Hawthorne Features - Post Your Feedback and Suggestions Here

Remove pings from feed, make them private.

Or take them away (we can just email each other here)

If you want us to click more then add a spell check and dictionary.

I posted what I hads to say on Tom's two articles.

I've mentioned this before.
I can only pst to ONE group. How can this be possible? Did ALL the other groups suddenly block me.

No that can't be. Now I get 3 to 12 comments because 99% of my friends don't know that I've posted unless they have me clicked as a friend.

This is most frustrating. Please help.

Get rid of the pings or make them private. Restore my Gather to it's original format. Do not, I repeat, Do Not tell me to use the feeds. I do not like the feeds, I do not find the feeds helpful. I do understand how the feeds work, but they are just busy work to me and it does not help.

I have nothing more to say than was said on previous threads. I think it's insulting and inane that you expect us to reiterate what all of us have stated previously.

I checked the last two threads and found the expected amount of double speak. It won't cut it. We're tired. We won't wait for Tuesday.

Gather use to be so warm and inviting and the lay out was great! Would you please change it back? Also on my profile page would you be able to show my groups listing the groups I own first and then the groups I've joined under the spot light and get rid of my feed and the ping thing? Maybe add a place that I can put some of my images on my page too. Under my feed the images and the groups owned don't show up. What's the deal with that?

I love Hawthorne. I love EVERY bit of it.

I would like to have the option of having the old namesapce page back. I understand many like the new feed, but I personally find it confusing, intrusive and irrelevant to my personal experience on Gather.
May I add, that I have never complained about Gather's upgrades before and in general find the site a wonderful community where I have connected with writers, poets and artists that I have met here. Having said that, we met under circumstances where our work came into each others perimeters due to our commonalaties, not because we were force feed everything everyone else says and does.

I'm with R. Ethan up there- I'm loving Hawthorne. My favorite are the spotlight, feed me, and page views.

I already voiced the few little problems I was having.

But rock on with the update!

How many times to people have to type the same complaints and suggestions before they are addressed? Seriously. I'm not meaning to be rude, but my goodness! I've seen the same few serious problems talked about among the community members but NO ONE official has said a thing about it.

I don't know about other new members, but if I had come upon Gather even a few days later than I did, I would have read all this negative stuff and ran! Holy cow!

Also, I notice that most of the people who like it have those official looking Gather frame "thingies" around their icons.

I could change my icon to "I HEART HAWTHORNE", but that would just be wrong. ;)

Give us our gather back. Please.

"Tom hosted a chat earlier this week to discuss the community's likes and dislikes as well as to solicit feedback and suggestions from our members on ways these new site features could be changed or improved."

The only time that Tom used the words "improve" or "changes" in his first "Talk To Tom" article was in reference to the "New" updated version of Gather:

"What would you change or improve on the current release? Are any of these changes something you consider "urgent?

"Please let me know if you have ideas not captured so far or have additional suggestions about how we might improve the current experience."

In these sentences, Tom is referring ONLY to "improving" or "changing" the "New Gather" that resulted from the update last Friday: "improve on the CURRENT release" and "improve the CURRENT experience."

There is no reference or even an implication about RESTORING some of the features of the PREVIOUS release or experience which existed before the update last Friday (or even an attempt to incorporate them into the CURRENT release or experience).

And, again, in his second "Talk To Tom" article, he talked about "improvement and changes" ONLY in reference to how the New Updated Gather which began last Friday can be "improved or changed." Example:

"We recognize, from the conversation over the past four days, that we have some work to do to improve this experience."

The words "improve this experience" in the context of his article refer ONLY to the updated version of Gather which began last Friday. And, once again, there is no reference or implication of bringing back some of the features of the previous version of Gather that the majority of members have been demanding.

We have had so many chats and comments and so far we now are waiting until the 22nd for another chat, It would seem to me with so many Gatherites not liking things, and blacking our their icons, that would be message enough, that we don't like this upgrade, especially the feeds, if you feel you need to have them, make them an option or hide them somewhere, I don't want them, I can't find my friends and the only way they are getting to me is by sending me an email to let me know they have something up, my comments have fallen off by 2/3 I would say, and that is a lot. And people are emailing me telling me they can't find me, and I can't find them either, How many more times can we say, take that feed away, give us back our old home page, where articles from our friends come up, not comments they make on whoever, just unnecessary junk. It's almost morning, well it is, but I am up because so many of my friends are very upset and have blackened out their icons. Help us Please Gather.

