Hawthorne 1.1: Info on the Upcoming Upgrade

It's almost that time again -- time for another site upgrade. So what can you come to expect from the newest changes to the site?

1) Feed and Spotlight Modifications.
First, there are some modifications that were on the 'please do this' list. No, the 'Articles for You' links aren't coming back. On the other hand, they are building a switch into the My Feeds window that will allow you to set it so that only you can see your My Feeds window (by default, everyone will still be allowed to see your My Feeds window unless you change its setting.)

Second, the Feeds dropdown lists will now retain your 'position' - for example, if you were last looking at the Friend Feed, for articles only, it will now remember that - for the duration of your session (in short, until you log out.) This is definitely a welcome improvement.

Third, the Feeds will now hold 1,000 items instead of 500. Unfortunately, this limit is still based around 1,000 items, as opposed to, say, 200 articles, 200 comments, 200 videos, 200 images, and 200 other things, so if you're having problems seeing your friends' new articles because you have many friends who comment frequently on each others' work, this is not going to permanently solve the problem.

Fourth, you will be able to spotlight ALL content (instead of just content that is within your My Feeds), without resorting to URL-based trickery to make it happen. All you have to do is view your article, image, or video, and a 'spotlight this' link will be added alongside the traditional 'edit' and 'delete' links. In the QA environment, I noticed that this option is only available when viewing the actual article (not when viewing the 'Articles by Me' list, for example).

2) Support Team Changes.
The Gather Support Team is also attempting to consolidate their methods of handling and quickly responding to problems -- in short, they are adding a 'trouble ticket' system (the front-end of which is a form that can be accessed whether you are currently logged in or not, so that you can tell them you can't log in, for instance), and attempting to direct all future help requests to this system (rather than having to sort through emails, PMs, articles, and other contact methods.)

There are a few problems that come to mind with this approach - namely, what happens if the support form or trouble ticket system breaks down - but we'll have to wait and see how things work out after the upgrade. Ideally, the consolidation of services should mean that Gatherers will know their message was actually received and marked as something Support should look into, and Support will have a much easier time of sorting out problems by priority and category.

If all else fails, though, you can still contact Gather directly by phone...

3) Private Message Changes.
This is likely to be the change that makes or breaks the upgrade for most people. Yes, they are removing the option for BCC and CC mails. Yes, you can still send to multiple people. However, you can now only send messages to your friends using the inbox - and to send to each friend, you have to find and click on their name. If you want to send a message to a person you are not currently connected to, you have to go to their Namespace, click the Send Mail option, and fill out a CAPTCHA form in order to send them a message. This means, for instance, that you can still send a mail to one thousand people at once (if all of them are your friends) - however, you'll have to click 1,000 times to do so, and they will now have trouble reading your message because they'll be able to see all 1,000 recipients. They did suggest that they might institute friend sets in the future, but this will not be in the current upgrade, and it is unclear whether they mean you'll be able to send to entire friend sets at once, or whether you'll merely be able to view only a specific friend set when choosing who to mail to.

The ostensible reason for these changes is to make it more difficult for fly-by-night spambots to create accounts and then immediately mass-mail large groups of people. As a side effect, it also ensures that the only way to have truly private messages is to send them one at a time -- which may or may not be a significant breaking point for Gather members.

It should also be noted that this change does not affect group mail -- that is, sending out messages to everyone in a particular group will still function normally (and presumably without listing the names of every member in the group). Expect a significant rise in the number of group-based mails in the future as a direct result.

Secondly, they are also revamping the inbox -- most noticably, they are putting pictures next to the names of senders (as well as allowing you to view their status by mousing over them.) It's unclear what impact this will have on performance, but I suspect that Gatherers looking to compare Gather to Myspace or Facebook will have a field day with this portion of the upgrade.

Finally, you can now report messages directly to Gather as spam by clicking a 'report as spam' link; this brings you to the Support Form, which will be pre-filled out with the basics of a 'this user is spamming me' report. This feature is primarily intended to provide early warning to Support when dealing with spambots, but I suspect it will take precisely two hours before people start using it to flag anyone who sends them a message they don't want. In short, I strongly suspect these changes will bring more hostility to Gather, even though they will also prove semi-effective at tricking the current group of spambots.

4) Search Modifications.
Another change involves being able to look for members through the search function. Searching 'all articles' for "Austin Cushing" (in quotes) will show all articles that mention Austin Cushing, as well as all articles written by Austin Cushing, for example. In feeds, adding Austin Cushing to the topic list (without quotes) will also show all articles relating to or written by Austin Cushing. This is somewhat useful as a workaround for having lost the ability to subscribe to members' content, although it's decidedly ungainly.

5) Sharing and Invite Modifications.
The last major change involves Gather's ability to work with other websites, mail clients, and such, both to make it easier to invite your friends from other websites to Gather, and to promote your Gather-posted content on other websites. In theory, this is useful for making an even larger network of social connections. In practice... well, I suspect this will be another sore point for Gatherers.

Conclusions.
Honestly, although I understand the reason for some of the modifications, I'm not particularly satisfied with this upgrade. Many of them will make maintaining the site easier, I'm sure, but very few of them add any actual functionality to the site.  The ability to spotlight content is important, but knowing that now every mass mail you receive saying 'come look at my points article!' will have several hundred or several thousand people's names on it is likely to get old very fast. Building groups specifically to bypass this problem and use group mail is a workaround, not a functional solution. The ability to share your content over a wider range is nice, as is the ability to invite people from other places, but not particularly helpful unless you already have a much wider social network than Gather encompasses. Being able to search or feed by name is  Consolidating support services is likely to be more effective at coordinating responses to problems, but in the end this is mostly better for the staff, not the users.

I'll see you all on the other side of the upgrade, Gatherers -- good luck!