Gather's Weekend Help Article - April 12-13, 2008

Thanks for sharing...

What were the "results" of the love it / hate it poll?
And. .
Why didn't said poll stay up long enough for all gather members to cast their votes? Most poll stay up for at least a day or longer. . .

I missed the poll..I would have liked to vote.

I do not like the changes - if you are intrested.

I do not care about pings, who pings who, who pinged who back...that is why people go to facebook.

I do not care to know when someone comments on an article, if I did not read the article.

missed the poll.....any chance you will post it again?

i am in the PNW PST zone and don't always see EST postings if not left up an entire day

as i stated in my article and in my comments April 11th, i don't like the chaotic layout nor the confusing navigation....i do like the spotlight feature,but would prefer it to be an option for all of my content....

cheers,gayle

well it looks like it's 'National Gather beat the help DAY'... from here...

odds is it ain't goin' away though I think SOME opt outs for things like Pings'd be a good idea and the FEEDS will help some but....

hang in here folks. WHAT!?!?!? you want your money back???

:)

I suspect the poll went away because of the ton of mass mails saying "VOTE NO BECAUSE THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD" skewing the results.

When the poll was first up, it was a pretty even divide - until all the mails started pouring into my ol' inbox. Less than an hour later, it was pretty much wayyy in favor of no.

I would have taken it down too.

I agree totally with Laura, I can speak for myself in this manner and resent all the emails telling me what to do.

I do think there is a glitch that I would like to have it looked into. I like the use of the friend feeds( Yeah I know I'm in the minority ) but mine is not working the way I think it should for examnple I have a friend set of gather chat friends and tonight they were inded chatting when I selected there group in my settings and then selected articles NOTHING, so I checked on my Team GAther friend set for articles and I know Jennifer Hodge is in this friend set of mine and she wrote some great content tonight but even after an hour after selecting my friend set for Team Gather then selecting articles for this friend set NOTHING, I did the same for comments from this friend set and I know they were commenting today alot in all the help articles and NOTHING I hope this is remedied as in the friend sets it is working in it is really cool to find there stuff easier then before. Please FIX

ALSO still can not cash out, it is still exactly how it was this morning.

I didn't get any mass mails about the poll. I just happened to see it on the front page and when I went back I was surprised it was gone already.

I really wish the profile page was a secondary page and the primary page included the person's articles, images, and videos. I am afraid that people will see one, but not follow the links to the others.

Yes. The upgrades stink!

I never even saw the poll either. I HATE the changes. If I try to select "friends" and "articles" from the drop down boxes, it will only let me see one page worth of articles and there's no next button. How am I supposed to keep up with my connections unless I go to each individuals profile? I've tried this is various browsers so I don't think the glitch is on my end.

All of my connections articles are not showing up in mygather page. I click on all friends and articles. Only about half are showing up.

To have seen the poll you had to go to Gathers homepage.
I don't think everyone checks it out everyday.

I check it occasionally!

I was hoping to find help here..looks like more complaining...I'll just figure things out for myself...Thanks anyway Gather help

I don't think there is any reason that the emails would have skewed the polls. People still make up their own mind. It was just a way to get people out there to see that it was there. What's the point of having the poll out there that no one knows is there? People need to have a chance to vote! I'm upset that gather took it down!

I was looking for the poll too. I found out about it in an article titled: OSA: The Q&A People At Gather Are All Laughing. Maybe the advertisers would like to laugh too.

I can't change my profile - every time I try I get sent to the Gather Front Page.

Suggestion or Idea to Share?

Yeah, THE UPDATE STILL SUCKS! (that's an idea, not a suggestion).


Need Help Getting Around the Site?

Yeah, I do. I've been on this site for TWO years and NOW I need help because you completely screwed it up. It took me TEN MINUTES just to find this article!

And Laura and April can whine all they like about 'skewing' the poll results but communicating with people and encouraging them to vote and advocating a position is what is done every single day in America. It's called freedom of speech. It's an essential part of the whole 'voting' thing. If the 'Hate It' faction was more organized, it doesn't mean you can just disregard the whole poll because you don't like the results. Gather pulled the poll because they don't want to confront that their update is an absolute and complete failure.

I was having computer problems and when I heard about it the poll had already been pulled. I don't care for the new changes at all.

I'm having trouble finding the spotlight button. How is this done again?

Would it be possible for a help file to be published on how to turn off these new unwanted features and actually make your preferred settings stay? Currently, I have to reset any views I want everytime.