I hope the next improvement will give us choice to have the classic version and or feed *frenzy* version.

How about going back more then 500 articles or letting us see things that have been posted longer then a week or two, without having to go digging for them. When I get new connections, I like to go read and view all there content, now I can only seem to get into what they have posted within a week or two. Stupid.

That is only when I can get into anything at all. I guess I should be jumpping for joy when I can see that much.

The only thing I have found that I personally like with the "upgrade" is the spotlightting. The rest of it is junk and needs to go. Starting with the feeds.

Amen to that J.P.

Ok, seriously, how am I suppose to find anything if every thing in my friend feed is wiped clean around 10:35PM every night?

It's hard enough trying to navigate without everything disappearing on me... Or does my friend feed have some kind of Cinderella complex?

I'd like to suggest a COMPROMISE of removing pings, connections and groups joined from the feed.

Extend the feed to cover MINIMALLY a day's worth of content, please. I'm on daily several times a day and I still miss a great deal of the content is posted.

If you give back the images and articles for me links I'll love you forever! I love Gather, but the new update has made finding content (which is why I'm here) very difficult to do.

I know of a great connection that has left as of today Michelle K....and others are looking for new sites to move to and stay connected.
My comments since last friday have literally cut in half!!! No one can seem to find their way.
The pings and all the info are adding way too much clutter to the front page.
Too much clicking to get to where we want to go.
Why ask when you don't seem to care.....

If I wanted to be on a Facebook like site, I would just go to Facebook! The "upgrades" make Gather a silly and irrelevant place that I will probably leave to Tom. If this is what he's after, he can have it!

I believe that much of the increased agitation in the community pertaining to Hawthorne is due to a failure to communicate....effectively.

Here is Tom's recent statement pertaining to community feedback:

"Thanks, everyone, for the really in depth experience on the new Gather experience so far.

I believe that in this discussion and my last one we have captured the broad perspective from the community on the new release. I am now working with our team to organize and condense that thinking into reasonable buckets of related thought.

I am then meeting with our product team this week to review this condensed feedback and to look at empirical data that we have on site usage from the last few days as well. It will take a few days for us to respond thoughtfully. We appreciate your patience in the meantime."

Tom Gerace, Apr 17, 2008, 8:38am EDT

This implies that community concerns have been heard, are being consolidated and reviewed, and that a response will be forthcoming in a few days.

Perfect.

However, then the statement below is made which would appear to indicate that no response regarding these concerns will be coming in the days ahead...at least not during Tom's next chat:

"Hi Guys - The upcoming "Talk to Tom" chat has been scheduled for a month. (4/22 @ 12N ET) Tom, and other members of Team Gather, have shared the time and date across the community since last week and we all think it's best to conduct this conversation in one place at one time.

I think I need to make myself clear... the chat is NOT about Hawthorne (directly). The chat is about Gather as a company and Gather as a community. Specifically, the company's Vision, Mission, and Values and how they relate to the technology and features brought to the website.

It's a conversation... not an 'answer'."

Pam Johnston, Apr 17, 2008, 5:22pm EDT

Thus, if Hawthorne will not be addressed (directly) during Tom's upcoming chat, when should the community expect the responses that Tom promised above?

Knowing this would go a long way towards quelling much of the concern and feelings of marginalization that have been evident since the update.

Thank You.

This site is supposed to be about sharing and viewing writings, images, and videos and commenting on the works that others create, but with the publicly accessible feeds you have given us, it is now more about voyeurism and stalking. A little over a week ago, things were at least slightly more organized (and a little more civilized), but now nearly the entire site is one big three-ring circus that is running more and more amuck every day. People complain (and that includes me), and then people complain about the people complaining, and then the ones complaining about the complainers get complained about by even more complainers.
Gather has taken on the image of the Soviet Union in 1954 in the minds of at least a third of all the members. Respect for and appreciation of this site and the company that runs it is sliding rapidly down a very slippery slope. Faithful and loyal longtime members are either packing their bags or have already vacated the premises. A very large portion of the members who make up this community are either angry as wet hens or have become so discouraged and confused it is only a matter of time before they walk out the door as well.
Simply put, the "fun" has gone out of this site like air out of a deflating balloon. When I log on this site now, it has become more and more of a chore not just to navigate through the maze of confusion, but to just keep myself from turning off my computer and seeing what's on television. And I hate television.
I am sure that you are even more painfully aware than I am of the fact that this site and the member community that it is made up of is quickly unraveling before your very eyes and, as time goes by, it will fall more and more apart. If I can see it, then I KNOW you can see it even more clearly. The Gather community is beginning to fragment and is rapidly losing its unity one piece at a time.
I cannot say for certain exactly what needs to be done. I only know that SOMETHING definitely needs to be done, and it needs to be done very, very quickly before it is completely too late and Gather becomes, in essence, a virtual ghost town.

