The guys and I thought it might be helpful to tap into the brilliant minds of our passionate community of users to make Fanpop a better place. Thank you all for all of your support so far, we really appreciate all the kind messages we've received and helpful feedback. Our goal is to make Fanpop the best place on the web to find content and community that you care about. I thought that maybe we could start a thread with ideas and suggestion on what you would like to see from Fanpop. I can't guarantee that we can implement all of them, but we always take our users suggestions very seriously. So feel free to post your thoughts here!
I had an idea, basically, if it were up to me, Spider-Man would be in my die-hard spots (not that I have any yet), but with it not being a regularly active spot, it's a bit hard for me to advertise it easilly as a favourite of mine. So I was thinking, would it be possible to just choose like, your Favourite 10 Spots just above the mosaic of the other spots on your profile?
Great work! Sometimes I fear that we lose track of all the good in this topic, for all of our suggestions...
That said...I know that this isn't the direction you've been going with the recent site redesigns, but I really miss having the old granularity for links (being able to specify the type of link). Here's two reasons (being the first that popped into my head):
1) Videos. There are many, many video sites out there. You will never be able to set it up so that all links to videos on other sites are set up as embedded players which users can play on fanpop. This means that any links to sites that aren't (identified as) embeddable on fanpop are listed as plain links. Those are then displayed in the wrong section in a given spot (links, rather than videos), which will eventually lead to users gravitating more and more to a small number of video sites that are supported as embeddable. This will have some effect on the diversity of videos that are posted. For example, I see this in the animal humor spot already. Having a tag that sorts the link as a video would help this.
2) Events. You may recall how much praise I lavished on you when you implemented the events function, complete with expiration date. There is still a need for this. Even though most links don't expire, having events that have come and gone remain in the links list just becomes filler for spots, noise through which users shouldn't have to sift, ideally.
1) With the new addition of images (which is fantastic, by the way) on top of the videos, picks, comments, etc., perhaps there should be a way for users to personally modify one's update news feed so (for example) I might get updates for recently added videos and comments to my picks but not for recently added pictures. Otherwise there might be more "clutter" than highly-active members might desire, as well as missing information that they might view as more important. Papa did alert me that you can currently look at your updates by category but I think my suggestion is still reasonable.
2) Also with photos, I would love to have a kind-of slideshow feature that would group together similar subjects. So if I added several pictures of Marilyn Monroe in the Classic Movie spot, I could have one link titled Marilyn Monroe and viewers could just click their way through the pictures (the way it is done with multi-part videos - moving from clip 1 to clip 2 to clip 3, etc).
3) Finally, I am noticing that when someone makes a comment on my photo and I click on the update to be redirected to said photo, instead I arrive back at the Fanpop mainpage. Perhaps a html error?
Cressida's ideas are good about customization, which in general is something I've been agitating to have for quite a while.
Further, I have to agree that the pictures implementation leaves something to be desired. Right now, photos are not indexed by user, so if I look at an user's profile, I can't see the photos they've uploaded. This particularly hurts someone like Cressida, who has been awesomely going to town with the pictures - looking at her profile, there's no record of it. In addition, the pictures are essentially noise in any search I perform, since the search results don't have a thumbnail version of the picture when there is a picture result, and the search results seem to be listing matches not by accuracy but in order of posting, which is really quite broken from my point of view.
That said, I must say that the two newer features (questions and the return of pictures) have done *wonders* for promoting active use of the site - the amount of new users I see who joined in May is phenomenal, and I see them because they are posting questions and pictures both. Good work!
But with the new features, I notice that the "recently updated spots" module has completely disappeared from the top page of the site. Oh no! While I know that I use the site very differently from most users, I have to say that the two most useful modules on the top page are the user profiles and the recently updated spots (with recently updated fora following close behind). Each of these allow me to see activity in spots I might not find otherwise, and while I am a fanatic in many, many things, I am also always interested in finding out about new things, too. Discovery of such is a primary delight of fanpop.
Aw shucks Harold, now I'm blushing like a virgin Southern Belle from all of this attention!
About Temptasia's idea of having the pic of a spot's creator on the spot, at first thought I agreed but then immediately disagreed. Spots are for everyone to contribute to and are not the babies of one particular user, which adding the picture of the creator might make newbies think...and thus second-guess their additions. But then, as a person who has created a fair few, I would (admittedly) like some recognition. Perhaps maybe on my 'recent activity' there could be a "spots created" like the "picks created"?
