Gather's Member Support team is happy to assist you with whatever questions or concerns you might have about your Gather experience. We also encourage all participating members to post their own answers, suggestions, as well as any tips and tricks they have learned, along the way.Simply post your question, response or suggestion to this article page to get the conversation started! To learn more about Gather's new Help Desk click here .
If you have an urgent question or need to discuss your concerns privately with Gather's support staff, you can now reach us by submitting your question via our new web form. We always strive to respond to all member inquiries as quickly as we can.
Feel free to also drop us a line right here on Gather!
Sincerely,
MaryAnne Flynn
Carolyn Richards
Chuck McGuire
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, answers provided will reflect the opinions of Gather members, and may not be that of Gather, Inc. or its business partners
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Comments: 39
" How do you invite friends from other social networks?"
Now you can easily invite friends from other social networks by clicking on the Invite tab and then clicking on the Social Networks button.
You will then need to enter your login info for that particular social network and then click the Get Contacts button.
This will bring up your list of friends on that particular social network so you can choose which friends to invite to Gather.
This feature will import up to 250 contacts.
I hope the information provided above is helpful to you, Ellen. If you have any further questions please post them as comments to this article.
"where is this contact support form found other than you linking to it here in your article?"
An easy way to find the help form is to click the Help link at the very top of any Gather page. This will take you to our FAQ's page, you will find the link to this form right underneath the list of help topics on the left-hand side of the page. Look for where it says "Need more help?".
For additional info on Gather's new support process please check out the preview article that MaryAnne Flynn published last evening.
A "CAPTCHA" is a tool used on the internet to validate that you are human, and not an automated script, program or 'robot'. This will typically limit spam accounts from being created, or spam content or comments from being posted in an online environment.
With a CAPTCHA you need to enter characters or symbols displayed somewhere on the page. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen, like this:
If you have any other questions about this, please let me know!
May I clarify something? Everyone said mass emailing is gone, but one can still send out a mass email to all one's friends, right? And now that the BCC feature is gone, we have to endure seeing the entire list of friends each time that happens?
If that's true, that's pretty stupid. I cannot name one single place - either an email account or other social networking site - where I cannot use the BCC feature. Why would you do away with that?
"GATHER MAIL IS NOT WORKING PROPERLY. I TYPED IT CORRECTLY THREE TIMES. THE FIRST TWO TIMES, IT SAID IT WAS WRONG. IT WAS NOT WRONG."
"Also, this new SEARCH BY NAME is not working. When I searched "Kathryn Esplin-Oleski", the results were Zero."
Kathryn - thanks for reporting these issues. We are looking into them for you, this morning and hope to have updates to share with you soon.
ONE: It was the word verification process that is not working properly.
TWO: Gather mail itself - it is unusable by ANYONE with a lot of connections. Only members with about 200 or fewer connextions will actually have the time to do these required multiple clicks.
And even with the multiple clicks, it is taking up to 3 or 5 clicks per secreen to get to the next screen within gather write mail.
One screen DOES NOT equal ONE letter of the alphabet with the number of connections that I have. One screen seems to hold about 50 or 100 names. Not sure. But I have 7,000 connections.
Gather mail is simply UNUSABLE as a Write feature for any member with 500 to 1000 connections or those of us who have more than that.
I have clicked about 20 times and still am not even up to K.
PLEASE ALLOW US TO HAVE ALL OUR CONNECTIONS IN THE GATHER WRITE MAIL SCREEN AT ONE TIME.
THREE: I WENT TO SEARCH ARTICLES. I have NO INTENTION OF EVER USING FEED ME. THE SEARCH ARTICLES SHOULD WORK THE SAME.
I don't find any place within FEED ME to search for articles except the main search articles bar.
Yesterday, the example given in the web conf was of a Gather staffer. And as someone was speaking, they said, 'You will see only articles published by _________. "
THEN, articles by ME showed up. That is because I mention that person in my Wednesday articles.
What shows up are articles BY the person or mentioned about that person in a link in an article written by another.
Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
but not
"Kathryn Esplin-Oleski"
But when I type in
Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
I get exactly the same results as I did before the upgrade. Articles by or about me.
Results for Sue* - by or about Sue* came up.
I then put in " " as instructed yesterday in the web conf.
O results came back for "sue*" or "Sue*"
The search feature seems to have an issue with ' ' marks at times but not at other times.
Is there an automatic shut out of this feature if the user incorrectly types (or the system perceives the user as incorrectly typing) 3 times?
I have Avast anti-virus.
Your problem is not due to your anti-virus software. The email notification message you are receiving has not yet been updated to reflect the new URLs (links) required to connect you with mail messages in your 'new' Gather inbox. This must be corrected by Gather.
Are you referring to "Spotlighting" on your profile page, or "Featuring" articles on your groupspace?
Why on earth did this happen?
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
Right about the time you posted this comment, we fixed the problem (mentioned above by Kevin and Thomas) with links in "You have received a message..." notifications. Before, clicking on that link would not bring you to the message, but would show you an error screen. This is now fixed. Would you please check and see if you are able to view your private messages okay now?
Someone from Gather staff will comment on your BCC concern either later this evening or tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure that I am clear on the details of why this was removed and the surrounding context, before responding. Thanks for your patience!
Hey, other than that I have not had problems with email, searches and so forth. But, if I so, be certain that I shall let you know.
Thank you ever so much!
cheers,gayle
The information below should be of help....
If your earnings page won't display, or another page comes up instead, click the "sign out" link in the upper right corner of the page, and then sign in again. This might clear up the problem for you.
You may also attempt to enter the web address directly into your browser's address bar. The web address for the earnings page is https://earnings.gather.com
If you are still unable to access your earnings and redemption pages, please contact Gather Member Support HERE and inform them of the problem on the form provided.
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for additional information.
Changes to private messaging were made with two things in mind. The first is that Gather mail is not e-mail; it's private messaging. We have found that using a BCC field enables members to SPAM more freely. We want users to communicate with each other with this messaging system and don't want them to send out alerts to long lists of people.
The hope and desire here is to encourage folks to really think about who they're sending messages to and why. Gather sincerely hopes that new refinements to the Feeds and the long standing e-mail notification system will prevent members from feeling compelled to message their entire network of friends when they publish something new on the site.
Going forward, the messages you receive in your Gather inbox will be sent intentionally to you and therefore should be specifically relevant to you.
The second benefit of this change is that it is now more difficult for accounts to be set up for the sole purpose of spamming members.
i am not alone in receiving these mass mailings and scrolling thru a long list of addressees is exactly what the BCC avoided....
once content became difficult to locate, i relied on head's up mail from connections...i never have rec'd the high numbers of comments from others on most of my content,but even i noticed a substantial decrease,so prior to this last upgrade, i did send out head's up mail now n' then to those who let me know they are cool with it.....
i recently posted an article for my connections telling them i will no longer send out,nor accept head's up mail ......i will only respond "inkind" by clicking names of those who visit my content....a decrease of comments is site-wide,so i am not the only one noticing as well as many members have moved on,or rarely visit since the last 2 or 3 upgrades.....
could you address mass mailings from correspondents and others who are told to promote their articles and thus use mass mailings....thanks
cheers,gayle
I always thought using BCC was good email manners and use it whenever I pass something along to more than one person. Does that make me a spammer? I think not!
I will send a mass email to maybe 20 or less close connections to let them know I'll be gone or maybe I've published something special to me. I don't do it often at all. Why am I being punished along with the REAL spammers?
I've been drifting away from Gather ever since Hawthorne. I have a feeling one day I'll just drift too far and not find my way back.
I didn't use BCC very much because I don't email notification about my content but others did. I don't mind getting an email now and again but I was hoping for that scrolling thing to go away. Truth is, I am getting more emails now than before and I have to scroll down each and every one of them. Oh well, I will get used to it I guess.
Other than this minor complaint so far, I can use everything and all is going well. Thanks for the work you do, and I mean all of gather support, etc., even if it doesn't always work the way we want it to.