Continued . . .

Now, in my utopian Epinions world, Mona can still contact staff and get answers to questions either on the boards or via email, especially when her question matters to people other than her. And the site management still has to take responsibility for communicating major issues that affect all of the categories, and empower the CLs with all of the details they need. In some cases, CLs may just be sharing what they learned from site management verbatim, but I would hope that they would be the ones anticipating some of the questions pertaining to their categories before they are asked and help site management to prioritize a bit.

Meagan -

I just wanted to chime in with a thought.

Some times CL's (current, past & future) have varying investments in the site. And currently I feel not all are active or always quickly accessible.

I certainly don't mean that being a part of this site precludes all other life's duties.

I just mean that I see them less and less happy along with the general membership, less and less answering emails, adding SAP's, reading & writing on the site -- and some seem disenchanted with the current state of things.

So adding them as another layer, to me, is only as effective as they want to be a part of that step.

Kimm

Let's go ahead and take a poke at the elephant in the room: Newsletters are cheery faces to the world publications. If we had a newsletter, it would have to be the Disney version of what's going on with the site.

What people are talking about here is a burning issue board.

Plagarism: That's huge- someone may decide to sue one of these days.

Treatment of Members: That's our survival. It needs to be policed.

Accurate plotting of traffic: Again, huge. People wonder if they are getting cheated for their work if that stays open.

We need a board where people can squawk problems and then rate how serious they are (Search can't find the #1 hottest product in the category vs. Someone suggesting the default background be changed to pale green).

And this would allow tracking, so there is some accountability. And the big one is setting priorities to make the site work. No name calling- just a working venue.

I have heard some responses to concerns along the lines of "you aren't one of the engineers" in the vein of "What do you know?" That isn't a constructive attitude. The membership is the only group of people who have an interest in honestly and accurately pointing out issues and methods to fix them. And that's right- we need to propose fixes and not just whine about what isn't perfect. While I am not one of the epinions engineers, I and one in real life, and I know there are a lot of epinions members with a lot of experience- it can be leveraged for good. It has to be.

But a newsletter isn't a mechanism to do what we want, though it will have lots of photos from the last meet and greet. No one is looking for whitewash- they want the house fixed. And there has to be a two-way discussion about what people can tell is broken, and what they just don't care about. There is a perception that a lot of the maintenance and site work is in the vein of modifying invisible items at the risk of breaking the site for reasons no user will ever see. Sort of like hearing the differential cover in your car is being replaced over and over while the front bumper is missing. If there was a burning issue board, there would be a spot to keep visibility to the important stuff, and get the word about what was being done about it, and take credit for good work.

I'd guess you just said what most of the community is actually thinking.

Rudi