The MINIMUM I could live with is to add a link to Articles For Me to the Articles tab, Images for Me to the Images tab, Comments For Me to the Comments tab, and Videos For Me to the Videos tab.

That would restore functionality for those of us with disabilities, and also for those of us who use comment counts as a means of navigation, i.e. to know which threads have been active (or not).

It is a simple task - and to refuse to even consider doing something that involves only 4 lines of simple HTML and would return so much functionality to a lot of unhappy people is just plain stubborn of the shooting oneself in the foot variety

Stop feeding me garbage.

GIVE US OUR GATHER BACK> I HATE THE HAWTHORNE CRAP!

Get rid of "My Feed" on my profile and replace it with the old style of listing recent articles, images, videos, and comments. I don't need a notification in my feed stating that I just updated my status on the same page, two inches below my status. It is as redundant as it is repetitive.

I like flits suggestion. I also have a question... when other sites are testing different formats/modes they usually have both up and you can choose which version you use. Would it be to difficult to implement that somehow? Maybe let each user choose their "view" Hawthorne or oldstyle??? If nothing else if you did it for one month if would give you data as to which version the users like better. I personally don't care which we use. I find Hawthorne to be way more time consuming and I get way less done using it. I wish someone would email me and tell me how to use the spotlight feature as i have not as yet gotten it to work for me. I LOVED the old version better and I hate change so that automatically puts Hawthorne down in my eyes BUT i have been trying to give it a fair chance. I can still use it and navigate it, it just takes longer and I don't like it as much. I feel it was a downgrade, but a still usable one. Gather is no longer my favorite place to be, i like easier more user friendly sites, that is what made Gather so special. trying to make it like Facebook SUCKS i am not a part of Facebook adn will never be and if Gather continues to try to be like them, I will have to think about leaving. I like having a wide variety of people to talk to, seems like you are shunning the older more educated and aiming for kids. Not interested.

good suggestion Chris I like that one too!

the only thing you should have changed you didn't...the way we add groups to post are articles to is stupid! I belong to alont of groups, and the way it is now I miss alot of them....so fix what needs fixing, and leave the stuff that wourked just fine alone.

The suggestions have all be made. You know the one I added - that a cross-section of people be selected as testers for changes this drastic...and time be given to let them play with it and iron out the kinks before introducing it to the community.

As I mentioned to Tom, another site where I've been for years has been testing a new email system for months before changing everyone's email experience. That's smart business.

And you know...there are still so many suggestions that have been made about organizing, about allowing us to go to specific pages in our list of articles or images, things of that nature. Those, we feel, are important changes. But then never seem to be important enough to Gather.

Dear Gather:

1} I would really prefer to have the OPTION of turning off my feeds. To beat a dead horse, I don't need to see a stream of who commented on what, or who pinged whom. Why is this important to me? I don't like every comment I've made and every place I've been open to the public. It feels intrusive.

2} I'd like to have the option of having my connections, or my groups articles and images right there when I open my gather. To me, that is 'user friendly'.

Gather, for me, has always been a relaxing oasis when I have a few minutes to spare. Now it's way too complicated and filled with unnecessary junk. It's difficult to navigate. It's hard to find my friends and groups content. Gather has had other upgrades, since I've joined, BUT, I have never seen such an concentrated outcry. That HAS to mean something.

Gather, please keep in mind, that your 'community' is multi-generational. As such, many have only basic computer skills. Right now, Gather is NOT 'user friendly' for many. GenXers are accustomed to this type of format, but what about the rest of us? Or aren't we important? The way it feels now? We aren't important.

I realize that Gather has a 'vision' and I realize that a lot of hard work and planning went into this upgrade. I've seen and been involved with upgrades at work. What good is all the pats on the back and atta boys if your community, which supports you, isn't happy? Yes, you do get advertisers to offer funds. What good are those advertising funds if your target audience--that would be your gather community--isn't happy or worse spends less time on the site to see those ads or products or even leaves gather? Aren't you guaranteeing you can bring to the table X amount of people as part of the pitch? How are your numbers now? More importantly, how are your demographic numbers going to be in two months?

