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Anonymous User
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Changes to the ideas board

Hi Everyone,

 

I wanted to let you know about a change I'll be making to the Ideas Board shortly.

 

We've seen over a thousand individual ideas suggested since the community launched, with several hundred of them being implemented to date.

In reality though, many ideas (I'd say as many as 80%) are duplicates of existing ones, which makes it difficult to accurately identify what the best ones are. A lot of idea submissions also contain multiple suggestions, meaning that we can't close them off as implemented until every aspect has been.

 

Over the next few weeks, I'll be merging idea topics together so that there's one topic per individual suggestion. I'll also be removing the ones which have been implemented or declined.

 

I'll also be blocking the ideas board so that new ideas can't be submitted. From that point on, we'll gather ideas from customer feedback across the community, as well as that received through our other contact channels and surveys. This will guarantee that each suggestion has its own place (and only one place) within the ideas board.

 

From then on, the goal will be for community members to comment on existing ideas, as well as kudosing/voting the ones they like the best. This will make it really clear what the popular ones are, even though we still can't make any guarantees that we'll implement them all.

 

I hope you'll agree these changes will be a positive for the community, and help us get more from your suggestions.

 

I'd welcome any comments or questions on this one.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

11 REPLIES 11
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @Anonymous User 

 

So if a member has an idea that has never been submitted, how do they post it, on the general forum or what?

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User, yeah, I think that's the best way. There are actually surprisingly few new ideas submitted these days, although you're one person who does tend to come up with new ones.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

Anonymous User
Not applicable
@Anonymous User

Thanks for clarifying that
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Quick update:

 

My restructuring of the ideas board is now well underway.

 

I've blocked submissions of new ideas, so if you have an idea, please look for an existing idea to contribute to, or post in a normal board if you can't see anything.

 

All popular ideas which have been duplicated are in the process of being merged together. For example, there's now one subtitles topic rather than about fifty different ones.

 

Another common theme in the ideas board is requests for movies, shows or even entire channels. To help simplify the work I'm carrying out, I'm temporarily moving these to a hidden area whilst we figure out how best to display them in the future. It's possible they'll end up with their own ideas section, but for now I wanted to let you know they won't be visible for a short while.

 

Whilst I'm going through all of the ideas, I am finding some which are really rather obscure, or that haven't seen any activity in nearly two years. I'm archiving those kinds of ideas to increase the focus on the main stuff that everyone's asking for, but I'll be happy to consider re-adding some of them once the restructure is complete, if there's significant demand.

 

As before, any questions, let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

Anonymous User
Not applicable

I agree with the idea of the approach (making ideas/themes easier to identify) but the most frustrating thing is that one of the biggest themes (subtitles - as mentioned in your post) has had no meaningful responses and has been an open topic since 2012.

nality.

 

The idea of the forum and the ability to offer suggestions for improvements is great but without any responses or activity around the high-volume topics, there appears to be no benefit in having the option there at all.

 

I for one am increasingly disappointed returning to the forums every few months in the hope of an update on this topic to find nothing but more contributors raising the same issues and no meaningful responses from Now TV.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User that's the exact reason for the change. Subtitles had been raised in about 30 different ideas topics, making it really hard to track the popularity vs. other ideas.

 

Even when the change is complete, it still doesn't mean we can implement anything people ask for- but I'm trying to make it better than it is now.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

Anonymous User
Not applicable

What's the point of having an ideas board if people can't submit ideas to it?

 

Maybe instead of blocking new ideas, you allow trusted community members the ability to change the status & merge ideas. This way the amount of duplicate ideas staying as new ones will reduce.

 

Liam

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User that's not an exact guarantee though. I want to try it this way first.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Quick update:

 

I've now completed the changes to the ideas board. We've gone from over a thousand individual ideas down to 101. The vast majority of ideas sumbitted are still represented within those, with the bulk of what's gone being duplicate ideas which have been merged into other ones, or things that we've already implemented.

 

There were some I've removed which were extremely unlikely ever to happen, and that had received little support from others. If you think of something which isn't on the board though, feel free to start a new topic and mention @Anonymous User within it, and I'll review it and move it to the ideas board.

 

When submitting an idea:

 

  • Make sure it's specific and only asks for one thing
  • Make sure it clearly explains what you'd like to see
  • Make sure it's clearly titled so that it'll attract the attention of others

If you have any further questions, let me know here, or send me a private message.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom