Community Platform Updates, discussion

[#1]

Hi all,

Many of you have seen and commented on Stan's announcement here. But I've also noticed that many of our most active Community members have posted their questions, thoughts and feedback about some of the recent Community platform updates here. I'm going to merge them here so that we can keep track of your comments about this topic, address your questions and share some of the smaller improvements that we're making. 

Thanks!

[#2]

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Martina P wrote:

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don't see how the coffee break kudos should cost more, though, since posts in that area might not be that serious, or even intended to be humorous. Hmmm...... 

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That's obvious: kudos on Freelancer's forum confirm that we excel in solving operational problems of other fellow freelancers. Kudos here evidently confirm that we are pure geniuses, ready to save the world and populate it with our bespoke, genuine thoughts 😉 😉 😉 Hence much higher price for kudos here 🙂

[#3]

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Piotr O wrote:

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Martina P wrote:

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don't see how the coffee break kudos should cost more, though, since posts in that area might not be that serious, or even intended to be humorous. Hmmm...... 

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That's obvious: kudos on Freelancer's forum confirm that we excel in solving operational problems of other fellow freelancers. Kudos here evidently confirm that we are pure geniuses, ready to save the world and populate it with our bespoke, genuine thoughts 😉 😉 😉 Hence much higher price for kudos here 🙂

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You are making a ton of sense! They must be the most expensive kudos!

[#4]

[#5]

Oh, oh, yes, I say that too! I want to go there and post and say first, like a desperate youtube commenter! Can I pretty please?

[#6]

Hi Phyllis and Martina,

You should see a new post there now and be able to comment on it. As we announce new features and updates in the future, you'll see even more in that section.
As Stan mentioned earlier here, moving forward we'll be creating a separate forum post to allow for comments, feedback and questions about new announcements. The announcement itself will be closed for commenting, with an exception of updates posted by Upwork team members. That way, we'll make sure official updates aren't lost among other comments and are easily discoverable. We will still be addressing questions and collecting input from the Community in the Feedback section.

[#7]

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Valeria K wrote:

Hi Phyllis and Martina,

You should see a new post there now and be able to comment on it. As we announce new features and updates in the future, you'll see even more in that section.
As Stan mentioned earlier here, moving forward we'll be creating a separate forum post to allow for comments, feedback and questions about new announcements. The announcement itself will be closed for commenting, with an exception of updates posted by Upwork team members. That way, we'll make sure official updates aren't lost among other comments and are easily discoverable. We will still be addressing questions and collecting input from the Community in the Feedback section.

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Ehh ... I think this is all getting a bit complicated, isn't it?

[#8]

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Maria T wrote:

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Valeria K wrote:

Hi Phyllis and Martina,

You should see a new post there now and be able to comment on it. As we announce new features and updates in the future, you'll see even more in that section.
As Stan mentioned earlier here, moving forward we'll be creating a separate forum post to allow for comments, feedback and questions about new announcements. The announcement itself will be closed for commenting, with an exception of updates posted by Upwork team members. That way, we'll make sure official updates aren't lost among other comments and are easily discoverable. We will still be addressing questions and collecting input from the Community in the Feedback section.

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Ehh ... I think this is all getting a bit complicated, isn't it?

___________________________

The one which is not allowed comments is to show a little Upwork muscle. New ideas and roll outs are cut in stone (sometimes porous like the wildly successful connects scheme). 

The one which is allowed comments is so that all the staff on Upwork can chuck us peanuts and popcorn  while they enjoy our rants and raves.  

Do you Upwork guys actually get paid for this stuff?  Just askin' ... 

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[#9]

Thanks for sharing your feedback, Maria. I respectfully disagree. I believe it's been very difficult for us to highlight most relevant updates and responses to most frequent questions in the comment section under announcements. This results in Community members missing important information and having to ask same questions over and over again. Separating the announcement and official updates from the comment section is something we have actually done in the past and what many similar Communities successfully do as well. 

[#10]

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Valeria K wrote:

Thanks for sharing your feedback, Maria. I respectfully disagree. I believe it's been very difficult for us to highlight most relevant updates and responses to most frequent questions in the comment section under announcements. This results in Community members missing important information and having to ask same questions over and over again. Separating the announcement and official updates from the comment section is something we have actually done in the past and what many similar Communities successfully do as well. 

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I respectfully disagree with your respectful response 
Just kidding.
Is that seems to me that dispersing things makes it more difficult to follow them.
But, hey, I don't take your reason. I don't know much about other forums as this is almost the only one I follow.

[#11]

I understand the rationale for separating the announcement from feedback about the announcement. Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall something about it but earlier, the "Feedback" page completely mystified me. What confused me is the grayed-out New Topic button. IMO there should be an explanatory post pinned to the top of the page. 

[#12]

Phyllis, I understand. That section of the Community went live less than an hour before first thread was opened there and you caught it just in time

One of the things we're working on though is making it clear what each section of the Community is for. So hopefully in the future we don't have confusing situations like this. 

Thanks!

[#13]

I found this thread (or non-thread) by using the search function. But when I clicked on it a message came up saying: "You do not have sufficient privileges for this resource or its parent to perform this action".

Who is the parent, by the way?

[#14]

Hi Robert,

Just to clarify, did you get that error when trying to view this thread? Or you're referring to some other thread? If you still have a link to the page where you got the error, could you please share it with me? We'll check. 

[#15]

Hi Valeria. I put "feedback" into the Community Discussions searchbox and and a link to a thread on feedback with zero posts came up. When I clicked on it I got this.

Access Denied - Upwork Community

[#16]

Thanks for the link, Robert. It should be fixed going forward and pages that aren't accessible shouldn't be indexed in search. (It may take up to 48 hours for cache to catch up)

[#17]

Is it just me, or does clicking into a forum thread no longer take you to the first unread post?

[#18]

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Wes C wrote:

Is it just me, or does clicking into a forum thread no longer take you to the first unread post?

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Wes,

I don't believe anything was changed in that regard. That's actually a setting each Community member controls in My Settings> Preferences> Linear Layout. There is a checkbox for "Jump to first unread post in a topic."

[#19]

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Valeria K wrote:

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Wes C wrote:

Is it just me, or does clicking into a forum thread no longer take you to the first unread post?

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Wes,

I don't believe anything was changed in that regard. That's actually a setting each Community member controls in My Settings> Preferences> Linear Layout. There is a checkbox for "Jump to first unread post in a topic."

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Thanks, Valeria. I did verify that's still checked, and since I posted that it seems to be working sporadically. I'll update if I can figure out any pattern. 

[#20]

We'll likely move this into it's own topic or article in time, but as some members may enjoy learning about the enhancements we're making in Community, we'll keep this updated as we roll out changes. We love the feedback and suggestions, so please keep it coming.

11/5/2021 Updates

• :newspaper: Text editor (TinyMCE) has been updated to the latest version in our Community Platform.  You'll see some slight variations in the layout, but functionally it should work the same (better actually). It's a more modern editor, that supports what many have come to expect such as pasting images directly into a post, the ability to more easily resize content/images, and some updated Emojis 😎
• :left_right_arrow: Search has been added to the top of all sections in Community.
• :shortcake: We've unhid the  "Private Stats" component on your Community profile. This is only visible to the individual user logged in. It's a quick summary of your Community activity.
• :bird: Minor styling fixes throughout Community

[#21]

Stan wrote (copied as there is no quote available)

We'll likely move this into it's own topic or article in time, but as some members may enjoy learning about the enhancements we're making in Community, we'll keep this updated as we roll out changes. We love the feedback and suggestions, so please keep it coming.

11/5/2021 Updates

•  Text editor (TinyMCE) has been updated to the latest version in our Community Platform.  You'll see some slight variations in the layout, but functionally it should work the same (better actually). It's a more modern editor, that supports what many have come to expect such as pasting images directly into a post, the ability to more easily resize content/images, and some updated Emojis 
•  Search has been added to the top of all sections in Community.
•  We've unhid the  "Private Stats" component on your Community profile. This is only visible to the individual user logged in. It's a quick summary of your Community activity.
•  Minor styling fixes throughout Community

____________________________

I cannot really see the point in deliberately breaking something that worked perfectly well. As to the  profiles. I object. I really object. 

[#22]

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Nichola L wrote:

Stan wrote (copied as there is no quote available)

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The quote option is now hidden on the "..." menu, which is unfortunate since it's really the most important option in the forum editor.

[#23]

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Nichola L wrote:

I cannot really see the point in deliberately breaking something that worked perfectly well. As to the  profiles. I object. I really object. 

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Thanks for your feedback, Nichola. However, it wasn't working perfectly well. A lot of functionality has been missing or outdated. Myself and our team of moderators are posting in this Community every day just like many of you. Many of these improvements are going to make lives of everybody who's posting in these forums easier. An ability to drag an drop an image alone is worth a lot since we often need to share screenshots with each other when discussing various features. 

Also, could you please elaborate why you object to being able to see more information about your activity on your Community profile? That information is private and is only visible to you. 

[#24]

I know I must be particularly dense, but I still haven't the faintest idea how the forum "Feedback" section works.  So please could someone point me in the right direction. At the moment it just seems to be a complete waste of time.  

For example in "Discussions" Stan writes a completely incomprehensible post entitled "Moderator Contact".  

Please Upwork could you stop making things so complicated and so time-wasting.  But perhaps I am the only one who finds this so frustrating? 

ETA: And another thing: It used to be when you posted something on the forums, you were able to immediately return to the post once you had submitted it. This is no longer the case - so more clicks and time wasting. 

[#25]

You're not dense. Upwork has made everything difficult for Freelancers, by policy. In particular, it imposes out-of-date "security" delays on payment, and seems to have shucked off the Freelancer UX development to 'bots.

[#26]

Hi Nichola,

I understand we're changing some areas of the Community and it may be confusing that the Feedback area doesn't have much content yet. However, as I mentioned in my response here, moving forward the Feedback section will house threads where the Community members can ask questions and share feedback about new features and updates we announce here.

That way those discussions and feedback will be in the same place and easy to track for Community members and for our Product team. At the same time, when we need to provide a follow up to an announcement, we'll post it right below it so it's clearly visible and doesn't get lost among other comments (just like Mike did here.)

The two threads we currently have there about most recent announcements have been closely monitored by me and our Product team. Some improvements are already being made based on feedback shared there by users. So I'd disagree that it's a waste of time. 

You shouldn't be seeing the post by Stan you were referring to. It was a test post. If you still do, please let me know.

For the latter question about returning automatically to the post, that I believe you're referring to, you should still be able to accomplish this - See the "Show confirmation pages for posts" checkbox in your settings.