The attitude of 'we can always get more people' is poor customer service. Excellent customer service skills can make the difference between an average business and a great business. In today's world, customer service is vitally important. There are too many businesses offering the same services. Customers--your gather community--is going to prefer a place where THEY are important. True, you can't please everyone completely, but you can't say "tell us your concerns" and then ignore them. Or, for that matter, give them a long spiel of rhetoric which says basically nothing--sound really good but the proof is in what you do, not in just what you say. There was a cute jingle not that long ago where the little old lady asked, "Where's the beef?" That catch phrase became synonymous with "where's what you've promise or guaranteed? I noticed your community your customers, have asking you "where's the beef?" don't you?

There are companies in the business world that teach seminars on the need and the importance of having excellent customer service skills. Those business realize to succeed they have to make their customers experience with the company a good one. Customer loyalty only goes so far and usually ends when the customer no longer feels important.

Granted, it's only been a week and I know that even tweaks to upgrades take time, planning, and money. But I really hope you really do more than create a forum for your customers to list their concerns and reactions. I hope really listen and do something.

To save space, I'll just second Chris Carlisle's comment.

I hate My Gather page now and try to avoid it.

I think people have known me (former raccoon) as an avid supporter of Gather. THere are comments from Gather team members noting so all over my former articles (now faded to black, too). THey'll return if the site looks good again. Meanwhile, "indexed keywords" on Google will lead to meaningless and content-less articles from me.

In the meantime, I'll still plug everyone else's articles. Read Chris Carlisle, Ms Meacham, John Phillipe and so many other talented writers here...Connie C (who strives mightily to help people save money), Nippy Kat (who thinks outside the box), Kris...too many to name.....

Give everyone the choice to have feeds on or not. Basically, the old look vs the new look.

I'm just not plugging mine anymore, considering that most are going. The keywords will, of course, live on in Google for awhile (or infinity).

Make that nppe Katz or whatever he calls himself now...and everyone else. Some great writers here! Check out the Writing Wombats, always!

This is getting sad.

I want the old icon page back. If you want to keep the comments and pings, then put them on a back page we have to click into. When I get into Gather I want to see articles posted. The rest is unpleasant to the eyes and of no interest to me. It interrupts my ability to get around Gather. It is so maddening, I'd just sooner get off than stay on and try to wade through all the mess.

I'm responding to Berf's comment, as requested, and I strongly suggest people read comments in their entirety so you can scroll up and see it. I am noting this excerpt:

"Faithful and loyal longtime members are either packing their bags or have already vacated the premises. A very large portion of the members who make up this community are either angry as wet hens or have become so discouraged and confused it is only a matter of time before they walk out the door as well."

I am one of those who feels this way now. Perhaps idiotically, I continue to hope that Gather doesn't bow to Google so much that users are lost in the shuffle. If a site loses its sense of individuality and community (even with NORMAL bickering, as all communities have from time to time) and an unfriendly or confusing interface, you lose the people.

I hope you don't do that.

Or bow to MySpace or Facebook interfaces either. Gather was an individual thing, much like certain lovely and unique breeds of dogs, cats, people, etc.

Bring back "Articles for Me", "Images for Me", and "Comments for Me" with the "view all" features/formats as before. I think flit above mentions a method for this above with the tabs. Also allowing us to "spotlight" articles/images regardless of age/date too would be great.
As mentioned before, this will allow members to use the new feeds if they desire, or people like me to use the older way if wanted, seeing all friends/connections with no limits.

Give us back our Gather - scroll through the comments we've made on everything this thread has requested and Tom's "chats".

Lip service doesn't make it.

Suggestions:

1) Allow the option of a "My Gather" page that resembles the pre-Hawthorne look as closely as possible. This has the best shot at pleasing the largest number of users.

If #1 is not possible (and you should EXPLAIN why it isn't), then:

2) Create a feed that includes articles, images, AND videos together and allow it to be the default.

3) Allow better access to older material. It is very hard to discover articles that have "fallen off the feed" without going to the individual users' pages.

If you implement #2 and #3, you will have solved most of the problems with access to articles that users are complaining about. Any further amount of customizability you could add (such as restoring image thumbnails to the previous size or restoring the general pre-Hawthorne layout, or providing more options for setting default views) would be improvements.

