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Forum Requirements (I want your input)...
Tue, 04/24/2007 - 10:28
Hey everyone,
I am in the process of getting everything together to move this site to a more manageable system and to give you more control of the site. I will be adding a lot of new features to the site to allow you to interact as a community better. I am not going to go into the feature set I will be adding at this time, but I would like to get your opinion in regards to the forum.
The forum is pretty much the epicenter of this community right now and I want to make sure that in changing the system people do not loose the functionality that they like. If there are features that you feel that you cannot live without please let me know in this thread.
thanks,
Will
I am leaving from Montreal, Canada with $1600 for 16 days
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
not sure if I know exactly what you’re asking or going for, but the idea of more community interaction seems fun.
I like the size limited photo gallery, just a little preview of some fav picts. Unforunately no one seems to be posting or even viewing it much, maybe its needs to be advertized a little more?
The groups could be promising also, how about running of the bulls and oktoberfest groups? possibly a ‘contiki sucks’ group []
I see what you mean about not knowing what I mean.
Basically I want the forum to only be discussions of specific questions and such and move more of the content information into the site. With that in mind I am trying to figure out if there are features in the forum that people can not live without.
This is the basic idea for the new site.
You sign up to be a member and you get access to the forum as well as being able to write reviews, and contribute other content to the site. (possible features: site wide profile; blog your trip and add photos, videos etc; if you book your flights, hostels etc through the site it will generate an itinerary for you with features like google maps and SMS so you can get the info on your phone while traveling; Weather lookup world wide; etc…) (i am not promising any of these features yet, but this is what i am working towards).
Some of the features will just be moved out of the forum to other areas of the site (photo gallery and such), but I want to make sure that I don’t remove a piece of functionality that is specific to the forum that a lot of people use.
Does this clear things up at all?
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
yeah I think I understand. But even with hostel reviews and packing lists, people are still going to have random questions that don’t apply to reviews or lists, so I don’t think Hostels or Packing should be completely removed. Maybe condensed into ‘accomodation and packing’ or something.
What would be great is to reduce the excessive amount of basic itinerary questions that overflows in fav places. I don’t know how, as its somewhat a matter of opinion, and nothing that a list or content information can properly address. Maybe a ‘dos and don’ts of itinerary planning’ content section?
Ya, I wouldn’t necessarily change the categories (unless it made sense), I would just be opening up the rest of the site to include more user content.
Your example is very good. I haven’t spent enough time on the forum to realize that there was a need for that. A possible solution could be to have a member managed section that outlined some of the common itinerary problems. If people have specific questions in the forum then this section could be referenced if appropriate.
My goal is to make this site a community that is not restricted to the forum. I would like to get more user generated content throughout the site, and by doing this, the forum software would not have to have all the features that it does. I am really just trying to get a feel for what features you all like and maybe which features no one cares about since I am currently in a planning phase of the redesign.
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
Yea, don’t worry about the forum categories being changed — don’t think we’re going to touch that. What I think Will is talking about is a greater integration between the forums and the site itself. In fact, we have already began to implement user content on the main site with a story by Cil in the Resources section.
Reykjavik, London, Lille, Berlin, Kraków, Lviv, Istanbul, Selçuk, Pamukkale, Kızkalesi, Göreme, Kars, Bat'umi, Akhalts'ikhe, Tbilisi, Telavi, Istanbul
Eurotrip Managing Editor
[=“1”]we fear change[/]
lol, you are going to be terrified then when I release the new site.
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
The new front page is…simple, but nice. I was really tired of looking at those faded together pictures!
Ya we may have to spice it up a bit, but it was really bad before. It was too busy to be functional.
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
Some of the smileys are a little too feminine. They need to be generic.
Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, and end up getting charged double.
I thought this was the new site?
And I agree with the MB on the limp wristed emoticons.
I think you will fail trying to be everything to everybody. Keep it simple, focus on what you do best. People are here for the forum, to ask questions & get advice. If they want to look at pictures or join groups, there’s friendster & myspace
obviously the forum is not going to go anywhere, but do you think it would be a good call to allow you all to add more content. for example having travelogues, being able to add hostel reviews, photo galleries and having all of this searchable by location. so if you are looking for information about Paris, France you could just sort the content by the location and everything that is public that is for Paris will show up (all types, travelogues, galleries, stories, reviews, etc…). that would be more valuable for the community wouldn’t it???
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
Some people would indeed like to take advantage of adding (and reading) more content.
Personally I never get too excited about travelogues and/or blogging a trip, but I know some people like that stuff.