I think we know how to see who created a spot with fair accuracy, but checking the age of the links/other content (assuming that there are more than a few fans for that spot). Since the rule about content creators applies here just like everywhere else (10% of users are active participants, and 1% of the users actually actively create the majority of content), that makes it even easier to figure who has created a particular spot. I've used this method to add people to my fan list, actually, since I most admire the people who are adding lots of quality content to the site. (I'm still kicking myself that tweakpotter had to create a pizza spot because no one else had).
But, back to the topic: that is, another suggestion or two.
* please, please allow us to edit questions/picks after we create them! Others have said more eloquently how irritating this is, to find that you've submitted a typographical error, only to realize that you can't change it. We're also forever stuck with my silly pictures for the Michael Bay: good or bad pick, which I would dearly love to be able to change.
We're able to edit pretty much anything else we've submitted; why not picks? You can limit the editing (much as you do the editing of a spot title after it's submitted) to changing text, and not allow deleting picks. This also could allow people to check the box that allows others to add picks to the question, which I suspect some users have missed in their questions, and so we're stuck with choosing between two options when there should be a dozen. Even if the question's creator wants to fix it, he can't.
Yeah this was a very tricky one Harold. We allow users to change their Pick choices for about 10 minutes after they edit and we're assuming that the preview allows them to see their errors or mistakes before they publish. Unfortunately, we can't allow a user to change an answer because it can impact the nature of their answer. You could potentially be changing a lot of people's choices by just editing an existing answer. You can actually only edit the spot name as long as it's pending, but once it becomes official, you can't change it anymore because again this would impact what people have subscribed to and shows up. We wouldn't want people to abuse this for spots or picks by changing the spot name or pick to something offensive. As for opening the question up to additional answers, I didn't realize that they couldn't change that. We'll look into that.
i don't know if you heard, dave. but facebook has this new applications thing. it wowuld be cool if Fanpop had it's own application. it would deffintly get new users. just look into it for me :)
Goalstopper, we've got our eyes on the Facebook Platform and are spending some time thinking about this one and how we want to approach it. If you have any ideas on what you might like to see in a fanpop facebook application, I'm all ears.
maybe you guys could do something on how many spots the people have joined that would be cool. or some game those are really popular with my friends.i am not sure how you could do that. i will keep thinking.
I understand the problem with "bait and switch", Dave - thanks for pointing it out. Maybe as users calm down with the picks feature a little bit, they'll start checking their work a bit more. But right now I think it's still a mad dash to get as many questions up as possible.
But some more suggestions:
* ratings for picks? Probably that doesn't appeal to you, but for me, I'd love to provide some feedback on the quality of the question/answers, other than writing comments.
* I'd still like to be able to edit/change pictures on picks, if possible. I am filled with admiration for Cressida and others' ability to crank them out so fast, but for me, I'd put up more questions if I could add pictures over time. It's time-consuming enough for me to get the logo and banner prepared for a new spot before I create it. Then, to have to generate/capture five or so more pictures to represent the different picks before I put up a question? The child-rearing pick I did took me just about as long as writing a soapbox article. But perhaps that's just me.
i don't know if harold already said this but it would be cool if fanpop save all the images for picks, so we wouldn't have to look for new images everytime.
I have a picks folder, on my computer, where I store all the images that I have ever used.
Just keeping something like that, and cleaning it up once a month or whatever, makes doing picks a lot easier in my opinion.
Although, instead of having to use images I have saved on my computer, how about being able to add images by putting in the image url? Would be rather handy.
Those are interesting ideas. I was surprised when I first uploaded images to a spot that it wanted to get it from my local machine, but then I realize that, if it didn't do that, it would just be a link, and we already have those.
Like you, PkmnTrainerJ, I have a big folder for fanpop (actually, separate ones on each of my systems...<sigh>) with images I've used. Even though I don't make many questions, I do make a lot of spots, so I have to save images for logos and banners...
A different suggestion, of a different refinement to an existing feature...specifically, enhancing the forum feature. More and more often I want to return to a forum comment that I've read before, but I have no good way of figuring out which forum topic has the comment. Two things could ameliorate this:
* a forum search function (for the specific spot's forum, please - I don't think having a site-wide forum search is useful or even desirable, given that it would diminish the value of the existing site search)
* the ability to save a forum topic to your favorites. This seems like a no-brainer (as an aside, I would recommend being able to save any kind of link in a spot to your favorites: an image, a question, a soapbox, a link, or a video).
That way, I'd be able to flag (for instance) the one topic in a TV show spot that I want to respond to once I catch up on viewing the episodes...
