We definetely need an edit button on the posts. It saves to have to post again just to correct some small mistake in the first post

And it would be nice to have the possibility to define a maximum number of participants for an activity - the "FULL" sign should appear automatically if this number is attained.

When you click on Glocals link in the email notification, first time if session is not there you just go to the Glocals Home instead of activity from the link.

When you click on the link second time, you are in the right place.

Hi Oded,

We lost a line of code along the way. When you look at the "pop up" details of the person, the DATE is missing. i.e. Last on-line Feb XX, 2010. We need the actual date.

The date does show up in the full page details of the person.

One of the things that would make me happy would be a simple system to insert a website link. The current system is not at all logical.

Good luck.

well... i´d like to comment also on the aestetics a bit: everything looks so bold, and framed a dozen times. and what is that brown colour about? i know you took the colours from the logo but you dont have to do that necessarily to make it look reasonable... colour coding doesnt mean to be restricted. but finding a balanced harmony. now many aereas are tone in tone, with little contrast.

Oded & Nir, can i make design suggestions?  

cheers!

Thanks alot for all the suggestions folks and please keep them coming. 

We'll let the thread ride for a few days, and will then 'sum up' the feedback and reply.

Sevket - any design suggestions you send usw ill be highly appreciated.

Thanks again

Oded

As you see, I have been waiting for this. ;)  In no specific order:

1) Mobile site or, even better, iPhone App! :)

2) There's only a member search visible now, it would be great if that could develop into a global search...I mean search Forums, Events etc.

3) Integrated google maps for open events and/or travel

4) Copy-paste is currently a pain!  It would help if one could paste directly into the text area instead of a separate pop-up.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Arun

Im thinkin..will let u know soon.

I love the idea of the city guides, but it might be useful to have some way for people to request certain types of things to be added. For example, I collect old vinyl records and I'd be interested in seeing a guide on there to places to buy them in Geneva ... I'm sure others might have similar specialist requests?

How about a feature: "open on Sundays".  This would be really great. Believe it or not there are even spas--in hotels, open on Sundays. Thanks.

I would like a 'print review' and the possiblility to search for posts from certain members and certain subjects.

in general, please limit to the minimum the number of clicks necessary to make a specific action. as someone mentionned, unless pop-ups are REALLY necessary, it's annoying to have them.

I've have had a specific problem for a week now. everytime I click once on the "back" button of my browser, I'm sent back to the page before the last one I was viewing, instead of the lattest one. tell me what is wrong, please.note I have always used Google Chrome with the new site, but never had this problem. and it happens only when I'm on Glocals.

Thank yu for this thread!

Hi Oded,

It would be useful if we got replies to our request to add an offer. Is this reserved for big sponsors? Only replies we get seem to be computer generated or simple standard mass mailing. Re Sevkets offer; I know him and he is a really good graphics guy - just in case you might appreciate an unbiased opinion.

Allan

Now that is a great idea. Finding good restaurants open on a Sunday evening is one maybe.

Allan

I would like to see a video section organized. Hire me and I'll come over and shoot videos of events edit them then post them on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/glocals) apparently someone already has created a channel for this purpose but know one is using it. I've been doing media production and streaming over the Internet since 1999 (http://www.videofame.com/VF_VideoClipSelect_DBz.asp) I've shot primarily Fashion, Charity and other Club events with lots of Interviews including celebrities. I feel glocals.com could easily have a weekly youtube news update with fun interviews and videos clips on a weekly basis that could propel it to a much more visible and exciting level.

Here is my Photo/Media Blog (http://www.videofame.com/PhotoBlog/PhotoBlog_MainMenu_001.asp) Where you can see some of the pictures from my recent trips to Geneva in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009

Can you please fix my radio?Sara.

Although some of my friends are online, they are not indicated at the bottom of the screen in the "friends online" field.
But if I go to the list of my friends, I can see that they ARE online.

This phenomenon happens only from time to time. I couldn't find yet a pattern when it occurs and when it doesn't.

Is this normal?

@ Allan

thanks for the credits!  we never had the chance to talk personally. will catch up with you soon.

@ Oded

yes i´d love to fine tune the look of the website together with you. already mentioned that to Nir some weeks ago. we can talk about that in the next days.

cheers

As already mentioned, re instate the member keyword search! It was so useful and now it is so limited.

I was thinking that it would be better to have something separate for tandems/language exchange thing.

I guess it is kind of specific stuff, not everyone is interested to look at it among other activities.

Simple web interface like:

Name | I speak | I search for person who speaks | Notes

Jack | English&German | French | Only native French speaker!

That would be cool!

Would be great to have a better search function in the Forums.

Something similar to PHPbb's search functions, able to search by author, keywords etc..

And to be able to see all the posts of a user just by clicking on a link on his profile.

Can we please get rid of the pop-up window with the text below? No matter what i select, it appears every single time, I log in, and it does not even work.

Thanks, henrik

Get notified when Member Activities you like are posted Maybe Later (Member activities are posted by glocals members inviting others to join them) We'll email you when Member Activities are posted in categories: Children & Family Entertainment & Culture Language Exchange Other Parties & Get Togethers Sports & Outdoors Travel In Cities: Geneva Lausanne Zurich Basel Bern

Hi Henrik

The notofications pop up should stop appearing once you select the notifications you want to receive or click on 'Not Interested'.

Have you done one of the above?

Oded

I don't often reply to forums,  but would just like to add that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the new website as it is - if people want to make changes/fixes/improvements then so be it - I never found anything wrong with the old website either, but I got used to all the changes - but now I think its great, so we move on and we grow.

Personally its a lot better than lots of other social networking websites and still the best, as far as I'm concerned.  I think you guys do an absolutely fantabulous job and I'm just grateful that you are where you are today - and I'm where I am today also, thanks to you.  Thank you. Grow and love - love and grow. :-)

1. search people by their real name (like facebook, linkedin, internations...)

