Nettes Interview.Sidemails – Ok or No Go?
admin on 02:53 PM
30
Platform News
It’s been a topic of heartfelt discussions in the community – is it ok to send “sidemails” (private messages) to make other community members aware of one’s own idea? Or is it rather like spamming people and as such a real nuisance for the receivers?
First of all, let’s define what we’re considering to be “sidemails”. A “sidemail” is a private message send to fellow community members
- to notify them about one’s own idea
- to ask them to review the idea
- to ask them to rate the idea
- and lastly the most shady business of offering so called “vote tradings”.
From jovoto community management perspective we have a pretty clear opinion on those phenomena.
Obviously, we strictly dismiss “vote trading”. In the FAQ “What is bad rating behaviour”? we’ve found nice words to explain what we think about it: “If your rate mine with 10 I rate yours with 10″ – omg, might even be lamer than supporting a friend. Don’t spam others with pm’s and beg for ratings.
It’s a definite No Go and if we find out about it we put the involved creatives’ rating status on false, so their ratings don’t count anymore.
But we’re also no fans of the other softer versions of sidemailing. Our understanding of the best (and only) way to make other community members aware of one’s own idea is being active in a contest by giving constructive feedback and rating the other ideas in a fair and objective way. In this sense, sending sidemails is like fishing for compliments without wanting your own hands to get wet. You could also say it’s a bit fishy. Or you could say it’s like throwing fish at vegans (you know, they don’t want fish…). Ähm yes, anyway, enough bad analogies, I am confident you got the point.
by Catounette
Hence, in pursuit of the fair and fun work space we want jovoto to be, let’s all agree on NOT sending sidemails as described above. Let’s work together and collaborate in more productive ways. Remember that we all make this place happen with our joined efforts. Let’s remind newbies in a friendly tone of voice about this “convention”.
Agreed?
Janne
Agreed.
Thank you so much for pointing that out “officially”! Now we can send messengers a link to this blog instead of sounding personally pissed. ;o)
Bloomberg
“Our understanding of the best (and only) way to make other community members aware of one’s own idea is being active in a contest by giving constructive feedback and rating the other ideas in a fair and objective way.”
–> If this is the case what about removing the “followers” section. as the more experienced members are now favored over absolute newcomers (e.g. first contest) as they have way more followers. They are therefore much more “visible” to the community when they post and update their ideas. (as this pops up in everyone’s update stream)
Jaschar
@Janne: Haha! Nicely put. Where’s the like button?
Prodeoweb
Perfect timing. I DON’T want those SPAM emails anymore.
Donner_Mayer
Good Point! I simply ignore sidemails. Therefore it makes no sense to wright me a sidemail to make aware of an idea;-)
Maria Grønlund
Aah, what a relief! It needed to be pointed out!
Of cause you want to pay attentions to peoples ideas, but if you pay attention to one idea in a contest you have to pay attention to all the rest as well to be fair! So a sidemail is not just a small request!
kaptn
Yessssss, PMs are unfair SPAM (mooning). If somebody need attention then he can SPAM the dashboard with comments – good luck!
Oxelot
If we want to avoid this, we would have to think in different ways to take attention to all the ideas. not just the first 15 ranked… I mean why the first 15 ideas have 50 rates and in the next page the ideas have 10, 15 or even less rates? I think that is pretty unfair.
Also, for me sending private messages was a tool to make aware the people who previous visited my idea about my updates. So what if there was a “sort by UPDATED” option in the ideas array? (besides the sort by DATE, RANK, COMENTS, VIEWS… does somebody uses these last two?) Or what about a standar icon ‘UPDATED’ in the idea avatar that everybody could recognize and would rise atention to the updated ideas? like this: http://www.al-amalpreschool.com/images/updated.png
I dont know, just couple of thoughts…
Frieda
@Oxelot: yes, I totally agree! I have the filter “Latest updates” on my to do list. And we are also planning to improve the options for idea presentation. How about files to sort the attachments? One file for each update?
flegido
@Oxelot and Frieda: Those are really good ideas. It would be great to implement them.
gabor
… Schön dass das Problem Sidemails/ die Diskussion darüber den Weg in den Blog geschafft hat. Ich finde es auch etwas störend hin und wieder Anfragen zu bekommen, etwas zu kommentieren/ zu bewerten … jovoto ist eine Gemeinschaft in der Ideen gemeinsam diskutiert und bewertet werden (können) – öffentlich. So ist es ungerecht denjenigen gegenüber die den “offiziellen Weg” gehen und die Community nach ihrer Meinung fragen.
Den Vorschlag von Oxelot mit dem “Update-Button” finde ich sehr gut, bin gespannt auf die Umsetzung.
…
Janne
@Oxelot: I like your idea with the update-button – but if you follow a contest, you do have the newest updates on your dashboard already – for my part, I check them daily. So it´s mainly a question of how far members are willing to inform themselves and if that isn´t the case, a shiny button won´t change much, I fear. ;o)
partick
The update status should simply be present in the idea-overview.
Last updated: Yesterday / 2 days ago / 3 days ago …etc.
partick
and unseen / unrated ideas respectively updates, should be marked with a different frame colour… just my 2 cents
Xavier
Support totally the this NO MORE SIDEMAILS blog!!!