OK, a completely different suggestion: make the text formatting tags work anyplace we enter text! I realize that the different widgets have been built at different times by different people, and this would require some retooling, but that's my suggestion. I'd love to be able to have a consistent user experience of putting bold or italics or underlining in my link descriptions, titles, picks, questions, et cetera (and, by the way, all three should work consistently anyplace they're implemented - none of this "you can bold and italicize, but not underline" jazz). Take it as a compliment: I love the text formatting you've supplied!
How do we know who created a specific spot? Also it would be cool to be able to just search for a person by name instead of having to find their picture. Also why can't we change our names?
I understand that this is a fan site, but I still think it would be great if there was a section in our info where we could post personal blogs, I love blogging. Oh and one more thing, it would be awesome if we could use html in the forums...
I'd like having a little space in my profile like facebook's status sentence. I'm about to be out of touch for like three weeks, and there's no good way to say that on my profile.
It'd make the profile a touch more current and personal (but unlike facebook, I probably wouldn't want to get updates on other people's status- that twittering gets annoying).
Harold, I do believe that you can add images to a pick you've created after it's been published. Just choose the little pencil/edit button. It won't allow you to change the name, but the image upload is still available.
And picks & their pictures do take me a fair amount of time. I usually spend 15-25 minutes on each, between choosing & re-sizing the pictures and making sure there are no spelling or grammar errors. I am starting to try and add my pictures that I've used for picks into the image gallary for any future-pick makers. But all I use is the basic Paint program.
I was thinking that we can save things like videos and links and stuff as our favorites but we should be able to do that with forum posts too. There are a lot of games that I like to play in different spots and it would be easier to remember them all if there was a place on my profile for my favorite forums. I think it would be good for everyone because i notices quite a few people play the games too...just a thought
it would be cool if we could rate the questions on fanpicks. Also, make so that when an images or a pick is added the spot is updated from the profile screen.
Nah, we can't become MySpace aleciane, we have a fan of the fortnight pick every two weeks, that's enough.
Here's what I was thinking about at work anyways.
I know that I already get told when someone comments on a pick I make, but how about being informed when a user adds a choice to a pick I have made? I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to implement.
I don't know if this has been suggested or not but I think it would be great if we could rate picks. And maybe like an alert or number counter when someone saves a video you post to their favorites. Also, there is a an error on my profile. It lists that I am a dedicated fan of 7 spots. when I believe it is only 6. Or at least only six are in green on my profile. Anyways, I love fapop!
A wall of fame where on each spot the pic of the fan who has added the most to the spot in a month is showen and could give people more of a reason to keep adding.
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That said...I know that this isn't the direction you've been going with the recent site redesigns, but I really miss having the old granularity for links (being able to specify the type of link). Here's two reasons (being the first that popped into my head):
1) Videos. There are many, many video sites out there. You will never be able to set it up so that all links to videos on other sites are set up as embedded players which users can play on fanpop. This means that any links to sites that aren't (identified as) embeddable on fanpop are listed as plain links. Those are then displayed in the wrong section in a given spot (links, rather than videos), which will eventually lead to users gravitating more and more to a small number of video sites that are supported as embeddable. This will have some effect on the diversity of videos that are posted. For example, I see this in the animal humor spot already. Having a tag that sorts the link as a video would help this.
2) Events. You may recall how much praise I lavished on you when you implemented the events function, complete with expiration date. There is still a need for this. Even though most links don't expire, having events that have come and gone remain in the links list just becomes filler for spots, noise through which users shouldn't have to sift, ideally.
2) Also with photos, I would love to have a kind-of slideshow feature that would group together similar subjects. So if I added several pictures of Marilyn Monroe in the Classic Movie spot, I could have one link titled Marilyn Monroe and viewers could just click their way through the pictures (the way it is done with multi-part videos - moving from clip 1 to clip 2 to clip 3, etc).
3) Finally, I am noticing that when someone makes a comment on my photo and I click on the update to be redirected to said photo, instead I arrive back at the Fanpop mainpage. Perhaps a html error?
Further, I have to agree that the pictures implementation leaves something to be desired. Right now, photos are not indexed by user, so if I look at an user's profile, I can't see the photos they've uploaded. This particularly hurts someone like Cressida, who has been awesomely going to town with the pictures - looking at her profile, there's no record of it. In addition, the pictures are essentially noise in any search I perform, since the search results don't have a thumbnail version of the picture when there is a picture result, and the search results seem to be listing matches not by accuracy but in order of posting, which is really quite broken from my point of view.