2. show recent visits to one's profile

In addition to several smart suggestions people gave here, I'd like to add my 2 cents: it would be nice to have the possibility to organize the list of friends into groups.

I take the opportunity to say that the Glocals web site works like a charm!

Thanks for your great work!

Making the site mobile device compatible would be very helpful. How often was it I was at the Zuerich HB and tried to get information of the web page ....

Protect our details!

Pretty much everyone thinks that their posts including emails and mobile phone entries in the forums and events are visible only to the glocals members. That is not true (was not as of a post a month or so back).

This means spam bots (automated programs collecting emails etc) can get your details from Glocals pages if for example you enter your contact details such as email when you organise an event.

Once you end up on a spam list, there is no getting away. You must change your email or mobile number ... what an incredible pain.

So my request is to make forum and event pages readable only by those who have logged in (& thereofre are registered members).

Thanks

B

The calendar idea is great, because if I RSVP more than 2 or 3 events some well into the future, it is not easy to figure out what and when when you want to make arrangements outside of Glocals events.

With the calander/diary you can easily see your commitments.

B

This is another great idea. Not all friends are "equal". Some you know and see once in a while, others you spend time with regularly and tlak with more often.

By grouping friends you could send messages and invites to particular groups rather than having to go thru your entire list each time.

Please fix the pseudo issue (it is shortened in the friends list, so if you click on it, it gives back a "member not exsiting" error).

Thanks

don't know if anyone already said that but a simple uploader of pics would be nice, something that does not need java.

I know that for big quantities of pics java is better but an alternative would be good.

ps: compatible to mobile would be great!

I hope you kept a useale version of the previous model as it was much more user friendly, more down to earth, easily navigatable, displayed profiles in an easy to view and use format. Why don't you sit down for an hour as a "user" (not as a techi) and comapare the 2 versions. Keep in mind that the site has 2 objectives - activities and people - and you can't have one without the other.  I bet the number of clicks per day is down with the new version.  Stupid stuff like number of members online is interesting.

Frankly, using the site now with all the clickdowns, you can't backtrack to where you just came from without re-starting your search from scratch, etc makes it rather tedious to use.

I might also suggest that all members are required to fill in the profile stuff (except perhaps the photo that is optional), otherwise, there are too many blank mailboxes out there that piss off those people who have taken the time to and have the courage to show their true faces - kinda like saying "play the game or buzz off".

The classified section is great and so are the threads, like this one.

Good luck,

@#*ç&%

Hi Poster and thanks for the feedback.

If you could be more specific about what you don't like about the new site, we'll try to fix it. 

Could you take a minute to explain why the navigation is problematic, why viewing profiles is not user friendly, and what else you'd like to see fixed?

Thanks alot

Oded

Hi oded,

I would agree that sometimes it seems to take more clicks than it used to get where you want to be.  One bugbear is the small pop-up box of a person which shows next to no information.  For example, if you look at the events and see a list of attendees you then need to click the name once to bring up a small box and then click 'view profile' in that box to actually see their profile - I would much prefer it just went to their profile or gave a more relevant popup box with the profile information.

Hi i've just been browsing the classifieds section. I think that it could be slightly improved by highlighting the title once the user has viewed an item.

1. The titles in the classifieds section are coloured grey (example title :- Table for sale 100chf). Once viewed by the user this title could be highlighted in a brown or orange colour to show that they have viewed that item already (viewed:- Table for sale 100chf). The website then stores this info for when the user returns a few days later. The higlighted titles will let the viewer know that anything pre 14th March for example has been viewed and discounted. This saves time as i often forget what i've already viewed and end up back tracking a week or so (this is time consuming).

2. When the user clicks on the item to view it, i think that the photos should be at the top not the bottom. I often have to scroll down to look at the photos and then if the item is suitable i then read the info. Often people will want to view a photo of the item first to decide whether it's suitable or not.

Hope this helps

All, 

Thanks. We read and consider every single post on this thread, even if we don't reply to every post. Your ideas are very helpful, pls pls pls keep them coming...

Thanks, 

Nir

Hi Nir, Oded:

Here's one more:

a) Ability to connect Forum posts, events, photos, guides, classifieds, offers (pretty much everything...lol).  For example...having a summary of a forum post feed into an event; photos attached to an event; offers attached to a person and so on...   

Currently everything is disconnected or connected partially.  For example, forum posts about an event/offer are not connected to each other unless someone posts links in both places.  A lot of times Forum posts result in events and vice versa.

Or Forum posts result in other Forum posts...which result in events....resulting in photos...which may be collectively discussed on other Forum posts, where someone wants to talk about a club...which is well explained in The Guide, which has ratings and reviews attached...and has hosted a few glocals events....the ability/option to link these (and find the links) today is mostly user dependent - it would be a dream to navigate having this as an inbuilt functionality.

b) A nice message telling people when they have posted anything - about the perils of posting email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, dog's middle name etc.

c) Some of us would also love to know about the upcoming changes, would really push us 'complainers' and 'wishlisters' to do more :).  (Personally, I enjoy testing websites / applications for functionality and would love to be part of a 'UAT group'...like Poster's suggested.)

Also, everyone....Here's a forum post where we discussed the pop-up functionality exclusively, am posting it so that everyone has an idea of what has 'popped-up' regarding them already. :)   

http://www.glocals.com/#/forums/new-site-feedback/Profile-Pop-Ups---Useful-or-Useless--83022.htm

Cheers!

Arun

Hi Arun, 

Thanks for the detailed ideas. 

A few quick thought about the ideas raised:

1. Connecting Things. 
One think that kills me is that now our Activities and our Activity Reviews sit in 2 totally seperate places. The activities is a stand alone section (where past activities are harder to find), and the Activity Reviews go on a forum (where they are more visible even if the event already happended). Any ideas on how to better link the 2?

