Gather's New Features – Post Your Feedback and Suggestions Here

How do you invite friends from other social networks?

I also want to know the above, and also how it is easier to contact Member support. Just got up tho, and haven't really navigated the site too much yet. Thanks for the constant work you do. Ellen B

There's a reason some people send to all their friends, because they have a message they want them all to see. Some view it as spam, and others welcome them. I was one that welcomed them. Now I see to send to all my friends or even a small portion (2 or 3)of them it takes twice as long. I click and it sits there and thinks about adding them to the list before it actually does.

On another note, where is this contact support form found other than you linking to it here in your article?

Carolyn, the GATHER MAIL IS NOT WORKING PROPERLY.

I have a ton of connections. This scroll screen by screen by screen is ridiculous. I also have to click multiple times to the screen to move.

I have to click up to 3 times per screen. Even at one click per screen, I have a TON of connections. 7,000 to be exact.

I AM USING OUTSIDE EMAIL FOR ALL SENDING.

Also, I EMAILED SUPPORT LAST NIGHT AND DID NOT GET ANY TICKET NUMBERS.

Also, the system of having to use the anti-spam, robot-detcting word verification system is horrible.

I TYPED IT CORRECTLY THREE TIMES. THE FIRST TWO TIMES, IT SAID IT WAS WRONG. IT WAS NOT WRONG.

YOU NEED TO FIX THIS.

There are about 480,000 mebers who have registered with Gather since the begining. Since hundreds of people are commenting and publishing every day and sending email to people, the mail system needs to work for people.

I understand that there needs to be something in place to detect robots and to prevent actual spam, but I have been bothered by Nigerian scam letters or other such spam, only a handful of times.

Isn't it better to address the real mail needs of the 480,000 members?

I CANNOT SEND MAIL AT ALL.

Please, Gather needs to reinstate sending email by username and to have ALL our contacts listed on one screen.

I have TOO MUCH TO DO to waste my time on more useless clicks. I just WILL NOT DO IT.

I am off for a few days after today.

I attended one of web conferences yesterday.

Gather just does not have OUR NEEDS IN MIND because Gather is operating in a vaccum.

Early on, Jim had emailed me (two years ago) to come in to Beta test some new features. As I was working, I could not make it.

Reinstating this would be a wonderful way to actually test what you are doing.

NONE of the Gather staffers actually REALLY uses Gather the way members do - minute in, minute out, day in, day out.

If something seems to be a minor hindrance to a Gather staffer, believe me, it will be a MAJOR ONE FOR USES.

Also, several people have figured out already they can mass email by clicking one name at a time. That won't stop.

EVEN THOUGH I WAS AT THE WEB CONFERENCE YESTERDAY, SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TELL US EXACTLY WHAT THESE FEATURES ARE, CAROLYN.

The ability to turn off feeds is great. The mail is not. I don't care about other social networking sites, so that doesn't concern me.

Spotlighting older content is great.

APART FROM CLICKING ON YOUR LINK, CAROLYN - HOW DO PEOPLE FIND THE MEMBER SUPPORT FORM?

Also, this new SEARCH BY NAME is not working.

When I searched"Kathryn Esplin-Oleski" as instructed yesterday in the web conference, the results were Zero.

When I searched Kathryn Esplin-Oleski I got the results I had been getting - anything written by me about me or commented by me. Better than the supposedly new way.

I love how my new email looks. I like that I can see icons since I have so many friends with the same first name - ha ha.

I didn't see this article and started to say the above at Keven's HelpCenter TM article (it's nice to have something nice to say for a change) but then I was BUMPED all the way off I.E. There's a few people I can't visit now at Gather because to try bumps me all the way off I.E. every time. None of my other forum places on the web have this oddball glitch. Only Gather. Hmpft !!!!!

Hi Sandy, Ellen, Ashley and Kathryn. Thanks for stopping by! Gather's Member Support team will be on-hand to answer everyone's how-to questions on today's Daily Help article. I will be addressing each of your questions there.

Thanks!

Some really good changes in this upgrade.

Congrats to the Team !!

I have never sent an e-mail to more than maybe 5-6 people at once so changing that is fine with me.

