I think a lot of the members when they sign on and go to the home page are clicking on Conversations and expecting to see everything there, blogs, documents, discussions, questions. The only time these will be shown here is when they are published in the category of Conversations. Here in is where the problem lies. When you blog you have a choice of having it either your own blog being published as your own blog or a place blog, i.e. published in a group, in the Conversation section, etc. Now, mind you, when I was typing this out to you, I had to go back to the page constantly to figure out where everything is going. I think people are getting frustrated when they get to that part of the publishing, that they finally give up because they have no clue where to stick something. Yes, the visibility of the blogs are shown on the home page, but if you have no experience on the site, you wouldn't know to navigate down to "more" to bring up the page Browse -Content, where everything is shown, questions, discussions, blogs, polls, videos, events. This is the page which should be showing up under the Conversations link instead of only the content published under the Conversation category. People are viewing the Conversations link as just that, a conversation with the community at large and not a Conversation category. So many things are being missed. Just see how many times I've highlighted Conversation only in this paragraph explaining where everything was going. If I click on the pencil and select which I want to create, and I select discussion, here I have to pick and choose where I want it to appear. Whereas under the Conversation link, it automatically places it under the Conversation category.
Also ask a question should be categorized in ask a site question, i.e. asking where something is located, or ask a smoking related question, i.e. does anyone know how long nightmares last and so on. That would streamline a lot more effective answers rather than having them sit awaiting a response. There's way too many categories to choose from. I've ran across some questions not even being answered. If they were smoking related questions, our members would be all over it. If they are site related questions, the developers should answer those or a simple FAQ section should populate and then if the answer is not answered, a PM is sent to the admin.
A perfect example of the confusion is I selected the question category and below it is showing me Publish Location and Conversations is already preselected for me, which it should go under the general category of either General Support or Community Feedback, one or the other, not both. Now, that begs the question of what's the difference between General Support and Community Feedback. I'm seeing many blogs, discussions, questions, being shifted around because they are not placed in the right category. There's so many categories to stick things in, it's not no wonder why. Personally I think this site needs to be less micromanaged and more streamlined into broad general categories instead of many small ones and really creating more work on your end trying to stick everything in their right drawers. As with anything in life, consistency is the key. You know what to expect and you know exactly what to do. If I'm stuck in a new job and I have 12 people telling me all different ways of doing something to complete one single task, I'm going to get very frustrated and most likely look for another job. I hate to see that happen here. Mark scha