4) Make a serious effort at addressing the privacy concerns that have come up. I realize that this is more of an issue for some users than others, but at least show that you are taking it seriously. Responses from Gather on the Google issue yesterday didn't seem to fully grasp or address the issue that was being raised.

I agree with Rick; if the default feed included ONLY articles and images, and the other things were options we could look at (or not) as we choose, that would go a long way toward making the new gather less offensive.

Right now, Gather just isn't as interesting as it used to be.

From what I have read, Gather wants to serve people who "don't want to write articles or post pictures every day, but want to use the site to keep in touch with their friends."
That is fine.

Maybe we could simply have the option of choosing between two different default variations: some of us could use the "new" gather, if that suits our desire for interaction with our friends, others of us could choose the old format of "articles for me" or "images for me"... along with our "old" namespace. If the "old" namespace is not desired by gather maybe we could at least be able to click on "articles for me" or "images for me"... somewhere. There are many members who simply cannot be here several times a day, or maybe not even every day, but who used to be able to catch up on all their friends via those links as soon as they got some spare time. Not being able to do that, I believe, is the biggest part of the frustration. If we could choose to go visit weeks and weeks of our friends' aricles or pics... without having to hunt them down one by one, all nicely lined up like they used to be, most of us would soon be happy campers again.

Articles are impossible to find unless the person spotlights them or sends you the url. This is just plain wrong. I too like to go and read content belonging to new connections but in the new Gather that doesn't happen.
We are supose to hightlight our content but it has to be new content. This means we have to go back and republish content. I can't even figure out how to spotlight.
PLEASE BRING GATHER BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT is not my computer as I tried it on a different one today Gather is VERY VERY slow!!! and occassional (when working from the Home Page when I go to an article my whole screen turns blue and the title is in the direct middle of the screen, this is happening on different computers with different IP addy's so it is a glitch of some sort.

Cashing out is still cumbersome and others still have not found the work around, please write a how to and mass mail to people on how to work around this


Please I Love the feed me and the way I can find people quicker but it hurts my eyes, and can not stay there for over 5 minutes with out getting a headache
Can you do somehting with the layout or the white space or something?


I dislike very much the pinging etc on my page yes I know I can change it but when I leave to look at something my chages are gone and I must do this each and every time. Please make it so I can make it permanent for me. A temp somewhat fix has been for me to turn off my Ping feature. but that is not what I want I really liked pings but don't want to see them on my page space, nor do I want to see staus updates or who befriended whom EVER!!!!!

Please fix the problem with cashing out. I don't want to til the end of the month, but it's bothersome to know that I can't do it. Again, the issue is that I click my earnings link, and it tells me to sign in. BUT, there's no sign in box.

Here I am again, commenting in an area that's designed to make me feel like I'm being heard without any of that pesky "Listening" stuff on TPTB's side. I have been more than specific about what the problems, as I see them, with Hawtorne are -- MULTIPLE TIMES AND IN MULTIPLE THREADS AS WELL AS IN GATHERMAILS BETWEEN TOM & MYSELF. As such, I'm tired of the redundancy and the busy work I've been handed of explaining my displeasure, ad nauseum, ad infinitem.

I'm also tired of not being able to accept the "pending" Friend Request from Dame Ruth Chief Executive Elitist D and Kate C. I'm tired of my Friend Sets locking people out of them -- although said people are ON the friend sets and THE FRIEND SETS are allegedly "integral" to the Hawthorne update and are quoted as our way of blocking out the less desirables here.

In short, I'm tired of Hawthorne Business as Usual -- I haven't been quiet in my displeasure. I've received pat answers and placations. Yeah -- this update rocks, all right. It certainly "rocked" the foundations of a lot of members' faith, trust and sense of community.

View counts is difinetely not working properly this article shows one view & there are so far 3 unigue views not counting mine. Please make it work, as it is it is not accurate.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977326734&nav=Namespace

1.) Consider removing fluff (non-content) from the feeds - pings, connections.

2.) Consider putting "My Friends" (where all their cute icons appear to show the latest sign ins) on the MY GATHER page as well as my namespace page.

3.) Consider replacing comment counts so they are easily accessible.

4.) This is not directed at ALL Gather staff... But to a few... At least make it believable that you care about what we're saying to you. In my opinion, the blase feeling you're emitting on articles, in comments and by removing some comments/pings is the worst thing about this update.