The first thing I did last night was turn off my feed to the public. I kept trying to sign out so I could check what the page looked like to an "outsider" but the page just kept showing my view as if I had never signed out. Very strange.

Thanks Gather Team!!
Looking Good ; )

Carolyn: CAN YOU POST A LINK TO THE HELP ARTICLE? IT IS NOT IN THE TOP MOST VIEWED. AND I DON"T KNOW HOW TO FIND IT.

Page views, comments, gather mail WAY DOWN. That is not good for advertisers or members.

Hi Kathryn. I provided a link in my original comment but for some reason it didn't encode as I intended - sorry about that.

Let's give this another try:

Gather's Daily Help Article

Thank you.

the email verification word thing SUCKS.... had to click for 4 new words to get one I could make sense of

email verification word sucks and it also doesn't indicate that you message was sent.

oh...and still need my comment count indicator back, btw ...feed info is all BLUDDY USELESS WITHOUT IT

While I'm sure there will be glitches yet to be found, I'd just like to say that I'm pleased some of our concerns have been addressed. While I never expected to get our old, beloved Gather back, I also never expected anyone to actually do anything about some of the issues we were so disturbed about. Thanks to all of you for at least trying.

I'm getting out the pom-poms for this: "When you're viewing a message you think is spam, you can now click the "report as spam" link. " Yay!

Cheers for the new look of the gather mail inbox, too. This is so much cleaner and easier to quickly sort and find what I need/want.

Looks good so far - I haven't been on long yet since the changes, but looks great! Thanks for listening to our concerns.

am I correct that in order to get to an article to spotlight it I have to still go through the feed thing...I can't do it from the article itself?

Way to force more page views.... and NOT allow me to spotlight stuff when I first write it... I have to sit here and wait 20 minutes until it shows up in my own darn feed?

Surely not...I am missing something, right?

I haven't gotten a single bulk Gather email today. I'm thrilled. Thank you!

Flit,

You can now spotlight all content while viewing it. The option will typically appear to the right of the 'delete' and 'edit' options on the content display page for the article (under the title), or image and video (under "Image by" or "Video by").

I looked there....will go look again ....and BELIEVE this time... thanks Kevin

Flit asked: "am I correct that in order to get to an article to spotlight it I have to still go through the feed thing...I can't do it from the article itself?"

You are not correct. Find the article you want to spotlight, open it up, and under the title you'll have the options to "edit", "delete" or "spotlight this".

got it...thanks.

While I haven't used many of the features you've upgraded, I'm thrilled I can get older articles and photographs to be spotlighted ( spot lit?). Just yesterday I kept trying to spotlight an older photo and had no luck. Thanks!

I haven't read all the comments here yet, but I just wanted to say THANK YOU for adding the sticky feature when looking at the feed on our page. I always want to see the articles (not into videos) and it was annoying to have to keep clicking this over and over.

Why is it so hard to explain new updates in a short-clear manner ?

Example : To spotlight an older article, click on "my articles" on your profile page, open the article you wish to spotlight and then click on "spotlight this"

This is not how this ( or any other new feature) was explained . It took a combination of the original article, this article, and member comments attached to this article to make it clear.

We are supposed to be living in the information age. Why are we losing the ability to inform ? All virtual and no face-to-face is the problem, if you ask me.

1 + 1 = 2, NOT 11

What's the reasoning behind getting rid of BCC? I cannot believe that. I hate seeing the email addresses of hundreds of people. I don't want or need to know who everyone sent messages to. Grrr.

My feedback (you asked for it!):

--Although I didn't really care one way or the other, I appreciate the ability to turn off My Feed.

--I am thrilled that we can spotlight older content. This is helpful for those of us who do not publish often.

--While I still dislike using the feed (I just can't stand it visually--it makes me want to leave after looking at it for more than a few minutes), I appreciate that it has been expanded. It would be even better if in the future we could choose what activities take up our precious feed allotment.

--While I was rarely a victim of it (I guess I chose my connections wisely), I appreciate the changes made to private messaging. I'm sure there will still be some who make the now extraordinary effort to spam their 7000 dearest friends, but it should cut down on a lot of it. Now, instead of reading article after article complaining about mass emails, we can read articles about not being able to mass email! I guess this will change future Gather contests, too. Contestants will have a harder time spamming everyone to go read or listen to their stuff.