2. Warning people againt posting their emails / numbers on the forums.
We already revised our Privay Policy last month to clearly indicate that search engines index content posted to our site. We'll need to find a way to highlight it even more, I agree.  

3. Posting a list of site improvements to come.
I love this idea, and we'll work on it. It might also force us internally to work in a more strctured way...(-.

Thanks again,

Nir

Hi,

I saw this thread on the start page and guess what, this is my first post on glocals...

First things first:

I really appreaciate that you are asking for feedback. And my first impression of the platform and the community is a really good one. The content seems extensive and the community more then alive. The posts in this thread indicate the passion about the community.

Even though I just joined yesterday, I have already some suggestions for improvement:

1) No SSL
Man, was I disappointed that such a modern site will send my email, password, name, birthdate in plaintext across the wire...

2) Virtually no privacy control
The public forum posts were already mentioned earlier. I agree with the previous posters that "public by default" is not the right approach for a more or less closed community. On top of this, the privacy settings can at best be called a joke. My question to you is, can I really participate in the community without being expose anything to the general public?

3) Location-based services
I am sure there must be a location-based killer app for glocals ;) not sure yet how this exactly will look like but consider it carefully when putting together your iPhone/mobile version of glocals. It will be just a matter of time until Foursquare and Gowalla take on this space in Geneva.

Cheers,

Tim

Tim,

Thanks, appreciate the feedback. 

You touched one of my biggest concerns with point 3: how do we leverage location based services, before the big boys come over and gobble it all up. And now that we launched our City Guide, adding location-based services to it seems natural.

Are you by any chance a heavy user of those services? I'm looking for a heavy user who can give me more perspective on how it works, as I admit I never got into the location based area. I just read about it daily on techcrunch...(-:

Nir

Hi Tim and thanks for the feedback

Re your question about privacy -

Our forums are open to search engines, but your profile is not. 

This means that 'the general public' can't see your profile, your info, your photos, your friends...

Additionaly, if you go to Settings > Privacy, you can choose which members can see your profile (All Members, Only Friends or No One) so basicaly, you can keep things pretty private if you really want to.

What additional privacy settings would you want us to add?

Thanks alot and welcome to glocals

Oded

I think that the Commercial Event do not get many viewers.....

Susan:

Thanks. That's true, but we didn't consider it an issue because announcements of commercial events are not our key focus. 

Tim:

If you have 2 secs to provide a bit more perspective on what other privacy settings you'd like to see, we'd be grateful. In any case, I'll pick your brain at the NMD tonight...(-:

Thanks,

Nir

Hi Nir what I want to say is that for example I put an activity that is half my activity and half commercial...it is a get together at my place, I do not get many people checking my ad....

Hi Oded,

Well, I had a closer look around to get the idea of how the site works and what is exposed. Remember, I am still new to glocals and have not used a lot of features yet.

I also noticed additional privacy settings for the contact data on the profile. I have missed that at my first glance. This is good. If they were also on the privacy page it would be even better.

What I still did not quite understand is why all events are public. As far as I could go there was no option to show an event/activity only to registered people. I guess, one could argue if this makes even sense here.

Ok, back to more points related to privacy.

How about an option to hide my activity from the public? This could be used to show a generic "register user" picture and hide the name* if a post, activity/event is viewed prior login.
I think that this makes sense for the events and the forum whereas reviews are perfectly ok if they are not anonymous.
The Attending list in the events shows always the last users who signed up. And that is before and after the event.

* The name... or username, first name, last name? What is it? Where do I set it up during signup? It was not very clear to me that my name is used as username.

Apropos sign up. I think this is a good occasion to educate the user step-by-step.
I bet that brings up new questions ;-)

Tim

I think the biggest issue I can see is that once we are logged I'd like to see each event have an "Add to my calendar " icon.

Then we can add and subtract and organise our lives around this calendar and see all events in one place.  Once you have this this would make life a lot easier and far more practical.

Thanks Phil.

Once you RSVP for an activity, it's automatically added to your calendar, so I assume you're asking for the option to 'Mark / Add to My Calendar' without having to RSVP.  Correct?

O

Exactly, so you can have the calendar to be able to easily see what you might and might not do.  This way you will use much more as a way of managing activities before committing.  Would be a huge improvement, trust me.

My job BTW is to pass on suggestions to our R+D from the field for our software so making suggestions is easy for me.  Some will be good like this one, as it will allow users to actually use the calendar as a guide / tool for events.

Dear admins and users of Glocals,

SEARCH ENGINES

Why do search engines have access to this, I presume, private site for a nonpublic forum? This access is a very bad thing, in my opinion, as it eliminates the thin layer of privacy one would expect, when one at least has to log in to a site to read content - and it discourages participation in activities.

I especially do not want to see pictures or postings indexed in the search engines. Online face recognition will be available shortly, and we all know, that employers, insurance companies, exes and others are increasingly likely to search for information on people. The notion of privacy is there for good reason, even if one leads a 'normal life', as social norms varies greatly between people, places and time. It is also a potential security issue, if anyone can look up a detailed record of anyone in the search engines for all time.

If in doubt, see what sites like Pipl and Spokeo can do already.

I propose to:

* use the "robots.txt"-method to instruct the currently well-behaved search engines to not index the site beyond a generic front page.

* use other methods to close the door to robots actively creating user profiles and siphoning off user postings and pictures via that route, and to protect the "deep web", that is the, ostensibly, password-protected Glocals user profiles, postings, pictures and video.

* strengthen privacy in general. For example, during profile creation, I find the requirement to use one's full name concerning. Why require that? It only greatly facilitates profiling of people for whatever motive, the profiler may have, even if the last name is currently hidden.

* enhance the controls on who can see what.

