Is it me, or did PM functionality get removed altogether? I don't see a way to send a Private Message. Is this a permanent thing, or is it scheduled to appear in the near future?
Pity. I'm really wary of typing my email address on a public forum just like that. My inbox remains spam free after 10 years and I'd like to keep it that way.
E-Learning Heroes no longer includes a private messaging feature. We’re focused on building a really transparent platform where learning experiences happen in the open and it’s easy for Heroes to learn, connect, and share. You can always learn more about other Heroes by clicking on their names or avatars. If you want to make it easy for other Heroes to contact you, we suggest adding your LinkedIn URL or personal website address to your profile.
A forum is just the start - the "back-chat" PMs etc. are where a lot of the important issues get discussed, and where deals get made. Sorry - but I think this may detract from interaction between community members.
Ditto. There were several folks who contacted me that way, some of you included, to discuss specific situations or work. It would be nice to have that aspect of community connection back.
I agree - many folks who wanted to contact me for work opportunities did it via PMs here. They can (and do) also go to my site and use my contact form, but it was nice to have that functionality here.
Re: Favorites - Normally I get steady daily traffic going to my site from wherever the heck I've posted in the forums, and as of new ELH site launch today I have none.
Maybe people were using their favorites more than I'd imagined?
I personally bookmarked/favorite the forum post vs. the links in that post, because the post provided context around the links and helped me recall why I bookmarked that post. We'll eventually know if that was an ill-advised strategy or not...
As far as my limited web development knowledge allows me, the new site is based on a fairly vanilla Bootstrap theme. This, and the absence of certain plugins (other than some analytics code), leads me to believe that the site has been custom built from scratch.
The migration of heaps of data from the old third-party based forum over to the new site alone, not to mention account and profile migration, must have been a nightmare for the devs.
I am grateful that search is now working as it should as I was very close to getting neck injuries for every time that I picked up my iPad only to look at another "Search is not working! HELP!" post which took half of the fun out of checking a new post at ELH.
I'm also grateful that any swipe related hand injuries won't be directly related to swiping to delete duplicate emails from this forum.
As for Private Messaging, I too am all for it, but lets face it, the only scenario where the lack of it becomes a problem is pitching for a contract out in the open. So, given the new developments, nothing stops us from asking the OP of a new opportunity to include their own email address. Sure, it's not ideal, but we've all used email before.
In short*, with regards to the Articulate devs, I'd cut these guys some slack at this point in time. If only for just a little while... ;)
* Funny how I always end up with "In short" when I have previously written a blogpost worth of words...
"Search is not working! HELP!" posts became endlessly entertaining for me at some point. That was a wheel (or a post) that apparently couldn't be invented enough times.
Re: Articulate devs - from me (and I suspect from most others) they'll get nothing but compassion. I didn't even want to start mentioning issues because I knew how enormous this task was and absolutely appreciate how well they pulled it off.
However, once I understood that they DO want to hear from us in order to continue to make it the best site possible - I thought it was only right to weigh in. The comments and conversations I've seen so far seem to be civilized, constructive, and (often) kind - and if I were in their shoes I'd absolutely want the info we're providing.
Well said! The site looks beautiful and works great. I personally love it. You can see that a lot of time and thought went into its development. I applaud the Development and Community teams for their hard work, and I'm sure we'll see a lot of tweaks along the way.
Ok I'll try harder to like it - I do appreciate all the work that went into it. I think a couple of tweaks is all it will take to make it more workable for me.
The first thing I'd like to see is an easier way to move between the various discussion groups.
The way it is designed now if I want to look at the posts here in the Building Better Courses, I first have to navigate to the discussions page and then click the View Discussions button to access the posts. One of the issues with the Discussions page is that the image at the top is so large that on some of my monitors I can't see the button unless I scroll down the page. At first I kept clicking the Discuss link on that page and nothing was happening because I was already on the page.
I like to answer questions that people have about the various products so once I finish posting in this general forum I have to click the Discuss link to go back to the Discussions page - scroll down to find the Choose Product dropdown and then select a product. It is a lot of extra steps. In the old forum you could see the recent posts for the various products together so it was easy to jump in and answer a question about Engage or Storyline whatever.
There are some other things I'd like to see changed but I'll leave it at this for now.
47 Replies
I think it has gone, think they have removed all social media aspects such as the wall and PMs
That seems like a horrible idea...
Pity. I'm really wary of typing my email address on a public forum just like that. My inbox remains spam free after 10 years and I'd like to keep it that way.
E-Learning Heroes no longer includes a private messaging feature. We’re focused on building a really transparent platform where learning experiences happen in the open and it’s easy for Heroes to learn, connect, and share. You can always learn more about other Heroes by clicking on their names or avatars. If you want to make it easy for other Heroes to contact you, we suggest adding your LinkedIn URL or personal website address to your profile.
Some PMs are about work opportunities and probably not suitable for public,
Add 1 more vote to bringing the direct contact/forum mail back.
Yep, +1 for PM's
I agree....would like to see them back.
A forum is just the start - the "back-chat" PMs etc. are where a lot of the important issues get discussed, and where deals get made. Sorry - but I think this may detract from interaction between community members.
Ditto. There were several folks who contacted me that way, some of you included, to discuss specific situations or work. It would be nice to have that aspect of community connection back.
Wink wink. ;)
Yes, bring back PMs.
Also gives the option to keep the "noise" down in the forums. I would prefer the PMs come back too.
Another thing I've noticed missing is all of the favorites I've bookmarked over the past few years. Can't find them anywhere...
No - looks like they have been zapped....
We're looking into methods for bringing them into our new Bookmarks list. Stay tuned...
Yep, +1 for PM's....
I agree - many folks who wanted to contact me for work opportunities did it via PMs here. They can (and do) also go to my site and use my contact form, but it was nice to have that functionality here.
Brian, thanks for the heads up. Yes, bookmarks would make the most sense - that was the first place I looked...
Re: Favorites - Normally I get steady daily traffic going to my site from wherever the heck I've posted in the forums, and as of new ELH site launch today I have none.
Maybe people were using their favorites more than I'd imagined?
I personally bookmarked/favorite the forum post vs. the links in that post, because the post provided context around the links and helped me recall why I bookmarked that post. We'll eventually know if that was an ill-advised strategy or not...
B
Don't like the new site at all but at least the search works.
As far as my limited web development knowledge allows me, the new site is based on a fairly vanilla Bootstrap theme. This, and the absence of certain plugins (other than some analytics code), leads me to believe that the site has been custom built from scratch.
The migration of heaps of data from the old third-party based forum over to the new site alone, not to mention account and profile migration, must have been a nightmare for the devs.
I am grateful that search is now working as it should as I was very close to getting neck injuries for every time that I picked up my iPad only to look at another "Search is not working! HELP!" post which took half of the fun out of checking a new post at ELH.
I'm also grateful that any swipe related hand injuries won't be directly related to swiping to delete duplicate emails from this forum.
As for Private Messaging, I too am all for it, but lets face it, the only scenario where the lack of it becomes a problem is pitching for a contract out in the open. So, given the new developments, nothing stops us from asking the OP of a new opportunity to include their own email address. Sure, it's not ideal, but we've all used email before.
In short*, with regards to the Articulate devs, I'd cut these guys some slack at this point in time. If only for just a little while... ;)
* Funny how I always end up with "In short" when I have previously written a blogpost worth of words...
"Search is not working! HELP!" posts became endlessly entertaining for me at some point. That was a wheel (or a post) that apparently couldn't be invented enough times.
Re: Articulate devs - from me (and I suspect from most others) they'll get nothing but compassion. I didn't even want to start mentioning issues because I knew how enormous this task was and absolutely appreciate how well they pulled it off.
However, once I understood that they DO want to hear from us in order to continue to make it the best site possible - I thought it was only right to weigh in. The comments and conversations I've seen so far seem to be civilized, constructive, and (often) kind - and if I were in their shoes I'd absolutely want the info we're providing.
Well said! The site looks beautiful and works great. I personally love it. You can see that a lot of time and thought went into its development. I applaud the Development and Community teams for their hard work, and I'm sure we'll see a lot of tweaks along the way.
Ok I'll try harder to like it - I do appreciate all the work that went into it. I think a couple of tweaks is all it will take to make it more workable for me.
The first thing I'd like to see is an easier way to move between the various discussion groups.
The way it is designed now if I want to look at the posts here in the Building Better Courses, I first have to navigate to the discussions page and then click the View Discussions button to access the posts. One of the issues with the Discussions page is that the image at the top is so large that on some of my monitors I can't see the button unless I scroll down the page. At first I kept clicking the Discuss link on that page and nothing was happening because I was already on the page.
I like to answer questions that people have about the various products so once I finish posting in this general forum I have to click the Discuss link to go back to the Discussions page - scroll down to find the Choose Product dropdown and then select a product. It is a lot of extra steps. In the old forum you could see the recent posts for the various products together so it was easy to jump in and answer a question about Engage or Storyline whatever.
There are some other things I'd like to see changed but I'll leave it at this for now.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.