Why am I still connected and receiving feeds of people that I disconnected with? I disconnect so I do NOT see their BS copy/paste comments and I'm still seeing them.

WHY WHY WHY?

Suggestion:

Make spotlighting easier to do by putting the "spotlight" button next to the "publish" button.

Also, wading through that feed column to get to our work in order to "spotlight" is ridiculous. Make it simple! Make it easy! Let us find our article or image on our own "article" or "image" page (a much quicker process!). From there, we click on "edit" to "spotlight" and then publish.

Second Suggestion:

PLEASE give us the option to filter out all that "ping" and "friend connection" info in our feed. What a barrage of nonsense!

I'm having trouble with clicking on things today. If someone leaves me a comment and I go to click on their icon an entire box hovers over their icon and the delete this comment option. If I click it deletes their comment instead of taking me to their page, not good.

I tried it with a different browser and same thing happened.

Ok, I also just noticed that I am not able to click on anyone icon's off my feed on my page either. Only works if I click on the name from the comment bubble or beneath their images. Is this supposed to happen and I am just finding out now. Because clicking on their images was the easiest thing to do.

Hi guys and girls I need some help with something today. I have just published an image and would like to spotlight it, however, it's not showing up on my feed section. Does it take a while to actually show up?

Taloha Luna!

You can only spotlight content published after April 7 (or so)...at least initially. Going forward only 20 days worth of content will appear in your feed, or up to 500 items. An 'item' is considered any content, ping, comment or activity which is available through the feed drop-down box.

Denise,

To spotlight your content visit your profile/namespace and locate the content you want to spotlight within the "My Feed" section, which will appear at the top of the page (at least until you spotlight content for the first time). Articles, images and videos may be chosen via the drop-down box on the feed window. Currently, you have a limited date range to choose from, and can only spotlight content appearing in your feed.

Listed under all content titles and date stamps in the feed window is a link labeled "spotlight this" (in blue). Clicking this link will immediately spotlight that content. Once the item is featured in the spotlight, a link will appear allowing you to remove the content from the spotlight, if desired.

Note: Currently you are not able to spotlight content published before April 7, as that content does not appear in your feed. You may spotlight up to 5 items.

I hope that helps!

Lune posted a great article to help out with the changes: Lune's "Learning To Find My Way Around the New Gather"

Hi Kevin, thanks for that. I knew this bit but was having trouble seeing the image I have just posted today. But when I closed my gather browser and reopened it I could see the image and now have spotlighted it as well.

I am actually liking the change so far. I have also used the "feed me' section and think that works great as well.

Luna,

After rereading your comment, I now see what you were asking. There is a 15 minute delay before content will appear on your feed.

I hope that the "Feed Me" feed options will be improved at some point. With the limited keyword range, a lot of irrelevant content still appears. However, at least members don't have to conduct a search to locate content of interest and remember complicated search rules.

Hey Kevin just to let you know in the very few things that are showing up in my feeds there is no 15 minute delay. Your comment above showed up right when you posted it.

Chris,

Thanks for letting me know. I will have to review Gather's statements in this regard. It may actually be up to 15 minutes, and only for your own feed on your profile page. I have also noted very little delay, and just haven't had time to test it yet. :-)

ty gather

Chris,

As a follow-up, I did some testing and found that content and other activities are appearing fairly quickly in all feeds. This includes my own content and actions in the community. However, per Tom below, there can be a delay of up to 15 minutes. I would be interested in knowing if the length of this delay is arbitrary, or related to peak site activity or other factors.

"There will be a slight delay (up to about 15 minutes) before new items appear in your friend feed or your profile feed. We built a system that updates these feeds in the background in an ongoing way, so that your feeds are already prepared when you request them. That means we can display your feeds much, much faster than if we had to try to construct them the second you ask for them."

Tom Gerace, Apr 11, 2008, 9:24am EDT

HELP, please and thank you....how do i get to the page where it shows my pts. and has a FEED ME feature?.....saw it once after signing out and back in,but that technique didn't work this afternoon.....i always leave myself signed in since don't share a puter,but signed out to see what difference it would make per the new layout....

also, when i did find that pts. page last night, i tried to go to page to order GCs, but the box which requires you to sign in again for verification was missing....

am debating on whether or not the hoops are worth jumping thru with each visit....

cheers,gayle

Hello Gayle!

I did answer you at the HelpCenter, but in case you return here....

First of all, there is a site glitch preventing some members from accessing their earnings page. This will probably not be rectified until Monday. You can try clearing your cache & cookies or using another browser, but it is unlikely that this will have any impact.