In reality, uncontrolled information leakage permanently transfers power from you, real persons, to someone else. Please plug that leak, admins.

Thanks :)

P.S.: I, of course, realize, that noone forces me to be on the internet, but that is not my point.

Thanks again Phil.

This has been mentioned before, I like it, and it shall be done.

Oded

Hi folks.

Thanks a lot for all the feedback and suggestions, and please keep em coming.

 We're putting together our next 'To Do' list, and next week we'll post it online.

For now, here’s a few things you guys mentioned that we fixed today: it online.This past week we fixed a few

Forums
You can now paste text directly into forum threads / forum replies without going through a ‘paste text’ pop up. (I’m pasting this from Word – lets see if it works…)

Member Search
On the ‘Members’ page, we changed ‘Search by interests’ to ‘Search by interests / keyword’.  ‘Search by interests / keyword’ is a free-text field that searches in Interests, Location, Company and Spoken languages.

Things to Do
Activity / Event  organizers viewing their guests  (attending, requesting invite…)  can see 30 guests per page instead of 10.  Guests are sorted by date RSVPed (recently RSVPd on top, older RSVPs below)

Inbox:
After replying to a message in your inbox, you’ll be taken back to your main Inbox page with ‘You Replied’ icon shown next to the message you replied to.

External links:
We fixed the ‘broken links’ problem, so clicking on links from notifications & messages will take you to the correct page – not the site homepage..

Profile Pop Ups
You can now see ‘Country of origin’ on profile pop us and on ‘Members’ page.

We know the above were bugging some people, so we went down & dirty on em J

Thanks again and please keep the ideas coming.

Oded & Nir

Apologies of this has been mentioned already:

How about enabling "Thank Poster" function/button on "Things to do" entries too. I see lots of people saying thanks in the comments but not having a button to do so, similar to forum posts.

Firstly those organising great events can be formally thanked (their tally of thanks will be more accurate) and...

Secondly those posting great suggestions or variations can also be thanked by others which gives the organiser a better idea of how many others like/prefer the suggestion.

Thanks for the recent enhancements by they way. I used the convenient button :-)

B

Hi,

I had two more ideas but I only remember one ;-)

You make use of HTML in the mails but use it only for very basic things. I could imagine a cleaner layout of the mails to be able to scan through them faster.

1) The first 7 lines contain no additional information to what my mail client already tells me. I find it distracting.

2) How about an icon to visually indicate if the mail belongs to a forum post, activity suggestion, private msg, activity message, etc.

3) A defined font would prevent my mail client from showing everything in Times New Roman, yak! (yes, I know this can be changed)

Cheers,
Tim

Tim:

Thanks mate, makes sense.

Not sure I understand tho point (1) tho about the 1st 7 lines in the emails not adding new info. Could you pls explain? Thanks for your time.

Bizhan:

Thanks, I like the idea of "thanking" people who post Activities. We're searching (and so far havn't found) a way to show which people organised good activities in the past. This "thanks button" could be a start in that direction.

Nir

Nir,

A picture explains more than 1000 words... (Sorry for the shaky lines).

Thanks Tim, gotcha.

Thanks for all the changes.  Here's a few more things I believe could enhance usability.

1) Backtracking - Hitting the browser back button brings up a random (usually the glocals homepage, probably cached) page.  Only when the back button is hit for a second time makes the actual 'previous page' appear.

2) The ability to format posts using the Bold/Italic, smiley buttons seems to have disappeared.  Although copy-paste helps one pre-format posts, and shortcuts make it up...it was a nice thing to have.

3) Connecting Things:  

This could be done by:

      a) Letting users add tags to all posts...(forum posts, activities, reviews)

or

      b) Actually integrating items and adding functionalities to allow users to connect             items as they open them 

either ways...a line or two of all connected (or tagged) activities, reviews/other forum posts, places, etc. shown in an 'Related Info' box (or scrollbox).  

Also, a functionality of recurring activities would help them connected to each other.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Arun

SiteAdmin just posted the list of imporvements we're working on for April 2010, here:
http://www.glocals.com/forums/new-site-feedback/87086.htm

The April list includes some of the suggestions posted here, so big thanks! More of the suggestions posted here will be actioned in following months. 

In any case, from now on we'll try to post every month the list of tech improvements we're working on. 

Nir

One issue I noticed on many windows and on many browsers is the following:

I regularly receive email notifications about activities I am interested in.

Sometimes those notices do NOT lead you to the activity.. the links in there have something wrong with them....  they take you to the main page of all activities of your city.

Today I decided to look a bit further into this, and noticed that:

for example, a link I received by email is this :

http://www.glocals.com/things-to-do/geneva/26665.htm

This is supposed to lead me DIRECTLY to the activity in question.

Yet when I click on this link on windows xp with IE8 as browser, I am REDIRECTED to

http://www.glocals.com/things-to-do/geneva/

!!!

Guys do you need to tweak your .htaccess ?

Thanks for the heads up Marc.

The prob you mentioned happens if the activity you are being directed to was canceled or deleted.  Since the activity page no longer exists, you are redirected to the main Things to Do page. 

Pretty iritating now that I experienced it and we'll try to add a 'The activity you're looking for was canceled / deleted' page for cases like this.

Thanks again and have a nice weekend.

Oded

great idea Oded. Thank you for fixing this.

That would be nice to have a warning when the post ink cartridge needs to be refilled. 

Hmm, I think I should have posted this issue here straight away instead of having created a new forum post...

What's the problem:

If you go to the Things to Do-List, only member activities are listed by default (instead of having a list of all activities). And I suppose, most people only browse the first list appearing by default. Unfortunately, Event Announcements are grouped together with Commercial Events which is very likely to stop people to have also a look at this list (there are also FREE events announced! so not very commercial).