5.) Please... Try to keep people here. Don't let them leave - because that will encourage others to leave as well - and you will definitely be losing business then. : (

My high level concerns are twofold:

1. Looks like the UI redesign is designed to promote immediate social interaction at the expense of the content. I liked Gather because of the content. I got to meet some interesting people but the way I met them was through the content and the comment threads. I'm not an intellectual snob. I've enjoyed articles about people's daily lives as much as anything. My criterion was always "Does it hold my interest?"

2. Regardless of the design philosophy, the new design was not implemented very well. I think it was installed with a minimal feature set in order to meet a deadline. The problem with the installed product is that it made navigation more work for most people. I didn't have a hard time learning to use it. I quickly got frustrated when I discovered that it wasn't very efficient.

I'd like to see a more content-centric view of the site. I hate to say it but the old UI with it's "Articles for me" etc. was very satisfying in that respect. I'd also like to be able to get to the things I want with a minimum of clicks.

Give us back our My Gather pages as they were.

Put the obnoxious feed page on a separate clickable page like our original goto pages for those who are readily entertained with watching everyone's every move.

Address the plethora of glitches that (a) make our articles not show up to various friends, (b) render our notifications unreliable, (c) make it impossible for various friends to link up, (d) prevent us from cashing out easily. Let's fix these before making more changes, OK?

Many of us have found ways to work around the various glitches and crappy navigation tools. We should have to.

One thing that would go a long way toward improving the feed approach would be persistent custom feed views where members could choose the feed components they wanted to see.

I'm thinking of a screen with check boxes for feed components--article, comment, image,...--that a member could use to build a view to save for future use like an ebay search. Other filter arguments ought to include friend set, group, date range, and some others I haven't thought of yet.

Why keep making the members repeat themselves? We have given you feed back it seems ninety two billion times already. Just read the pre-chat with tom article for one example.

Can't we just get answers without the fluffy buzz word language?

1. I would like content back on my homepage. Tom did at one point mention that you would look into making the spotlight feature more flexible by including older content as well--that would be great. If we were able to organize the content that's presented on that first page, we could actually link to it for "outsiders" to see what we're about. This would bring more traffic and perhaps more members to Gather, but as it is now, many of us would not seriously consider such linking--the page is simply not presentable, so to speak.

2. Make the feed optional, and for those who choose to have it, give them the ability to turn off specific items they don't care for (e.g. pings, connections, status updates). Those use up all the space and make our friends' content expire faster than we could get to it. But providing a link to the old "Articles/Images for me" pages would make a lot of people happy, and it shouldn't be hard--the pages are still there (and I hope they will continue to be there), but most people don't know how to find them.

3. Thumbnails for images would be nice.

1. Give us a better editor with spell checker.

2. Give us control over our profile page and what is seen by everyone (including google) and what we choose to keep private (among friends or at least people who have joined Gather.)

3. Reward quality content.

I'm going straight for Gather speak:
1. Who is your target audience? If not us, then who?

2. Are they showing up?

3. Are our Google indexed articles leading them here? What are they seeing? Black icons here and there, unhappy articles. How attractive.

4. P.S. I saw the article about a Presidential debate which Tom Gerace probably knows about. 199 views, 2 or so comments. Sad.

Aniko, Chuck, Tom, whoever - Question: If we turn off the feed here, does it turn it off only on our page or on the Web as well?

Me? What am I doing in such illustrious company? :-)

I meant not having a "feed" on our profile page, either for ourselves or for anyone else to see--if we choose not to have it.

Has anyone, by the way, ever resolved the lack of prize for Kate C.'s kid who wrote up a fine Spiderwyck review, then waited patiently for a promised prize that never came. That should be corrected immediately if it hasn't been already.

I would like to have my articles for me and comments for me lists back. I am still able to navigate, but only because I set up my own system, which is not as complete or convenient as the old My Page set-up was.

If you keep the feeds, I would like to be able to opt in and out of multiple features, and have my setting stay.

And (thanks Synchronicity), I'll always hold on to my original wish: Reward quality content.

I have to be honest...I am not hating it....as a matter of fact, I am finding it works for me...

Normally, I'm a "take it as you get it" kind of person... I don't really care WHAT kind of "format" you're using, HOW or WHY you're using it... I simply know that, before the (ahem) "upgrade", my articles were garnering anywhere from 15 to 25 comments a piece and, after the upgrade, those numbers have dropped by at least one to two thirds.

That's all I know. That's all I care about and it appears that the only "culprit" behind this significant drop in readership is the fact that there are so many "who pinged whom", "who made nice-nice with whom" and 3 or 4 MORE completely superfluous actions that we are all now made to view, that they are getting "lost in the shuffle".