Second, go to your "My Gather" page to view and use the "Feed Me" option. On the "My Gather" page, there are three tabs near the center of the screen. The "Feed Me" tab is the first one on the right.

(the above link will take you right to it)

Tomorrow I will be publishing an article explaining the new site functions, and identifying the location of familiar and popular features that are now in a new location. I would have done it today, but answering questions in the community has kept me quite busy. :-)

Thx 2X now,Kevin!....i replied at the help center,too ;> .....the feed me feature isn't working now for me....seems to be same as key word search feature which i use quite a bit in general...

if you don't mind, send me head's up with hyperlink when you publish article you mentioned

cheers,gayle

Gayle,

I thought you had mentioned to me you had tried signing off and then signing in again to rectify your difficulty accessing the earnings page. If you haven't done so already, then I suggest trying this....just in case.

We need an opt-out ability! I hate all the stuff showing up, the feeds about people posting and pinging and commenting. Maybe someone likes it, but I sure don't!!! It's like a wall of noise I have to make it through to get to my own page.

The results of the poll: 384 votes, 54 percent AGANST, about 29 percent FOR, SOME percent OTHER, some percent UNDECIDED. An hour ealier with 149 votes, it was 42 percent FOR, 29 percent AGAINST, some OTHER, some UNDECIDED.

We definitely need a choice of NEWS FEEDS or NOT; public or private pings.

Rose W. posted an article and went to the Gather staffer pings in which Gather staff congratulated each other on the upgrade. It wsa downright embarrassing to read these private words and how they were phrased in a public forum, a lot like eaves dropping in a private conversation.

Facebook changed their original NEWS FEED to an option after its members expressed outrage last year.

I find it very disturbing to read that Pam said Gather will not be making any changs.

My article proves HOW MANY people want an option of NO NEWS FEEDS and PRIVATE PINGS.

Lisa Gensheimer, one of Gather's best correspondents, said publicly (and privately to me() that she will LEAVE if NEWS FEEDS are not optional.

I have made many friends from Gather but now have their outside emails of the best writers on Gather - I don't need this blog as a writing site anymore

It is embarrassing to hear that Gather management is SO stubborn it will NOT listen to the views of the members ship and change accordingly.

Making changes to NEWS FEEDS optional and pings PRIVATE are not difficult; this obstinance seems willful and self-obsessed.

MANY people will be leaving because of the features that are downright awful.

And, once they do, more will follow. These top people will never be replaced. The caliber will continue to go down.

Well, I missed the POLL completely. It would be nice to have it reposted. I'm still not completely in tune at all with how to find what. Maybe I'll have a better understanding about the changes tomorrow. I hope.

It's funny I never received a mass email about the poll - and I still hate it.

I also hate the way that some of the gather staff talked to membership, very snotty and condescending.

In addition I have stated, all over the site, that I highly resent a person, who is probably younger than my youngest child, telling me that "change isn't always easy".

I was using computers when they were in separate buildings and people wore dust-free protection clothing. They kept the temperature low to insure there would be no damage to the components.

I helped write the repair manual for the first micro-processing systems for a tech school.

I know a lot about change, I know how to teach myself systems and I also know when something is poorly designed and not user friendly - welcome to gather.

I don't like the update. Nor do I like the fact that the poll is down, though I did manage to catch it while it was up. And, while I didn't get any mass emails about it, they wouldn't have skewed the results anyway-- anyone seeing it still had the free will to choose their vote. They could have just as easily voted "I love it!".

To sum up the suggestions I wrote in the last article...

There needs to be a way to permanently adjust your friends feed. I don't want to have to switch the feed in the drop-down menu every single time I pull up that page. There should be an option to automatically adjust them, so that it always shows up the way you want it to. A simple set of checkboxes in the My Account page would suffice for this.

Give us the option switch back to the "Old View" for the My Gather page. I like being able to see my friends' images in a properly-sized thumbnail (like the current general "Images" tab) and not on a feed. I liked being able to see 16 decently-sized thumbnail images at once on my screen without scrolling.

Make feeds on namespaces optional to view, or put it at the bottom of the namespace page.


Hopefully, the coming week will bring about some changes for the better.

I can't but help but wonder whether Laura Cushing was born and raised in the United States. Yes, I received an email...one email from Kathryn...asking me to go to the front page of Gather friday night to vote in the poll. When I went there the poll was already taken down. Had I voted, I would have voted against the upgrade...not because Kathryn told me to but because I myself did not like it.