As an example: May 10th, there is one and the same activity "Cuban Salsa" posted twice:

- in the the Member Activity List (268 views, 3 attending)

- in the Event Announcement/Commercial Activity List (only 12 views!!!).

Knowing this "barrier", I announced the free visit of the Geneva Book Fair in the Member Activity List (to be sure that people will see it) instead of posting it in the EA List... And it turned out to be the right idea...

Would it be possible to have by default "All Things to Do" shown (meaning no pre-filtering)?

I suggested once a solution I found smart on other forums:

the edit button is active only for 15 minutes (on other forums is 1 hour) so you have time to correct mistakes but can't edit out the content the day after having created a fuzz. :D

@Oded

Not sure if this have come up already in which case apologies for spamming.

When commenting groups or events some of the white spaces are behaving badly. I really do want to make some paragraphs to the comments to visualize the text more. I believe the point of this is to reduce length of the space one comment takes but maybe

should be allowed in comments? Or at least
. Or <br>?

And apparently my n n made new lines here now separated with space in this posting.

I would suggest thumbnail generation and caching to speed up the page loads.

Meaning that currently the original fullsized user pictures are used and scaled down by the browser.

Hi,

How about adding RSS feeds? It would be very useful to keep track of forums and (especially) classifieds.

Cheers,

N.

a repeat button for events would be helpful.

A privacy request:

The organizer of an event himself/herself should decide whether the Tweet and Facebook buttons are added to the event page.  What if John Doe organizes a fondue dinner with Glocals fellows but does not want 400,000,000 people be informed about it?

It's been several months since this thread was started and some changes/fixes have already been completed - kudos!

One thing that for me has always been annoying:

If I look at the the Things To Do list late in the afternoon, I really wish that all the events for that day which already started (or finished) hours ago would not be listed. Please make the database search smarter (using not only the date, but also the time) and sort the list in ascending Start Time order.

Imagine going to the cine.ch site and looking for a movie to see in the evening, but you have to wade through the 100s of movies that played all afternoon before you can get to the relevant section. Annoying!

And, a very easy fix, indeed. Should take about 5 minutes, right?

Zonker:

I agree with you that the list of events in chronological (hourly) order is a good idea.  However, events already started have to stay in the list, as one can join a party that has already begun.

@OmegaMan: If I had to choose between sorted and filtered, I'd choose filtered because I don't want to see all the events which have already started and often have already finished, such as movie outings, museum visits, ski trips, hiking, etc. 

Perhaps the three current categories "Upcoming", "New" and "Past" could be expanded: "Today", "earlier Today", "Tomorrow", "Upcoming", "New" and "Past". I almost never use "New" or "Past" but would definitely use Today and Tomorrow as quick links.

Expanding three categories into six takes a bit more programming, so I didn't want to suggest that to start. But, simply changing the SQL statement to exclude events which already started *and* sort the list......very quick change.

And an "Edit" button on the forum. Its extremely annoying to type something and then realise that you did a mistake and not being able to correct it

@maria_ if there were a way to thank you 1000x for that post, I would, but alas......

It would be GREAT if people could be reminded to post classifieds in.... wonder where, wonder where - oh yeah in CLASSIFIEDS :-)

You have a great forum for that, and it seems like some think that they are in more emergency than others and have to post this elsewhere, which is rather unfair to those abiding by the "rules" ;-)

posts on the groups wall arent forwarded to the members? 

Classifieds is not part of the forums I believe, it is it's "own place" 

How about when in "chat" there is a button that says "available for chat"...or a group chat room... banter on the forums is fun.. but slow sometimes, and a group session  would be useful.... and I second Marias thoughts about the "edit own posts" function.

thats it from me

Sevket buddy... you just press "unsubscribe from forum" and you wont get disturbed any more by my rantings .-))

or "untick" the button that says "notify me when:.:blah blah etc" when you post on the forums. (its the button7box  just above the green post  box you press) ;-)

1) Flickr integration

2) Better communication between glocals and facebook for those with an account on both sites. 

3) Android/iphone/blackberry app.

the idea would be to be able to see:

1) Which events are happening now with time remaining

2) Are friends involved

3) upload tracks once a hike/cycle/climb/walk is finished. 

4) Upload event pictures on the move (to upload pictures from phones on the way home)

when looking at events we need to be able to return to the page with the list of events rather than back to the home page. It makes searching through events easier. 

Dear Nir & Oded,

it would be nice if there was an option in the settings where one could set if connentions are allowed see which events you are attending/commenting on. Thx!

How about being able to select more than one city where to post the activities?

Eg: If I'm from Zurich and plan a hike in Interlaken, then it would be nice to post the activity in Zurich, Bern and Luzern for example.

I was just going to post the same thing as Mike S. I did a hike in Ticino two weeksago and posted the event in Geneve Lucern and Zurich but had to post it three times so I did not bother with Basel and Bern.  It worked I had people from Geneva and Zurich come

It would be nice if the site were usable in Safari for Mac. Bits and pieces of the page are all over the place, often overlapping or invisible.

I tried to post a screenshot, but it never finished uploading, sorry.

Upgrade space. The lag everyone is talking abt is a cue that it's hardly coping up if more members go online. I don't see any problem on my end since I visit site when everyone is sleeping. Chat, by the way, is already activated. Maybe some just missed it.

@Angela - I use Safari 5.0.2 and have no probs.

Can you please send a screenshot / explanation to oded at glocals dot com so I can try to understand the problem?

Thanks

Oded

I am using safari 5.0.1  but never had that problem. but my problem is how come when the chat is deactivated (no one can chat) some people can still send chat to me? this happened to my old account last week, I had to change account because a guy was bothering me!

@angela interesting. I also use Safari for Mac (every version as soon as it's released) and with one exception (fixed a month ago) it's been fine. i'd be interested to see the screen shots, too. david at zicount dot com.

