Muscatine

I personally don't understand what's so hard about getting around this site. I'm finding things pretty simple. A little slow, but otherwise simple.

Re seeing what people have posted in the past: TOTALLY AGREE!  This has been on my "to do list" for a while now, along with other "search" features so you can see posts with certain content or tags or from a given date.  It's definitely coming.

Re emailing everyone - yes, but not yet.  We've already gotten a lot of great feedback from posts on the discussion board (nationwide - remember we host over 36,000 neighborhoods and dozens of small towns!) and that "to do list" I mentioned has plenty on it.  If we're going to email folks asking for suggestions, I want to be able to act on those suggestions, not just shelve them for months... seems disrespectful otherwise.

                                  -Robert.-

I intentionally left out a few features at launch time, for a couple of reasons: ease of use and appropriateness issues.

On the ease of use front, we're trying to build something for Momma Bear, Poppa Bear, Baby Bear, and Goldilocks, all at once.  We can add buttons for photos, videos, text size, font, etc etc... but lots of buttons is scary for novices.

On the appropriateness front, we're concerned about offensive content and copyright violations.  I'd love to see photos and videos of local events, attractions, history - it should be easy for Tom to post photos of the bridge lights!  But as you all know, there are some folks who get a kick out of irritating everyone else, and it's even easier to be annoying with images than with words.

I'm leaning towards first improving our ranking system (e.g. "respected neighbor"), so you can score individual users and posts and hopefully your rank will better reflect how the board users as a group view your contributions.  We'd then limit "advanced" features like photos to people who have been helpful, appropriate and friendly.

What do you think... would this help encourage those who make positive contributions to keep doing so while limiting the folks who just want to get a rise out of everyone?  Or is this pie in the sky?

I've got some pictures I would love to post-my daughter took a bunch of pictures when she went on a class trip to Washington D.C. about a month ago.  I'm just not slick enough to know how to do it, and I really don't have the time to sit down and figure it out, either.  In theory, it sounds like a great idea to tie the ability to post photos in with the ranking system.  But, there is a certain poster here who posts some really cool pictures that aren't offensive at all, but this particular person has a pretty low ranking.  What would happen in a case like that??