The above is an interesting idea. I wouldn’t want it to be an overwhelming info overload, OTOH it could really be handy.
basically we have major issues when it comes to finding content that is one the site. the main purpose of categorizing by location is to make location specific information easier for users to find. there are a few ways to do this, but to start with i would probably have one page that auto updates based on what you select (country, province, city, maybe content type ie. photos, stories, travelogues, ect…)
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
I’ve never liked travel blogs much either, mainly because people go into waaaay too much detail. But I think if you had an area where people could post a favorite photo (only one or two), leave a couple tips and comments, suggest a restruant or bar, that would be ideal for all those people who ask “where should I go.” But if its not interactive, like a forum, its not going to get much action. At the same time you don’t want it sloppy, people posting 8 paragraph stoires, long back and forth arguements about if or not its acceptable to smoke weed, etc. Something kind of to the extent of the packing lists, someone starts off and everyone adds a little to it. Of course it will probably never work that smoothly.
I wouldn’t mind some good travelogues but that’s the problem. How would you choose. If someone wanted to screen them and then add the ones that were good.
Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, and end up getting charged double.
if get gass petal lk nite rider 4 my car I likeee haha
The travelogues would probably be associated with a profile and if they wanted to make them public then they could be accessible through a travelogues page. We would have some sort of moderation process, but this is down the line a bit at this point (but it is already built in to some extent). When I have something somewhat ready then I will request about 20 beta testers so I can get feedback and give you guys a feel for what it is like…
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
I can understand what you mean about the travel blogs, but at the same time the detail that you don’t like may be exactly what someone else is looking for when trying to plan their trip. I would be setting it up so that each entry in the travelogue would be associated with a location, so if someone was writing about their trip through spain and the south of france the content would be searchable based on the location. These travelogues would probably not be read back to back (unless you liked the person’s writing or wanted to follow their trip), but if you were traveling in the same area and were looking for information, their post would show up when you search on the location.
We can specify whether or not people can comment on the articles and what type of content people can comment on, so if we want to have a dialog we can, but we don’t have to.
We are not trying to replace the forums in any way, but I know that some people feel that some of the content in the forums would be better served in another form and that would help minimize some of the repetitiveness and clutter making the forums easier to use.
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
I am all for minimizing the repetition.
This more of a question than idea. I recently started using Mozilla (love it). One thing I have really liked about this browser is that when I type in text boxes, it tells me when I spell something wrong with a handy little red line. Then when I right click, just like Word, I get spelling options. I have realized how dependent on this I am now when I post here at Eurotrip. What is the reason this is disabled when posting here and is there away to not have this disabled with the new platform?
Also, I don’t know if this has been discussed but perhaps there should be a separate forum for “Help me with my itinerary”?? They usually are under Favourite Places but they are usually written by people who don’t have a favourite place yet! Just a thought. Now I am going to paste this into Word to see if I have any spelling errors.[8|] (the u’s are on purpose )
The itinerary help, and the notion of a separate forum for it, are a bit tricky IMHO.
It’s one thing when somebody posts a real itinerary, whether it is a whirlwind 2 week trip or an open-ended six month journey. Those people will get help.
There are those who ask where to go and what to see, and it is obvious that they have not used Search and/or read the sticky at the top,let alone cracked open a guidebook. Those people might not get too far unless someone feels charitable.
We understand that people might not yet have a Favorite Place, and maybe we could work up a sample itinerary (one for a 2 week trip, one for a 3-4 week trip etc) or something like that, but I always felt that Eurotrip was a bit more about independent, do it yourself travel.
Having a separate forum for itineraries might clean things up, but I wonder if people might then miss out on valuable Favorite Place information? I dunno. It’s worth talking about.
I know what you mean Cil. Sometimes by adding too many forums, everything get spread out a bit too thin. I would only suggest a seperate forum if we’re having trouble with the load in Fav. Places, which I don’t think is the case.
Reykjavik, London, Lille, Berlin, Kraków, Lviv, Istanbul, Selçuk, Pamukkale, Kızkalesi, Göreme, Kars, Bat'umi, Akhalts'ikhe, Tbilisi, Telavi, Istanbul
Eurotrip Managing Editor
in terms of management of the forum, you guys would know best. i do not spend enough time on here to have any sort of valid input.
i am very interested in the itinerary problem though because that is something i am hoping to solve. if anyone has suggestions or can identify specific problems when it comes to helping people with itineraries i would like your comments.
i think i am planning on approaching this in two steps. first, i think we would need a place for people to ‘post’ their initial plans and be able to request people to comment on them. this way they can refine their plans with the help of other peoples experiences. (please note that this is outside the context of the forum.)
secondly, i would like to create an itinerary based on the bookings you do through the site. so if you book your flights, hostels, etc through the site it will automagically build your itinerary for you with the option to have the site send your mobile updates of where you need to be with addresses etc while you are on the road. this second feature will probably not be in the initial roll out, but is something that i think would be valuable and will be working on later. i would also like to make it possible for members to share their itinerary if they would like, so they can organize meeting up with other members while they are traveling.
do you all feel that i am missing anything? do you see problems with the way i see this? if you have any comments please let me know…
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
People who ask itinerary questions can’t get answers from people who haven’t been anywhere. If you have been somewhere then you will answer with some of your favorite places. I think the two go together. Have to agree with mim as well about diluting the boards.