Larger photos.  560 pixels wide is kinda smallish. 

Hi guys. 2 proposals:

1. a mobile access (platform, whatever) - and pls also for something called "Bada"? (they sold me that one)

2. Canton Vaud -tab 

Many thanks!

@Risto - what's Bada?

Oded

Hello Admins,

One feature that would be nice is to be able to edit the title and body of a post in the forums. I posted a link and actually made a mistake and can't edit it. 

Cheers,
josh 

not sure if already mentionned but a more free and open profile photo update service...  It sucks waiting for ages for the new photo to be approuved by admin and to see that silly chicken in a jacket...

So right Maria_

Yeah plus when you're drafting a text to post, and you blink or check out another tab for a link or something, when you come back to your draft all the text you'd drafted has disappeared. Forever. On Facebook you can leave it 'unposted' overnight and next day it's still there.

"Your German, Russian, Urdu for my Basque, Albanian, Swahili"  ?

Every time you look, seems there's more and more of these any-language-will-do lingo-swap appeals choking out the real social activities in the Glocals to-do lists. Just recently one day there wasn't a single social activity on page one - just lingo-swaps. It's gotten so bad that one suspects it's language teachers fishing for clients.

Nothing personal, but an Albanian trying to get Urdu lessons is not a Glocals social activity. Or have I missed a new widely-shared expat trend ?

Your Bärntütsch for my Glaswegian, anyone ?

Hi Oded,

This is a long thread so this may already have been mentioned.  Since the implementation of the new site I have found it very difficult to use with Mozilla Firefox 3.0 to 3.6.  The buttons like send for e-mail and repy for posting don't work.  Also some pages time out quite often (the "things to do" for example).  I'm using IE8 at the moment and the experience is better but I hate it for "moral" reasons because Microsoft is "The bad guy".  Also it is prone to virus attacks.  So can we get user experience improvements for Firefox?

I suggest a "bookmark event"-button, in case an event is interesting, but it is too early to RSVP for any reason.

Automatic hyperlinks for website addresses contained in text.

The possibility of scheduling a repeating event (for Friday evenings, say) and indicating attendance for several weeks in advance. (See Doodle for ideas.)

Remove "number of people attending" from the event announcement. Since ours is a repeating event, and since we use Doodle for attendance in weeks ahead, it always looks as if there is just one person attending.

The possibility of replying "maybe" to an event.

Group founders and admins should be able to write a group email to a select number of members.

Currently, if you start drafting a post, then open another window to copy some text, the first part of your post disappears when you return to edit it. Could this be fixed?

Combining the member and other events.

Mobile / iPhone app.

Additional tabs on group pages for reviews of group activities, photos, etc.

Improved design for greater clarity and simplicity. Get rid of the brown.

Some new, non-native English speakers get confused during the sign-up process, since they don't know the difference between "sign up" and "log in".

Start new line after job area and job, to avoid comical & unintended job descriptions.

Change "non-profit / UN" to "non-profit / international organization".

An "introduce yourself to the group" button within groups, for new members.

Please get rid of those chickens! :-)

Thanks! 

"Please get rid of those chickens! :-)"

In other words, you want people to use randomly downloaded faces from the internet? ;)

excellent idea. At present it is so difficult to search thru various events to find something you saw & had some interest in but was not sure if you could attend.

A "maybe" button is a really bad idea. 90% will go for that. You never know if you will have enough people for event or not.

As has been mentioned by many people, much better search is needed all across the site.

PLUS AN UPDATE ON PROGRESS ON THESE IDEAS & WHAT'S COMING SOON. Oded would you like ideas to keep coming or ...!?

No - just the chicken pictures. They get a bit tiresome after a while. :-)

Also, when a group admin sends a message to all members, could the group's name be included automatically? 

...and the possibility of deleting your own post, or editing it later.

Hi guys and thanks for the feedback

Building www.BuyClub.ch has kept us busy for the past few weeks, but now that BuyClub has been launched we're going to shift the focus back to glocals.

This week we'll finalize the upcoming glocals To Do list and will post it in the forums.  So if you have any more suggestions, please post them here so we can see what people want.

Thanks

Oded 

Hi,

I think it would be useful to have an option to get a message if someone posts something to a group you are a member of.

Cheers

Hi,

I would like the chat windows to adapt their size when minimized. Right now they pile up on each other hiding some of them. It would useful to unpin them from the same browser window/tab into a floating frame.

Cheers

@Sandra-Lynne J

Hi ! When i read : "Remove "number of people attending" from the event announcement" and "The possibility of replying "maybe" to an event.

I wish you to experience organizing a lunch/dinner/hike/ with more than 15pers... it could be really FUN  Any other nightmare requests !!??  Cheers !

for god sakes, paginate these forums! 

oh, and by the way, sorry to be so cynical, but seeing as this thread was started in February and there have been *many* *many* of these suggestions made prior to the thread, I am not holding my breath that any of these bugs will be fixed, features will be added, or typos will be corrected, etc.

Prove me wrong. Please.

Hyeomer - I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean.

Can you please post a more detailed explanation, or a screenshot?

Thanks

Oded

stop spamming our emails from glocals.

Every time I get an email from glocals, about 50% of the content is useless and annoying. When I read those emails on my iPhone, in the Message List mode, I don't see *any* of the actual message, only the "New from glocals.com: daily deals" blah blah blah.

From: glocals.com <[email protected]>

Subject: Carolyn C thanked you for your post: Re: What should we fix / add / improve on glocals next?

Date: 14 November 2010 12:32:50 EST

To: <me>

Reply-To: glocals.com <[email protected]>

New from glocals.com: daily deals in Geneva on buyclub.ch

Each day we feature 50% discounts on great Geneva place. Check it out.

Hi Zonker,

Carolyn C just thanked you for your post: Re: What should we fix / add / improve on glocals next?

