the front page to let people know what?s happening? I'm sure people would be a lot more understanding about problems on the site if they had some idea what was going on, even if they didn't know when things were likely to get better. Also, what's happened to the search engine? It's terrible, making finding your way around the different categories much more difficult than it should be. Dooyoo's no use to consumers if they can't find what they're looking for.

Short opinions are another thing. I haven't really felt like writing a 'proper' opinion for a while, but I often seen things that I could have written 200 or so words on. Short opinions at the moment are a total waste of time - what use are a few sentences to anyone? - so why not scrap them and start again with something that is useful f
or the reader and encourages people to write more often? Make the word limit somewhere between 100 - 200 words, pay nothing for a read but maybe 5 or 10p for every one written. I suppose you could drop the rewards a little after the first month and delete anything that really isn't useful. It would be a good way to involve new writers without them feeling intimidated by all those long opinions and it would build up dooyoo?s database at the same time. And there'd be no more opinions on chocolate bars that list everything written on the packaging just to increase the word count.

It's great that the new opinions list now lists the last one hundred ops, but it still doesn't help when the last twenty have been written by the same person. Sometimes churners are just new writers that don't know any better - most people get over-excited when they first join dooyoo, don't they? The problem is that a long list of opinions by the same person puts established members off reading anything and so the new members leave almost as soon as they've arrived. Then again sometimes churners are just a pain in the neck - those with nothing better to do for a few hours than knock other people's opinions off the front page almost as soon as they've been posted. The answer to both these situations is to limit the number of opinions anyone can post in a single day. I know dooyoo needs new submissions but surely something like five opinions a day would be enough for anybody? It can't look very good for the site if someone surfs in to see dozens of single paragraphs by the same person on the front page.

The competition for new opinions on electronics and computer games is a very good idea. I hope it won't just be a one-off, why not extend it to every category? Give extra miles to the best first opinion about anything that nobody else has written about in UK & Ireland, Books, Movies, Travel, etc. It doesn't have to be much of a re
ward, say 3500 miles, and it would help to build up the database, which might help to attract new members. Sometimes even the smallest of things can be enough to kick start momentum.

I know there are no crowns in Speaker's Corner any more but why is it so hard to find nowadays? I'm sure people would write in that category if it was updated regularly, even without the extra one pound fifty. The opinions mightn't be of any direct use to dooyoo, but they make the site a bit more interesting and indirectly encourage writers who might eventually end up writing about DVDs and other more 'useful' things.

Maybe I've been sounding like a bit of a moaner; I don't mean to be. But I think that dooyoo could very easily be much better than it is now with just a little more consideration and a few changes. This is a great site, and it shouldn't be allowed to die without a fight.

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