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Repurposing Message Forum

Forums: Questions and Answers About Building Your Site
Created on: 02/23/10 11:08 AM Views: 1948 Replies: 10
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:08 AM

I'm thinking about changing the Message Forum, to an ongoing trivia games forum.

Does anyone have thoughts about changing the function of this area? The first question I'm posing: "List all of the 60's slang words you remember". I'm trying to get people to visit the site regularly, and PARTICIPATE. The last game we did was a disaster..sending answers to me via email....I will never post a game on our site again that allows for only one winner, where I have to decide! Evil or Very Mad

If I do use the message forum for games, I wonder if there is a way to change the introductory wording, so I can explain how to play? I can't seem to find a place to change it. Maybe there's a good reason for that...like don't do it? Confused

btw: I don't think I can make this work in the other open forum. (We're calling it Scrapbook..what is the official term?) I can't seem to get people comfortable to post there. Everything I have started in our Scrapbook just dies!

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Edited 02/23/10 11:13 AM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:20 AM - Response #1

Possibilities:

1) Put the game in your Scrapbook (User Forums) and then put a big link on your home page that goes directly to the thread. That way people won't have to navigate to it. Or try emailing the link using your Email The Class feature. Or both.

2) Use your original Message Forums as you indicated. The original forums were just one never ending single discussion thread, but the simplicity of that actually worked better for a lot of schools. There is no editable text block above the never-ending Message Forums, so you'd have to post all game instructions, etc. in the first post. Because that post will scroll off the screen after 25 subsequent posts, I'd also email the instructions to the class.

3) Use your Survey Maker. Unfortunately the name fools a lot of people, but the Survey Maker is just a generic form generator. Many people use it to produce all kinds of fill-out forms. If your game has questions people need to answer, you could create it in the form of a fill-out form. Based on your needs you could then set the group's answers to be either publicly visible, or hidden from view from each other.


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Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:18 PM - Response #2

Love number 3 as a new option, but the tweeks you gave me for one and two make all great options. Thank you Brad!!

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:00 PM - Response #3

I know as the administrator I get emails when someone posts something to our forum, but the classmates don't do they? I think It would keep people coming back a little more if they were sent an email, stating someone posted something on a forum discussion they participated in, to keep it going or to just bring someone back to the site. If you don't remember to check the forum, you miss out! Smile

Also, is there anyway that all classmates could get emails letting them know when someone posts something on someone's profile, that would get more people on the site and on to other people's profiles. More traffic and more reconnecting. Smile

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:03 PM - Response #4

These are things that I would really like to have on my site, the two items above, Administrative choices (what admins can do what and see what, etc), Instant Messaging, and a place for us Admins to see what emails we have sent out to whom. No pressure, really! I love you guys and couldn't do our reunion with out you! Smile

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:38 PM - Response #5

Yvette Allen wrote:

I know as the administrator I get emails when someone posts something to our forum, but the classmates don't do they? I think It would keep people coming back a little more if they were sent an email, stating someone posted something on a forum discussion they participated in, to keep it going or to just bring someone back to the site. If you don't remember to check the forum, you miss out! Smile

Also, is there anyway that all classmates could get emails letting them know when someone posts something on someone's profile, that would get more people on the site and on to other people's profiles. More traffic and more reconnecting. Smile

Both of these things are already in the system now:

1) Forum Subscriptions: Classmates can easily subscribe to any or all forums and get email notifications. We can't subscribe people by default, we'd drive some people crazy doing that. So you have to opt in. Once you do, you get all emails.

2) Profile Subscriptions: If you click Profile Subscriptions, you can already subscribe to any or all Profiles. Every time a comment is added to a Profile it's considered an official "Profile Update" and emails are generated out to the subscriber list. So all that's already in place now. It's another case of we can't make being subscribed to 100% of the Profiles a default option, because a lot of people would not want that and would complain about excessive emails. But for those who do want that, simply subscribe to all Profiles.


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Edited 02/24/10 12:39 PM
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:40 PM - Response #6

Yvette Allen wrote:

These are things that I would really like to have on my site, the two items above, Administrative choices (what admins can do what and see what, etc), Instant Messaging, and a place for us Admins to see what emails we have sent out to whom. No pressure, really! I love you guys and couldn't do our reunion with out you! Smile

No pressure! WE JUST WANT EVERYTHING AND WE WANT IT NOW!! Wink

Seriously, as I mentioned above the first 2 things are already possible now. Admin Rights launches this week. IM, a brand new Flash Chat that's totally cool, and saved all class email repository are all coming. Fun fun! Smile


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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:53 PM - Response #7

Very Cool!! Smile Thanks again for all you do! Smile

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:54 PM - Response #8

I've been depending on the "profile updates" on our homepage, rather than to subscribe to each person. I've never had an update from the homepage show "comments", so I'm wondering if the homepage notification works differently than the email notices?

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Edited 02/24/10 12:56 PM
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 6:15 PM - Response #9

The Profile Updates box on the home page will only show updates if the Classmate him or herself has updated the Profile. If you actually subscribe to a Classmate's Profile, then all comments added by others will generate an email to you.


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Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 6:24 PM - Response #10

What Brad is saying was the very first thing I did and while sometimes it is a bit of a nuisance, overall I really love this feature.

Thanks Brad! I've had no internet for the past four days, so the catching up has been a bit slow. I'll be looking forward to those new features.

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