We are rapidly approaching the end of yet another contest period at ProU. And of course, the flood of blogs telling the people who run the site how to make it better are going to pop up as well. The first has already popped up today. As a moderator, I would like to encourage this sort of activity. Us moderators cannot know what you want changed unless you tell us. However, we are only a small group of people on a very large site. While we do our best to keep the site running smoothly, we need your help. So this is my official call to the ProU community for help.
1) Comments, Suggestions, etc.
First off, as I've already mentioned, I want to encourage everyone who has a problem with the site as a whole to submit feedback. You can do this in a variety of ways, including the Forums, comments in blogs already dedicated to the subject, or a blog of your own, or even e-mailing the moderators at info@progressiveu.org. In looking at blogs from past contests, I have seen what a lot of people have had problems with, and the change that has resulted. Remember, if you don't tell us what you don't like, we cannot make it better.
I'm sure very few of you have noticed, but we now have several categories under the 'moderators' area of the forums. These are recently created teams aimed at making the site run better. And enormous progress has been made from these teams, and will continue to be made as with the news feeds you can find at www.progressiveu.org/news. You should see a number of changes by the start of the next contest, so keep an eye out.
2) Rating
Yes, the ratings feature is new this contest, and all things considered, I think it is a great improvement. However, I have heard complaints about the 'highest rated posts' section being too static, or only one user being featured. Really, there is a simple way to fix this... rate more posts. If everyone rated the posts that they visited, we wouldn't have a problem with the lists being dominated by one person, or never changing because there are no more votes. Currently, you only need three votes to get onto the list.
However, I would like to note that people should not be voting '1' on a post, or even a '5' on a post, simply because they agree or disagree. We want you to put a little more thought into it than that. Similarly, do not vote it '1' simply because you are jealous that it has a high rating and you do not. If you do rate it poorly, please comment to explain why.
3) Flagging Posts
This is probably the aspect I want to stress the most right now. We are only a small team of moderators, and though we try, we cannot always catch posts that violate the Terms of Service. As such, we rely on you to flag what you deem inappropriate. A moderator will get back to you on any flag submission as soon as possible, and appropriate action will be taken. So if you find something objectionable, please flag it. You can do so by copying the URL, and clicking the picture of the man holding a red flag and filling out the form. It's as easy as that.
And finally...
4) Set an example
Certainly, there are many people on the site that are fairly new, and are uncertain how to blog appropriately. The best way to tell them how is to model how you feel is an appropriate blogging technique. Offer helpful advice, and others will soon follow in your footsteps. Furthermore, this is a site that encourages progress. We want especially the younger voices of America to be heard, and we want to encourage change for the better. Set an example for others in your blogs, and perhaps in your life outside of blogging.
Enjoy the rest of the contest and remember to not give up. You can make leaps and bounds towards the scholarship in the next month, just make it worth it.
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-I don't pay much attention to the rated posts, because, as you pointed out, it only takes a few votes to qualify a post. Maybe more votes (like five?) should be necessary to qualify a post, but I think that will depend on the popularity of the rating feature. As it stands, I don't rate posts very often unless I am particularly impressed or disappointed, and I get the impression that others are the same.
-The site is pretty slow. Part of this is how popular it appears to be, and part just seems like the server is slow. If I'm ever checking it on a slow connection, the server usually times out.
-It's not especially functional on Apple computers. I can use Firefox to get some of the rich-text formatting to work, but the HTML I've tried doesn't work in either Firefox or Safari. That's part of why my posts are mostly plain-text without any of the fancy stuff that makes blogging blogging.
Hope that helps!
ProgressiveU needs a way users can visually keep track of points.
I was here for the last contest and saw a lot of the suggestions and just want to say I like how they were integrated and how the site was improved. Keep it up. It shows this site really is progressive and open minded.