Laura Cushing...we live in America...America I say...not China...not Germany during WWII but AMERICA. The following statement you made sounds absolutely absurd even to this kindergarten teacher:

" I suspect the poll went away because of the ton of mass mails saying "VOTE NO BECAUSE "THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD" skewing the results.

When the poll was first up, it was a pretty even divide - until all the mails started pouring into my ol' inbox. Less than an hour later, it was pretty much wayyy in favor of no.

I would have taken it down too."

Do you hear yourself? Have you not been listening to national politics all these years? Has it come to the point in America that if one disagrees with Big Brother and canvases on behalf of their beliefs, it is wrong? I know in local politics when I hold a sign saying "Vote the Override" or when I make phone calls stating my beliefs, I'm not "skewing" the results. I'm exercising my right as an American...freedom of speech is still allowed in the United States, is it not?

I understand that you work for Gather...but that doesn't mean you sold your soul to Gather. If you truly believe the upgrade is positive...that's wonderful. I'm glad it works for you. I am pleased you like the look of your page....that you like "Feed Me." That's your point of view. I respect it. But if you are just supporting the Gather position because you don't want to cross the company line, then that's another whole ball of wax.

I think we really can find some kind of compromise where everybody wins....or at least that's what I am hoping.

The AntiChrist said it in a nutshell:

"And Laura and April can whine all they like about 'skewing' the poll results but communicating with people and encouraging them to vote and advocating a position is what is done every single day in America. It's called freedom of speech. It's an essential part of the whole 'voting' thing. If the 'Hate It' faction was more organized, it doesn't mean you can just disregard the whole poll because you don't like the results. Gather pulled the poll because they don't want to confront that their update is an absolute and complete failure. "

Hi Kathryn How are you? I was just reading your comment above.

I don't think Pam said there will not be any changes made. I read her comment as saying that this new upgrade is here to stay. Meaning we will not be going back to the way Gather was before, but ofcourse Gather would consider (I understand) tweaking the system in the future to make it more appealing to everyone.

I was just voicing my opinion, Elizabeth - something I think America also says we can do.

I'm not saying that everyone has to love the new upgrades, or that they shouldn't talk about the parts they don't like - but I DO support an end to the mass hysteria and all the misinformative mailings.

I stated my opinion, and what I would have done in that circumstance.

Your opinions can (and do, I'm sure) vary.

I would like to just get back to enjoying the site now.

Thank you.

Hi there. How do I spotlight my articles?? I published an older article again that I want to spotlight but I don't know how to spotlight an article... can you help me out please?

Sheesh, is this not a help area or what??

Hi Lisa,

When you publish an article, it will show up in your feed on your profile. There will be a 'spotlight this' option by it that you can click to spotlight it.

--L

Lisa, check out my recent article - "Learning My Way Around the New Gather" The last two screenshots show you how to do this.

As far as this "And Laura and April can whine all they like about 'skewing' the poll results but communicating with people and encouraging them to vote and advocating a position is what is done every single day in America." by the AntiChrist

Agreed. Apparently it's ok when Laura or Austin try to campaign about something, but not anyone else. (no-right clicking, sound familiar? Hypocritical much?)

I didn't send or receive such emails and I, too, can think for myself just fine, thanks. I hate some aspects of Hawthorne (seeing the pings of others, seeing who they connect to - and them seeing the same of me. TMI and info overload) and love others (spotlights, page views). The rest I'm undecided.

With the new upgrade came a very important glitch. I am now unable to cash in my points. What will be done about this?

Ok - I just cashed in my points. I signed out and signed back in and I was directed to the Earnings Program. I think that we should not have to sign out first.

I am unable to upload photos. I have Window Vista and I have tried in both IE and Firefox. My photos are under 1GB and they are jpeg format. The progress varies anywhere from 4%-94% and then just quits. I have tried several different photos and nothing!

This is so frustrating. I don't really think it has to do with the upgrade but it did start within the last week or so. I was able to get maybe 5 images uploaded and that took several days and many tries!

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Heather The problem may be with Windows Vista itself. I had Vista on my computer for a while and it was not compitable with some of the other softwares in my computer, I often had problems opening a media file or playing a video etc. I just switched back to XP and it all works fine for me now...

Hi,
Is anyone else other than me having trouble signing in to Gather at all? I keep getting the phrase User name or password not recognised, and after trying again and again, I can generally eventually get onto the site. That's beyond frustrating. And it is a very real problem.
No, I never saw the poll - I couldn't sign on!