Welcome to our monthly Ask the CEO chat!
I would like to start by wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year. I also want to thank you all for your contributions to the amazing 2006 we have experienced here at Gather. We have come a long way from the newly-launched site we had back in December of 2005, and we hope we made Gather a better place for you to meet and discuss important issues of the day, as well as the fun and personal topics that round out all of our lives.
I’d like to use our time today to reflect on the past year and talk about where we are headed in 2007. Your input is truly valuable to our team as we evaluate our options and select our priorities for the next twelve months to make Gather a better experience for us all.
To join the conversation, here are some helpful tips:
1) To see new comments and keep up with the discussion, you will need to periodically refresh your screen. You may refresh your view by using the refresh button on your browser, or the F5 key on your keyboard, or through the Ctrl+R key (on Windows) or CMD+R (On Mac) key combination.
2) Once you have posted a comment to the conversation, refresh your screen (see above). Don't worry about accidental double-posting of comments, as Gather technology prevents doing so without a screen refresh between posts. This will ensure that you can more quickly "chime in" with your thoughts.
I will be here for the next hour to listen and respond to your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.
I, and the entire Gather team, look forward to hearing your thoughts today and I encourage you to voice your opinions on all things Gather. Thank you again for making 2006 such an exciting year.
Happy Holidays!
Tom Gerace, CEO
Gather.com
tom.gather.com
PS A number of you mentioned that you were missing these sessions due to the limited window when we are live. I am posting this a bit earlier today to broaden participation. I'll be back at 2pm to start answering questions then!
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Comments: 58
Looking forward to bringing in 2007 with you all.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and all the Gather staff!!
I asked the following questions in response to your recent article announcing the imposition of Community Standards and revised Terms of Service, and never received a response. Can you answer me now?
Please clarify: Would the following comment be considered a "personal attack"?
"You are stupid!"
If so, and assuming one were reported for violation of TOS/Community Standards based on that comment, what would be the consequences?
Also, can you please provide definitions for the following: "abuse", "harrass", "inappropriate content", "inappropriate rating", and "inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the service".
If I should tell you, as the author of an article, that, in my opinion, your writing is inane, your thinking is fuzzy, your reasoning is faulty, your attitude is pompous, your logic is child-like, or anything else in a similar vein, and you get upset over being criticized, does that mean that I have "inhibited" you from your "enjoyment" of the service?
Thank you, and happy holidays.
Thanks for taking time out of your busy, um, birthday schedule to talk to the community about your reflections on 2006, plans for 2007, and ideas for the Gather community. Members, please post your comments and thoughts and give Tom time to answer. We look forward to the conversation!
Our TOS are meant to prevent people from engaging in behavior that drags down the community (e.g. ad hominem attacks, stalking someone from article to article to try to drive them from the site). They are not meant to prevent debate or the critique of ideas.
To suggest that writing is inane or logic is faulty (or that facts are incorrect or that a perspective shows some bias) are all, I believe, reasonable things to share. To call someone names (whether "stupid" or some stronger term) or to perform character assassination serve no productive purpose, drag down the conversation and the community, and therefore do violate our TOS.
Clearly, there will be some interpretation necessary here. We will work to be fair and consistent in our application of these rules and to provide better clarity as we learn from the community over time.
I am not sure I understand your question completely. You must be a member of a group to post to that group. Members may subscribe to groups to get email notifications when new material is published if that group has public content. You may also track the group using our new RSS feature if your browser supports RSS (or if you use some other RSS service).
I will ask our member services team to reach out to you today to make sure we have provided a good answer to your question.
Layla- who's to say that I don't have a nice Veuve Clicquot here a my desk? There label is, after all, nearly Gather orange.
I think the Time piece was particularly interesting because of some of the insight it provided on how social media will impact how our democracy functions. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee ( http://mikehuckabee.gather.com/ ) was on the site earlier this week. What was remarkable, I think, was that Governor Huckabee was at the keyboard himself. He learned to use Gather and spent time between meetings that day discussing his educational agenda for the nation and other topics live with our 30,000 member forum at politics.gather.com
It is, I think, truly a sea change in politics. For years, our leaders have engaged in one-way communication, broadcasting to or mailing us from afar. Now, in places like Gather, they can reach thought leaders nationwide in a direct conversation. Those that do, I expect, will be far better informed and welcomed more warmly and those that fear direct engagement.