Thanks a lot for being friendly and helpful.

The glocals.com gang.

I don't want to be told with *every* email about buyclub. I got the hint already! And, please, put that blatant advertising AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MESSAGE, so that I can actually see my message without opening it up on the iPhone. And why do you repeat the same info on the Subject and in the message body? That's nonsense.

Screen real estate on a mobile device is precious. Please don't waste it on your marketing; save it for the content of my message.

Thanks.

@ Hyeomer - thanks for sending me an explanation.  I understand what you mean and am checking if we can resize the chat window.

@Zonker - Iritating as it may be, the blatant advertising allows us to keep glocals free.  I'm sorry it bothers you.

Oded

I second (third, fourth?) the request for an iPhone app or even a mobile version of the website. Go Facebook or Meetup on that one - simple with just the essentials (what's on tonight, location of the event and time, maybe guest list). You can always improve it when you have more time and resources!

Initially, I was checking glocals exclusively from my iPhone (it's not that desirable to browse it in an open office environment), and I still do quite often, and the time it takes to navigate the full site, zoom in, log in, etc. is quite frustrating.

That would be the biggest low hanging fruit improvement for me!

Second problem I keep having is having to log in again on my iPhone every time I visit the site, despite ticking the box. Probably a Safari issue since Chrome is fine with keeping me logged on.

And of course, great job with the site! It's really been a great thing to have whilst settling in Switzerland.

If someone is bothering you have them ejected from Glocals... simple. Save others as well as yourself.

Hi again folks and thanks alot for all the feedback

As you can see from the replies above, there are alot of different things people want added/improved, and aside from a mobile friendly version, there doesn't seem to be a clear 'winner', which makes my job a bit harder.

Re a mobile friendly version - we won't be creating an Iphone app any time soon cause they're expensive to develop and I'd rather have something that works on all mobiles.  We tried several free programs for adapting content to a mobile friendly version but none of them delivered the results we wanted, so it looks like our tech guys are going to have to do it.  I estimate that we will be able to launch a mobile version in about 6 weeks, but I don't want to be responsible for anybody holding their breath so I'll update this estimate in a couple of weeks.

Re the rest of the feedback on this thread, and on other threads - I'm going over it all and trying to prioritize the list based on the number of people that asked for it, the number of people that will be affected by it, and our ability to make it happen.  I'll post a list of the things we're working on by the end of this week.

Thanks again and have a great week.

Oded

Quick update -

I received alot of mails about the glocals inbox being slow, so today we uploaded a few fixes that should make opening messages, replying to messages and composing new messages alot faster.

We also uploaded some fixes that should make the 'Things to Do' pages faster, so please let me know if you notice any bugs in the inbox or Things to Do pages.

Thanks

Oded

A bit late to this thread but I have some ideas/requests...

1. A way to plan an activity without necessarily attending. This is only relevant when you are a group admin and you want to post a group event but cannot personally attend and don't want to burden group members with the responsibilities of becoming an admin. ;) OR, the ability to make someone an admin only for one particular event. OR, a way to link an event by a group member to the group without links.

2. Events on the day of show up in past events! At least on group pages. They should be "upcoming" until the end time the organizer writes.

3. Upcoming events on group pages: the default is to only show 5, and the order is furthest away on top - so when you have 7 events, the 2 events coming up soonest (is that a word) are no longer visible. Also, there is no simple "view all" button for upcoming events, only past events.

4. I strongly second the "repeat event" button choice.

5. Hyperlinks - when I post a url it would be nice if it became click-able.

6. Group summary: At the top of a group page there's a little summary of what each group is about. After a certain length there is a "+More" button. Make the character limit clear to group creators! (Right now my group description is one character too long to just show up altogether...weird.)

7. I second the "Maybe" RSVP option for events - it's a good solution for those who would like to "bookmark" events, and it would be nice to be able to send a reminder to only maybe RSVPs that it's time to make a choice...maybe that can even be automatic!!

8. Agree about the auto-full limit for activities, and there should then be an automatic waitlist. Meetup.com does it pretty well AND notifies people in order of them signing up for the waitlist when a spot opens up in the event.

I think that's all I have right now...thanks for all your hard work, guys!

Hi Vicky and thanks for the feedback.

Re the Activity / Events display on the group page -

I did not notice that the activities are ordered from most furthest in the future to most recent, and will fix this today or on Sunday.  If today's activities are showing up in the past, I'll fix that too.

Re the number of activities displayed - I could not find any groups with more than 5 upcoming activities but will check what happens in the pretty rare case that this occurs.

If by 'Repeat Event' button you mean a way for activity organizers to duplicate an activity / event they posted without having to write up all the details again - this is one of the things we will be working on in the next 2 weeks.

Re the group summary - I agree that the current design is bad and this too will be imrpoved in the next 2 weeks.

Re RSVPing 'Maybe' - I'm not sure its a good idea, but we will add an option for people to bookmark activities.

Re allowing activity organizers to set a 'Max Attending' number - also coming in the next 2 weeks.

Thanks again for the clear and relevant feedback.

Oded

Hello Oded,

I think RSVP "Maybe" is a great idea - but only as an option to those who feel their type of activity allows a "Maybe" response.  

The possibility of allowing this option to participants can rest with the activity owner and can probably just be a checkbox while setting up the activity.  Just an idea. :)

What do you think?

Keep up the great work!  

Thanks,

Arun

@oded half the things that you mention just above also apply to non-group activities, too. I hope you'll apply the fixes you make to normal activities, too.

Especially the whole sort order thing. I have asked repeatedly since the new site was launched that the Activities be ordered, not only by day, but by time of day, as well. 

Thanks Robi.

I'm still going over the feedback and checking the feasibility of some of the requests with my tech team and tomorrow I'll publish the first To Do list we'll start working on.