That said, I must say that the two newer features (questions and the return of pictures) have done *wonders* for promoting active use of the site - the amount of new users I see who joined in May is phenomenal, and I see them because they are posting questions and pictures both. Good work!
But with the new features, I notice that the "recently updated spots" module has completely disappeared from the top page of the site. Oh no! While I know that I use the site very differently from most users, I have to say that the two most useful modules on the top page are the user profiles and the recently updated spots (with recently updated fora following close behind). Each of these allow me to see activity in spots I might not find otherwise, and while I am a fanatic in many, many things, I am also always interested in finding out about new things, too. Discovery of such is a primary delight of fanpop.
About Temptasia's idea of having the pic of a spot's creator on the spot, at first thought I agreed but then immediately disagreed. Spots are for everyone to contribute to and are not the babies of one particular user, which adding the picture of the creator might make newbies think...and thus second-guess their additions. But then, as a person who has created a fair few, I would (admittedly) like some recognition. Perhaps maybe on my 'recent activity' there could be a "spots created" like the "picks created"?
But, back to the topic: that is, another suggestion or two.
* please, please allow us to edit questions/picks after we create them! Others have said more eloquently how irritating this is, to find that you've submitted a typographical error, only to realize that you can't change it. We're also forever stuck with my silly pictures for the Michael Bay: good or bad pick, which I would dearly love to be able to change.
We're able to edit pretty much anything else we've submitted; why not picks? You can limit the editing (much as you do the editing of a spot title after it's submitted) to changing text, and not allow deleting picks. This also could allow people to check the box that allows others to add picks to the question, which I suspect some users have missed in their questions, and so we're stuck with choosing between two options when there should be a dozen. Even if the question's creator wants to fix it, he can't.
But some more suggestions:
* ratings for picks? Probably that doesn't appeal to you, but for me, I'd love to provide some feedback on the quality of the question/answers, other than writing comments.
* I'd still like to be able to edit/change pictures on picks, if possible. I am filled with admiration for Cressida and others' ability to crank them out so fast, but for me, I'd put up more questions if I could add pictures over time. It's time-consuming enough for me to get the logo and banner prepared for a new spot before I create it. Then, to have to generate/capture five or so more pictures to represent the different picks before I put up a question? The child-rearing pick I did took me just about as long as writing a soapbox article. But perhaps that's just me.
Just keeping something like that, and cleaning it up once a month or whatever, makes doing picks a lot easier in my opinion.
Although, instead of having to use images I have saved on my computer, how about being able to add images by putting in the image url? Would be rather handy.
Like you, PkmnTrainerJ, I have a big folder for fanpop (actually, separate ones on each of my systems...<sigh>) with images I've used. Even though I don't make many questions, I do make a lot of spots, so I have to save images for logos and banners...
A different suggestion, of a different refinement to an existing feature...specifically, enhancing the forum feature. More and more often I want to return to a forum comment that I've read before, but I have no good way of figuring out which forum topic has the comment. Two things could ameliorate this:
* a forum search function (for the specific spot's forum, please - I don't think having a site-wide forum search is useful or even desirable, given that it would diminish the value of the existing site search)
* the ability to save a forum topic to your favorites. This seems like a no-brainer (as an aside, I would recommend being able to save any kind of link in a spot to your favorites: an image, a question, a soapbox, a link, or a video).
That way, I'd be able to flag (for instance) the one topic in a TV show spot that I want to respond to once I catch up on viewing the episodes...
OK, a completely different suggestion: make the text formatting tags work anyplace we enter text! I realize that the different widgets have been built at different times by different people, and this would require some retooling, but that's my suggestion. I'd love to be able to have a consistent user experience of putting bold or italics or underlining in my link descriptions, titles, picks, questions, et cetera (and, by the way, all three should work consistently anyplace they're implemented - none of this "you can bold and italicize, but not underline" jazz). Take it as a compliment: I love the text formatting you've supplied!
It'd make the profile a touch more current and personal (but unlike facebook, I probably wouldn't want to get updates on other people's status- that twittering gets annoying).
And picks & their pictures do take me a fair amount of time. I usually spend 15-25 minutes on each, between choosing & re-sizing the pictures and making sure there are no spelling or grammar errors. I am starting to try and add my pictures that I've used for picks into the image gallary for any future-pick makers. But all I use is the basic Paint program.
Here's what I was thinking about at work anyways.
I know that I already get told when someone comments on a pick I make, but how about being informed when a user adds a choice to a pick I have made? I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to implement.