Another point/assumption is newbies are excited about their first trip. The forum gives someone a way to get involved in taking the trip early by posting and planning. I wouldn’t do anything to take away from that. It would also take away from reasons for people to join and post.
Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, and end up getting charged double.
i feel like i am not making my points very well and it probably has to do with the fact that right now i can’t give you all a hands on feel of what i mean. the forums will remain unchanged (for the most part) and they can be used as they are now if that is what is desired. i am attempting to offer additional features to the site that will compliment the use of the forum and will be based on the same membership.
there are two major problems with the site right now that i am trying to address asap:
1. there is no way for the site to be maintained without a developer and there is no way for members (of the forum/site) to contribute to the content on the site other than through the forums.
2. the content on the site is very disjoint and is very difficult for people to find useful information. i am trying to put together a system where content can be easily found and in such improve the overall usability of the site.
i understand that there is a system in place that is working, i am just trying to improve it if possible. since you all are using the site all the time, i want to get your thoughts on what could be done better. it is kind of tough because you really only have context in terms of the current forum system and what i am building is pretty much like the forum, but is integrated into the entire site (the forum is still there and will still be everything it is now, but you as users have more control over the site in general). if you are a member of the site, you have access to the forum as well as adding content to the site in a variety of different ways (with different levels of moderation etc).
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
I agree! There are some things that are very hard to find.
Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, and end up getting charged double.
[=“times new roman”][=“3”]And I think that’s Will’s point.
He was brought on to the project to find the best way to manage the information that is already here by programming a management system in regards to all that stuff we have on the main site (i.e. articles, hostel reviews, links, etc.) and providing an easy way to add to it in the future. Alot of us didn’t look at any of these things because of the way they were sorted and stored. If we remember back to the old days when Eurotrip first came around under Andrew, the information and the forums were both very popular. But in recent years, the stuff outside of the forums has been hard to find with an [/][/][=“times new roman”][=“3”]infrastructure behind it that was a decade old technology. Will is looking to make all this stuff outside of the forums more accessible and interactive.
Think that’s accurate, Will? [/][/]
Reykjavik, London, Lille, Berlin, Kraków, Lviv, Istanbul, Selçuk, Pamukkale, Kızkalesi, Göreme, Kars, Bat'umi, Akhalts'ikhe, Tbilisi, Telavi, Istanbul
Eurotrip Managing Editor
ya that hits it pretty much on the nose. i am also trying to build it so that if we have ideas that we think the community will benefit from then i can implement it relatively easily.
there is a large group of people who depend on this site for most of their travel information, i would like to be able to offer them more…
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
Not a “requirement”, just a suggestion…
It would be nice to “rate” an answer with “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” (or maybe just “thumbs-up” / they do this at Yahoo Answers). Often times, if someone else has already answered a question well, I don’t want to pile-on with another answer, but if it’s something really important, I want to emphasize what an earlier answer said. A “thumbs-up” rating system might do that efficiently.
That would be great! Thanks for the clarification, Mim.
Don, are you suggesting something along the lines of what they do at Digg?
I agree that a pile-on can be a waste, but the thumbs up or down “shorthand” can be helpful to anyone following the thread. Of course, it is still a bit subjective, I guess.
i agree that a rating system could be useful. i have a couple that i am considering, but i think i am planning on going with a 5 star rating system. it will give the number of people who have rated it and the average (as well as showing it with the stars). i originally was going to be implementing it for the hostel reviews, but we can use it anywhere in the site, so if it would be useful in the forum we could use it there too. we could have more than one as well. we could try a thumbs up and thumbs down just to see how it works out. i will think about this and see how it would fit.
thanks for the suggestion…
Frankfurt, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, Barcelona, Paris
Eurotrip Developer
Here is 2 more cents. There is this page
http://www.eurotrip.com/preparation%5Fand%5Fpacking/
reachable by going to the homepage and clicking on Packing in the left column.
Most of stuff there is touchingly obsolete including “fresh” ideas dating back to 1998 and an online tool that lets you concert French Francs into German Marks…
Tell me about it!!!!
We’re working on that and we should have all new fresh content soon. For now we’re concentrating on getting the technology up to snuff.
Reykjavik, London, Lille, Berlin, Kraków, Lviv, Istanbul, Selçuk, Pamukkale, Kızkalesi, Göreme, Kars, Bat'umi, Akhalts'ikhe, Tbilisi, Telavi, Istanbul
Eurotrip Managing Editor