It is people like you, Paul, that will shape this country's agenda going forward. And rather than being heard every couple of years at the ballot box, you can now be part of an ongoing dialog with our leadership.
Thanks for joining the conversation (even when spirited!) here on Gather.
Thanks for the question. Yes, when we refer to "spamming" connections, we mean inviting everyone new to Gather. A handful of people began inviting every new registrant to Gather, confusing and turning-off new members to the site. We want to be sure people are connecting whenever they have a connection with people, but prevent members from being spammed by those simply seeking exposure on the site.
We are considering, however, providing a new category of connection (perhaps "acquaintance") for people that know each other just casually on the site. This would allow you to control notifications and article list preferences for acquaintances differently from how you do people with whom you have closer ties. Would this be helpful?
I know you are busy, busy but I wrote an article containing Suggestions for improving Gather. I was wondering if you could look at it when you have a spare minute. There were many commenters who added suggestions also.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976862254
Thank you, and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your staff.
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y ! !
1) the ability to publish video (particularly exciting for things like political leaders addressing the site, reporting of events, and allowing authors to do readings from their work, in addition to the other video material you see published these days).
2) the ability to publish music (we can finally let George C bring that guitar onto Gather...but look-out George, I picked-up my first acoustic guitar last week and have already mastered two chords)
3) a revised homepage that shows more of the great content you are publishing and allows people to more easily find the content they want. we plan to call-out nine areas of focus on the site and make it easier to find groups/authors/content than ever before
4) instant messaging with other Gather members will come a few months into the year
5) and...just a teaser...we have some truly amazing stuff in queue for our author community. Some of our plans here are so exciting that part of me wishes I were not an employee of Gather.com so I could participate :)
Travis-
Good call- we will also be adding an events calendar to the homepage to call-out live events on Gather. Later this year, we will let groups schedule events as well and help you keep track of when your groups have activities going on.
I should have mentioned that we have digested responses to my article on commenting and will be implementing a few initial changes there in the near future as well. I will provide detail in a separate article, but I think we have a plan to take small steps together, test one of the models the community suggested, and examine the experience. We can always look at a different method if we don't like how that turns out. Stay tuned for details.
Thanks, and Happy Holidays to all at Gather staff.
Groups organization is something we are looking at now. With more than 5,000 public and private groups (and growing daily), we see this as an increasing need.
One of the challenges here is that group owners often use a very broad set of tags to define their group. Their organizational methods might not match your own. How would you feel about our allowing you to tag the group with just those terms you want to use for self-organization (e.g. adding the tag "books" to all your books groups) and then we can organize them your way, for you?
Jim Bostick, Gather User Experience Architect
Keep 'em coming!
Were you hinting at something in that direction in the comment above??
Not only that, they are not listed in any particular order on the 'Options' page. I would love to see them at least alphabetized - and possibly with links to their homepage so I can check out what type of group it is before I publish.
Remember to send ideas and suggestions to "Build A Better Gather" at improve.gather.com.
Please have a safe and happy holiday!
I'm a happy guy, and I bet a lot of others are too......
Happy Birthday! And thanks for continuing to listen to all of us, and improving Gather.
As for groups, people... how about alphabetical order? Has someone already said that??
But, that work is much appreciated by the members of Gather!
Some of you have left some really great ideas for improvements...I especially like the ones regarding being able to organize our groups, and the one about some kind of notification of "live events", such as this one!!
All in all, I love Gather. And I can see that the Team in Charge, has some great plans for making it even better for all of us!
Merry Christmas!!! or
Happy Holidays!!
Take your pick. (Cause I really do want to include every single one of you!!)
Would Gather ever consider publishing their own book, compiling some of the best fiction, recipes, biographies, anecdotes, and so on, published on Gather? I'm not sure how difficult it would be to arrange, with copyrights and so on, but it would be an interesting project. Is this even possible?
You and your team are instrumental in making Gather a prime place for intellectual and cultural exchange. The power of internet in determining the new trends and directions for the proximized global community is increasingly being recognized. It is no wonder that Time Magazine has declared the internet user as "The Person of the Year".
Merry Christmas! Hope you have a wonderful holiday. I think gather is just great the way it is. Thanks for all you and others have done to make this great site possible for us to enjoy.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticles.jsp?memberId=76800&num=20¤tPage=2&start=20
Bring on the video/audio I'm itchin' to jam and be jammed at !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!