Less comments = less rewards for me.

That's all I know.

Well, here is my comment.

I understand there are probably marketing reasons behind Hawthorne; that is fine. I think there is also probably a way that these marketing features can stay WITHOUT disrupting the users' ebb and flow.

I use my outside email notifications for the first time in 18 months, a far superior system of navigation than the feed.

Also, your search engine is nowhere near Google's status.

I typed in various names of members into the search articles box...

Mandi watch where...revealed articles about a WATCH, my article about WATCH city, some articles about another Mandi and one article ABOUT this Mandi.

I tried Rose W. Rose Williams, Rose Georgia peach and fargopeach441. On Rose Georgia Peach - I got one article dedicated to Rose...just another georgia peach.


I typed in my username, kathryneo and no articles were found.

I typed in the usernames of several other members and no articles were found.

For months, I have typed in the usernames of people I know into my browser to get to their page and to get to the most recent article.

However, now, I have to go to their feed and click articles.

Every click members make that takes them away from their primary purpose here: streamlining their time will be clicks that take away from other purposees.

For people who do know how to navigate, every time I click upon someone's feed and have to click articles...just to get to their list of articles takes away from my reading time - I will be reading fewer articles.

Multiply this a thousand times and you have a lot less traffic.

The CEO of Facebook had absolutely NO problem letting users turn off the News Feed as an option. He has said publicly if members don't like a Feature, he will change it.

The friend feed/group feed is useless. I have thousands of friends. . Most people here have hundreds if not thousands of friends.

As people have commented, the 200 item limit fills up in a few minutes or hours.

Outside email notifications are there as long as the member has not left Gather.

You have removed some valuable functionality and replaced it with inferior functionality.

Organizational psychologists counsel their clients AGAINST making changes without getting significant group input BEFORE hand.

When people are not involved in a decision making process, there is a much greater likelihood they will automatically DISLIKE the result.

Also, in order to get GOOD results, you need to have the wides possible base from your membership.

Getting feedback and advice BEFORE you make changes is a much better idea.

The spotlight feature is good.

Many of us hope you will really take to heart our comments.

Facebook responded to member feedback, so we are all hoping Gather can too.

I find the Hawthorne "upgrade" clunky and hard to maneuver. The feed of "Your People's Activity" was always available. Most did not use it. Why replace the interface we had and utilized with an interface that many members don't like.

The Feed holds only 500 items. Many here have 500+ "friends." How can they see the content they'd like to read when it's not available on the feed?

There are two things about the Hawthorne "upgrade" that I like. One is the page counts and the other is the ability to spotlight articles and photos on our gather page. It would be much more useful if the articles and photos could be older.

I've been here since September 06. I have been through many upgrades. I have never complained to Gather HQ about anything in any of those upgrades. I brought nine people here, including myself. I've bought a stack of books because of the promotions here on Gather. I've been a good user of Gather. I'm not asking for much, just the choice of whether we use the feeds or "Articles for Me." Then everyone would be happy, including those who like the new interface.

Instead of the Feeds being the default option when you go to your page and others, have the top row of Articles, Images, Videos, Comments, People and Groups be the default so that there is less information being blasted. It's hard to come to this site and relax and read when pings and random stuff keeps hitting you. If I could have exactly what I want, I would have the old interface set-up with the new features.

I have requested these concerns be addressed in several formats and it has not been addressed as of yet.

I think you need to return Gather to its previous form. You made too many changes at a time and you did not improve the site. It is more difficult to navigate, it does not meet my needs. Get rid of the feed that tells me what everyone else is doing and make it so everyone does not see what I am doing. I feel my privacy has been invaded and it does not make me feel safe.

I hope Gather will take the time to listen to the community and understand their concerns in a manner that is professional and of the caliber I have come to expect from the Gather Staff.

You did not address the safety concerns many of us listed. You did not address the issues of too much information on a page and how we do not feel we should have to segregate our friends. Nor did Gather address the concern of stalkers. Please let the community of Gather know how you plan to resolve the issues we have asked to be addressed. GREMS 'gremlin', Apr 15, 2008, 8:41pm EDT


Talk to Tom: Improving the New Gather (Redux) by Tom Gerace published: Apr 15, 2008 rating: 9.9 comments: 274

I f you do not plan to restore Gather to pre-Hawthorne status then tell us. If you do not understand what we are asking then ask us. But do not patronize us or ignore us.