It’s the only way to keep it fair!!! Great you post this one Frieda!!!
There was a time(weeks ago) where we had SIDEMAILS bombing!!!
Nice to know this is almost over!!!
Silviasim
We are a lot and everyone does what he can to get noticed.
There is no way to choose whether or not to receive private mail?
If we could have the opportunity to choose to receive them only by the staff of Jovoto, we would eliminate spam.
If we choose to receive them from all, we take everything that comes in and act accordingly.
Is not said that you like the idea that submit in private email …
One last thing: I agree with Oxelot, the first to publish an idea almost always have the highest ratings, so we have to be fast or very good and very original
This is my point of view … and I said because I learned of this blog from a private email…
Perro
Jesus W. Christ! you nailed it.
Frieda, it is well-known by our growing christian community (NOT) that with only five fishes, the lamb of god was able to feed thousands of people. Just to keep ongoing with the smelly references, and this post seems to do the same. I hope your words of wisdom can change the mind of (no offense) those annoying community members who repeatedly send these look-at-me, look-at-me private mails.
Another thing, I think there’s absolutely no need for the rest of the community to know who’s following who. It should be shown just in the personal dashboard and no at the profile page, otherwise, as bloomberg remarked, the people with more followers has some advantage over the new members, as if this were a popularity contest.
As a side note, I want to make public my appreciation to the fact that our beloved Xavier is discovering the much richer world of communication involving the use of non-caps. I know it’s a long way, but there we go
mgo
yessssssss, i don’t want to get any sidemail anymore.
but i understand people doing this, if you aren’t in the first 20 positions with your idea, you don’t get a lot attention. very often i see very good aproaches on the 2.page and really don’t understand why.
i would be thankful for a solution how every idea could be voted in every contest.
kaptn
Well, I am on jovoto now for a couple year and I have seen a lot of NEW members / ideas who comes in the top 3. I guess without PMs ;O
Good ideas don’t need support.
But I have seen a lot ideas witch got supported bei PMs and the idea climbs up.
When I got the first PM, I thought f…. what should I do now? If I don’t love the idea, than the member can see that……
Janne
The next flood of sidemails is sweeping over us. Interesting to watch on your dashboard, who is answering to the pleas. As long as people keep reacting to sidemails, blogs like these are of no avail. And as you can see, people do react . Heart for heart. Love for love. It´s as simple as this.
Xavier
@Perro, that for including me in your post!
I never thought this “CAPS LOCK TITLE CASE” words can be a meta-communication issue as sidemails?… :S
But maybe if you think so, i’ll just start to write in “lower case” types… as I’m doing now in Janne’s comment cause she asked me to do so in her ideas…
Anyways, I’m supporting the NO SIDEMAILS(sorry this, but promise is my last title case word)…
Thanks for the beloved!
goforit
Good to see that this problem is “under discussion”
I personally am convinced that the problem of new community members (that their ideas gain not enough attention sometimes) could be solved, when votings were allowed to commit only at the end when the deadline is near. That may “force” the voters to watch all entries together and not to pick few first-posted ideas and never visit the contest again. As for me, I never vote ideas at the beginning, even if I comment then – I wait for the updates when announced or when I see there are still in progress. It´s really sad to see when really good newcomers earn only a fistfull votings because they have no or few followers and therefore be ignored
perro
mjmmmm… interesting. what goforit proposes is interesting, even though it doesn’t really change the sidemails phenomenon… it just delays it for the voting week. but in the other hand, I think it may work.
@xavier, sorry if I hurt some feelings over there, buddy. Don’t wanna be the capslock nazi. But thank you anyways.
Janne
Not sure whether anybody cares to read this, but where is the difference between sidemails and facebook announcements? I was just discussing this with someone who used the “legal” method of posting jovoto submissions on facebook and hence was loved at least twice in consequence. Why is this “allowed” and sidemails are not? Isn´t this the same?
Prodeoweb
And what about all the petitions at twitter?
Jesko
@prodeoweb: We have twitter petitions around?
jvanboxtel
Hey guys,
@goforit
It’s indeed a interesting approach. But this would take out the effect of ideas that get better and better in contests. I think it’s an important aspect to see direct feedback on your updates via votes.
@janne
That’s a big difference. If friends see it on your facebook wall it spreads the news about a public contest/idea. But to vote, you have to sign up, vote, and vote/comment for other ideas before you votes actually count. In case you only love the one idea from a friend your rating will be globally disabled or perhaps after contact with the user only for that contest.
@prodeoweb
I’m wondering what you mean? I didn’t pick up any twitter petitions?
Cheers,
jeroen
Janne
@ Jeroen: What do you mean by a disabled vote “perhaps after contact with the user only for that contest”? Does you system detect those single votes and if so, are they basically disabled for that contest or not? Your answer sounds like “it depends”. Thx for clarification.
ReneCreate
Sidemails starting again @ victorinox contest / project ^^
please give me a friend/ignore list or a only ppl i follow can send me msg function lol
or even better if you register you are forced to watch the guidelines in fullscreen for 5 minutes and if u leave fullscreen in this 5 mins you can not register
ReneCreate
btw best part in sidemails ” I also had a look at your ideas and i like ur idea very much” to bad i don’t have any idea up atm :p