It seems to me that we are going through a period in which Epinions is operating on dramatically reduced resources. We seem to have lost our Project Manager and Community Liason, one right after another with virtually no notice. I may be mistaken but I think we've lost 3 (or ist it 4?) Epinions dedicated engineers recently.

I think before we get excited about creating a newsletter and diverting whatever resources remain, let's wait to see what resources are replaced.

But that's just my opinion.

Rudi

*snicker* See, this is why I don't bother calculating my hits or complaining about anything because I know I'll just get frustrated and my feathers all ruffled.

Anywho, I agree with Patty about updates not given strictly on the Message Boards. I've been here for 5 years and I only recently discovered the boards 2 or so years ago.

Heh...I always envision Epinions staff consisting of 5 engineering guys and then 5 others of different positions. It's easier to think of it in small terms when things stay wonky for so long.

Which is why I'll admit, I was shocked when two bugs I reported were fixed weeks later and I got emails about it.

However, I also think it's funny that the newsletter is being brought up yet again, and while it always seems to get rejected by the Epi-heads, suddenly it sounds like an awesome idea...what makes now different than before?

NT

I believe in possibilities, and after seeing the complete hash other sites trying to run reviews of my own product specialty have posted, there is a lot right with Epinions. We have a few things which annoy people, and we have some bugs which seem to recur. My shopping list for what I'd like to see is this:

(1) Come up with a review mechanism for products. A lot of stuff doesn't have a photo. A lot of obvious product tie-ins don't exist (try to fing iPhone's bluetooth headset, for example).

(2) Fix the search engine. There is a bunch of stuff on our site which doesn't come up in the search engine, even if it has a review. The way people find our reviews now is through Google searches.

(3) Get rid of anonymous ratings. I don't know of a single non-abusive use of this feature. The entire point of this site is a user takes credit for what the write and builds a reputation. Anonymous back-stabbing isn't part of that model.

(4) Switch the 10-4-10 with something more quality based. No one wants to do a search to find a half-hearted check-the-box writeup. I personally put a lot of effort into my reviews to make them the best they can be; better than what searches of other sites show. A lot of other people have done that, and it is why Epinions matters. Can I do 10 high quality write-ups a month? Yeah, but not if I'm going to be a dad to my little kids.

Epinions has some new faces in leadership roles. I appreciate them asking what can be done to make things better. Things are different now than when this site started. Changeover of personnel is natural for any organization to stand the test of time. Things change, times change, and new ideas will always be needed. A time when there are some problems is the best opportunity there is- you can make your influence felt by making things better. After all, if there wasn't anything wrong, the only way people could make their presence felt would be to screw things up. So let's do some good.

Maybe the easiest solution to a communication problem, would be a normal, everyday writer, working with someone from site staff to present the newsletter worthy information to the public as a whole. It could be a voluntary position of sorts, with someone from the writer-base helping to relay the information to everyone else.

Just a thought... but it would surely help put information out there, and give a link to employees of the company that could be queried if important topics were to come up.

--R(3)