Feedback and suggestions?

Here you go

I would like to see a happy medium between the previous format and the new one. I like the number of views being shown, and the spell/grammar check for the comments now. I would also like to see the articles, images, comments; and friends all back on one page. The old format was arranged so you could go back much farther on articles, and it was much easier to navigate. I don't personally know much about the feeds, and am only commenting on features that I have used/ noticed so far.

Give the member an option which "skin" to have as their front page interface..Either the classic "old fashioned" way or the new "feeds" way. Or just make the feeds as customizable as possible, for example allowing the user to select what they'd like to see on theirs.

Otherwise I still like the concept of this site where our participation is rewarded. Thanks for creating a good user experience.

Another thing, it appears some people's icons became black rectangles or squares..looks like an error might need to be fixed ;)

KEO went on and on and on about how she couldn't find people when she typed their names into the search articles box:

"I typed in various names of members into the search articles box... blah blah blah blah blah.....

Kathryn--the search "doesn't work" for you because YOU don't know how to use it. Why on earth would you (or anyone, for that matter) use search articles to search for people?

If you want to find people, select "search people" from the drop down menu in the search area. All of the people you listed are easily found that way.

Sheesh.

psst ... this was already starting to happen well before the 'upgrade' ...

it is the way of the general nonsense monster that has taken over the serious writers stage ... i don't know how any 'writer' will remain in this hog pog ... i have gone & come back to find it worse, not better ... it is just a typical of social networking society that we are thrown into this mix here too.

I don't feel Tom is going to address Hawthorne so why are we even talking about the mess. I HATE THE FEEDS; thay make me feel like I am stalking people and it is just plain junk. It's simple. Tom is taking Gather some where but I don't believe the current users are in on where it is going.

Tom why have the chats if you are going to do whatever you want any way????

Tell us where Gather is going so we don't waste our time banging our heads for something that won't be forth coming. Quit wasting our time.

My two cents regarding tomorrow's "Gather as a community" discussion...

Gather has long been known as a community for writers/artists. A site for writers and artists should, in my opinion, focus on the writing and photography of its participants. The current format strays from that mission, since it doesn't focus on the articles/photos we personally post.

There are benefits to the new nearly-anything-anyone-you're-connected-to-does-on-Gather feed. For example, I received a string of comments on three articles after a person who is popular on Gather made a comment and that action appeared to all of their connections Gatherwide.

However, in the spirit of change, I think that the current software "upgrade" (while definitely a feature upgrade) was too much to roll out and require of all members. My suggestion -- in keeping with Gather's creative community following -- is to roll back to the previous version and from there allow members to select which features they want to show on their homepage. Think Squidoo. Gather could roll out new additional features whenever it wanted that way, and it wouldn't affect the overall user base experience. All new features could be added in to a user's page through an opt-in process.

I totally agree with Ms. Meacham and others about the negative or frustrating aspects of the "upgrade" and how Gather has strayed from its perceived mission by many here.

Please keep in mind that my history here has been one of STRONG support for Gather (for years), having promoted authors, written feature articles, reviewed books, led or participated in book chats, etc.

I do not feel that the site user friendly, whether for new or older members. I try to think of your "target user" now and I can't even imagine who that would be - or the purpose of Gather. Target users should be clear and those users should feel drawn to Gather. WHo do you envision as the typical or ideal Gather member now? Let us know so we can decide whether we want to be a part of that.
When I expressed my own concerns about the upgrade, that article shot to top spot as people weighed in. It got at least 222 comments! I was saddened by that, mainly because of the fact that people WERE truly so unhappy ( a part of me was hoping that I'd be proven wrong) . A few people liked the upgrade, very few, according to that article.

The fact that people felt so strongly about the issue should be important to Gather - and I am trying to remain hopeful that it is and that changes will be made that indicates community concerns do matter.

The dissension and personal attacks that this upgrade created among Gather community members is sad to see and after those die down (and hopefully, Gather will respond and members WILL be happier), I'd like to see a better Gather, one that brings in NEW members and maintains regular users here.

I would definitely like to know exactly how every part of our feed is going to be indexed on Google (comments, chat remarks, pings, articles), including keywords, from now on. Those of us who want to take advantage of promotional and networking opportunities with the new Google index could do so while others might opt out.I understand SEO and other benefits but not everyone does - or cares to. Also, even if people opt out of page feed

If comments show up on Google, let people know that. On many sites, comments DO show up on Google, ranked by popularity.