--I have had no problems sending Gathermail AT ALL.

--The FeedMe change is great and seems to work well--now I can search for member content by typing their username in the window. It's a semi-substitute for subscriptions except it doesn't include comments. That's a shame.

--If the Most Read articles list ever goes back to something of use (that means the ancient articles like "Win An Original Dress from Dancing With The Stars!", "Are You At Risk Of Choosing The Wrong Pergola Plans?", "United States Redneck Special Forces" , "Monica's Simple Ripple Crochet Baby Blanket", and "Get 400 Thousand Free Tokens From Pogo!" disappear from it forever), I'll be a happy camper.

--I am off for a few days after tomorrow.

Looks great so far!

Just curious, is there a way that we can have our user name show up on our profile and on our comments?

hi, just letting you know that when i receive notice in my regular email inbox that i have received mail,or a comment notice, i click on "here" and it takes me to Gather page that says "article unavailable" and then at top right it shows "sign in".....i click that and it shows me i am already signed in (i leave myself signed in since don't share puter)...then, i navigate to my Gather inbox to read msg which Gather sent notice about!.....lot of steps and glitches i suppose.....i used to click on "here" within the Gather notice which navigated me to Gather msg. rec'd in my inbox....i didn't have to scan thru mail to find it

of course i know i can just turn off all notices,but i do like to know when someone comments,or sends me personal mail....is tech support working on this glitch?

Thus far i like the "spotlight this" for older content...

i don't like when i reply to mail that i can't add to,or change the subject title,nor can i send to myself so that i have a copy to refer to incase person never rec'd,or for whatever reason.....i don't do this with all,but like having option....

will peek out other changes later today.....Thanks!

cheers,gayle

I just tried to publish an article, when I clicked the "publish" button all I got was a blank page that said "done".

I'm very happy with the gathermail change.

I like feed view persistence although I'm disappointed that it took a point release to get a feature that should have been there from the initial release of Hawthorne.

I'm cool. :)

Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~

no complaints or concerns so far

I get that blank page every time I try to add an image to an article - and yes, I know sometimes the BACK button works to recover the hour + work that just disappeared into the ether, but no, in my case, it did NOT work and I was NOT amused.

I will take steps to ensure I back up whatever I'm working on before Gather has the option to eat it in future - but wouldn't it be lovely if we could trust the tools Gather provides us with to actually work? *sigh*

I just wanted to thank you for the new changes, so far I like what I see.

Kevin thank you for helping me with the spotlight thing, I had been searching for this answer. I will go give it a try right now.

Is there any place where it's easy to find articles such as this? Thankfully Kevin was able to provide me with a link to it. I saw the request for feedback on the home page briefly, but then when I was ready to provide some comments it was gone and I had no way to find it.

Despite the increase to 1000 items, I'm still not getting very many articles to read. Perhaps the feed is still decreased by the multitude of activities I have no interest in whatsoever - pings, friends, comments, etc. I'm only interested in articles and some images. I used to be able to go back and read a few days worth of articles, but now I have two or three pages at most and can't go back more than 24 hours. Last night an article was posted at 10 p.m. that I wanted to read, but by this morning it was gone and I had only three articles available. It appeared as if the feed was reset and cleared out because I can't imagine there were 997 non-article activities occuring while I slept last night. Since there is less content from me to read from my friends, I spend less and less time on gather. Sure, I could eliminate half of my friends so I could read more articles, but then that goes totally against the supposed mission of this being a social networking site, doesn't it?

Publishing is now more difficult. I cannot check the "allow ratings" option. So much for points. Big savings for Gather.

With the removal of the BCC option, mail is a pain. Every time I click on a name, I get an error message, saying that this process is making Internet Explorer unstable. Sometimes the page disappears, sometimes it mails 2 copies. TWICE today, I've received six copies of two mails.

NOTE: Why do you think it is simpler for each sender to click names hundreds of times when the receivers can click DELETE once. DUH.

OH YES, THE NEW IMPROVEMENTS ARE JUST SWELL....for Gather. By not allowing us to click on ratings or to send group emails, our work will not be viewed as much and Gather won't have to redeem so many points. Will it be even better for you when we all get disgusted and quit?
I am absolutely disgusted with Gather.