Suggestion feedback

From the beginning I want to state that this thread is not about “rejection feedback” (if you want to talk about this read hutcheson thread http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20718).
I’ve read a lot of threads with a simple problem: some suggestion did not reach ODP queue. It appears that sometimes (it may be a bug or something else) this thing happens.
I believe it will be a good idea to provide, to this problem, an automatic email response. Something like: “Thank you for suggesting www.mypage.com in the category http://dmoz.org/.......”

All the above is just my opinion.

Some kind of confirmation message appears on the screen?

Let's think about it at the lowest level. If the message appears in your browser or your email client it's just bits and bytes being transmitted over a certain protocol, or a certain port. If it's the web then it's port 80; email goes over port 25. Same message both times.

Ovbviously the email is a little bit more complicated as an email address is required and there might be legal or operationl ramifications in sending an email. Confining everything to a session between a browser and a web server is much much simpler.

But going back to the protocols: the suggestion is that a bug could make a "success" message pop up where actually there was a problem? As I pointed out above, with the mechanisms being v v similar there's just as much chance, in this scenario, of a "success" email being sent out but the suggestion not actually making the queue.

The biggest problem is people not actually reading the message on the screen. "That submission didn't work" ... OK ... "Your site will not get listed" ... OK ... "We are now uploading a horrendous virus to your machine" ... OK ... "You will die a very painful death in two minutes" ... OK ...

miromulus]I believe it will be a good idea to provide said:

http://dmoz.org/.......”[/url]

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Please. Do a search on this forum and you will find already several answers to this same question asked by different people.

jgwright said:

The biggest problem is people not actually reading the message on the screen. "That submission didn't work" ... OK ... "Your site will not get listed" ... OK ... "We are now uploading a horrendous virus to your machine" ... OK ... "You will die a very painful death in two minutes" ... OK ...

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Wow, I did not know that. I know people don't read guidelines, but clicking everything that is on screen is something beyond my understanding.

miromulus said:

clicking everything that is on screen is something beyond my understanding.

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Really? When was the last time you installed some software and actually READ the license agreement?

Furthermore: I think the distinction has to be engrained between "submit" and "suggest". (As I attempted in another thread today.) I believe progress is being made changing over the interface. The idea of submitting, and of receiving an email notification, implies some component of "ownership". Something akin to tracking your order from Amazon. The webpage only structure implies and lays down a more "fire and forget" mode. So this is preferable.

pvgool said:

Please. Do a search on this forum and you will find already several answers to this same question asked by different people.

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I’m sorry for not being able to read all threads but I’m sure they are a lot of other problems that were argued in more than one thread.

wrathchild said:

Really? When was the last time you installed some software and actually READ the license agreement?

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What is a license agreement?

Wow, I did not know that. I know people don't read guidelines, but clicking everything that is on screen is something beyond my understanding.

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I've been on software for many years. Interface design is an art form. The crux is that users will just not read the messages. It's amazing standing behind users as they insist they have a problem ... "please read the message" ... click, click, click ... "you see it's not working" ... "erm, no, read the message" ... click, click, click ... "again! you see! it's not working..." ...

I’m sorry for not being able to read all threads but I’m sure they are a lot of other problems that were argued in more than one thread.

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Don't worry, I think this is fairly topical. As evidenced in the link in your first post, a thread only a month old, progress is being made on the interface, and on the distinction between suggest<>submit, so I think the discussion will have evolved a bit from whichever previous threads discussed the idea. Still the preference should be to keep the status quo of course.

I've been on software for many years. Interface design is an art form. The crux is that users will just not read the messages.

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This is what the lovely people at the enterprize formerly known as "gator" used to (and possibly do still) exploit the fact that users almost never read license agreements.

They have and do argue successfully that the user gave them permission to load their garbage -- and they are usually right, permission was buried deep in the license agreement for a different package.

miromulus said:

Wow, I did not know that. I know people don't read guidelines, but clicking everything that is on screen is something beyond my understanding.

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This is one of the biggest problems I see among novice surfers. I just recently spent about 9 hours spread over a 6 day period trying to debug, vaccinate and do a general house keeping on a friends computer. The first couple of hours were spent simply deleting and removing programs and internet shortcuts from their machine, there were nearly 200 online casino's, "free" virus scanners,Gator, etc on their machine. Most of which I have seen before and know to be Pop-up type advertisments that give you the option to click OK or Cancel.
I can bet most came from their kids just clicking away on OK every time something popped up. They had and still have no clue what goes on with their own computer. In addition to these programs I removed 250 virus and 600 adware/spyware/malware items.

I finally came to my senses and suggested a complete backup, wipe and clean by a professional (simply because I had given up) because I was wading through infected Registry keys that I couldn't make heads or tails of in some cases.

I hear this from many people I speak with:
" I just click Ok and the pop-ups go away"
They don't even read what they (pop-ups) are. It is more convienent to just click away and move on to the next one than to read before clicking.

shadow575 said:

I removed 250 virus and 600 adware/spyware/malware items.

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For me this is a problem that can be solved by removing the OS (Windows, you won't see yet this in Linux but in the near future, who knows) and installing a new one. This will also teach the guy a lesson.

After about the 4 day, "Format C:" was looking really good too Unfortunately itwas for a friend of my wife and she ended with the ability to acutally reboot the machine so she was happy enough.

I did recommend a complete wipe and start over and I added a few little programs myself to police some of the problems before they occured.

I advice everybody to keep their work files on a different partition (and, if possible, save them on CD's). That way, format c: is a very good option.
In many cases the problem is not erasing the hard disk, is who will erase it first, me or a virus.