Re the waiting list though, I don't think it will be as efficient as you think, cause what will happen is that people will add themselves to several guestlists, hoping that something will open up, and then, if something does open up and they get an email saying 'a spot for activity xxx has opened up' -> who's to say they're still interested or available?  So you, as an organizer, will still need to check if the person is still interested, and will still need to confirm that they are indeed coming.

If you have some ideas on how to configure this waiting list, I'm open to ideas.

Oded

Oded - the solution to your issue with Robi's & other people's request for waiting list function is easy: Allow only one waiting list entry per person per entire day or per half day.

BTW, the "maybe" function will be a disaster for organisers. The site already needs lots of improvements to make organising less consuming as you see form the suggestions. But some people quite rightly want:

(a) to somehow keep track of an event they like and decide nearer the time. And so be able to see at glance the upcoming activities that they are interested in

&

(b) get a reminder of those potential activities nearer the time.

To cater for this valid requirement the bookmarking suggestion will be great combined with the activity calendar suggestion for better visiual indication.

Also for organisers, whether shown publically or not, there could be a number showing the bookmarks (clicking it would show details such as those who have not RSVP'd as yet).

I sincerely hope you will implement a yellow card/red card system that already works very well in other social sites in Geneva or some other way of dealing with habitual no-shows depriving others from attending events.

In summary, at present it is time consuming and exhausting work to organise events. Too many no-shows and too many sporadic requests from peole wanting in makes it harder. I too out of politeness reply to every single email. But I am now taking a break because of the time and effort this takes.

Slight delay - the To Do list will be published tomorrow. 

Thanks

Oded

A few quick question for those who asked for a way to mark / display No Shows:

1. When an activity organizer marks someone as a No Show - should he/she be required to include an explanation of what exactly happened?
2. If No Show marks are to be displayed on people's profiles - should the people be allowed to add a reply/explanation about why they did not show up?
3. Should the No Show marks be visible to everyone, or only to activity organizers when a person wants to join their activity?

Thanks alot

Oded

Re: waiting list function, I think Bizhan's point is right but I think he's being even too generous - when a spot opens up in an event, notify #1 on the waitlist, then an hour later #2 (if it hasn't been taken), then an hour later #3, etc. Anyone who has been notified is eligible to take the free spot. It won't be perfect but it will ensure that the spot is taken by someone who will actually go, and it will also ensure that the one person who has no computer access that day will not hold up the entire "waitlist" process.

As for No Shows, I think there are certain events where this matters a lot but other ones where it's never important. It should always be the organizer's choice whether marking No Shows is even valid for their event - it's a lot of extra work to have to mark everyone present post-event, if it didn't even matter in the first place. I also worry that it would also be counter-productive if being a "shower" vs. a "no-shower" became a sort of valuable currency on Glocals.

I understand the importance for an organizer to be able to block repeat offenders - but an organizer can manage RSVPs by making it request-only, anyway, and if they are aware of those people who habitually no-show, they can simply not allow them to RSVP the next time. I think each organizer should manage their own relationship with their RSVPers - and if someone is a no-shower to everything, eventually all those organizers will be aware of the fact and will block the person. Someone can no-show to certain types of events, and always show to others - it's not necessarily a universal characteristic. If the "black mark of no-show" ends up preventing people from being able to attend events, or if the "gold star of showing" is worth something, then people will mark their friends as "shows" even if they didn't show, maybe will mark people as "no-shows" even if they did show up just to spite them, etc. 

If No Show marks are definitely happening, then I think they should only be available if an event has an attendee limit. The organizer should definitely have to include an explanation, as well as to mark whether the no-show notified them in advance. I really don't think the black mark of No Show should be on people's profiles, but if it will, then yes, space for explanation would be fair.

agree  with David.... rudeness at non showing up to a private event (eg dinner parties) can not go unshamed... esp where the organiser has gone to the trouble to arrange it in a personal setting, and extra especially if money was spent...major events is arguably somewhat more relaxed of an argument...

Glocals should advocate politeness, and reduce the Genevois habit of not showing up to events... I have experienced it over the last 10 yrs in business as well (not related to Glocals)... its a sad fact that rain keeps people away from things, but simple politeness should be the norm... more so in our private lives.

I agree that something needs to be done about No Shows - we're now trying to understand what needs to be done and how best to do it.

Oded

yes, dealing with No-Shows and Waiting Lists is important. As are many other things that have been mentioned here and via Feedback.

But, why don't you go for the low-hanging fruit first?!

Such as:

sorting the daily activities by time

listing the time for activities in the list view (not just the details view)

automatic "Full"

correctly showing "his" or "her"

etc.

I, for one, would be much happier to see progress on the site in smaller steps first followed by bigger steps.

Just sayin'

I think there should be a Settings option to allow users to "disable" broadcasting of their Activities on the Home Page ("Updates From Your Friends" module)

don't you mean .. a "disconnect from stalker" button, or was it a "don't let my girlfriend know I'm at this party" button?

Probably an "optional privacy"-button.. while, possibly, innocuous, not everything should be broadcasted all the time (I know.. the times.. get off my lawn, etc.)

Surely you mean: "Have the complaints board review the ejection request", no? ;)

Hi folks.

Thanks alot for all the feedback and suggestions.

I'm now polishing off the To Do list and will post it here in a few hours.

Thanks again.

Oded

Hi Oded

Being a founder of several groups which give rise to numerous activities, I notice that interested persons leave posts either within the group or more often than not in the activity itself. This is hard to follow as there does not seem any form of notification for the group founder or event organizer when a post/message is left (particularly if that person is not on the friends list nor in a group)  

I only tend to become aware of these messages when I go into an activity to either edit or update it.  Additionally, when an activity is past, one tends to not consult that area anymore potentially missing and comments or observations from persons.  In the Group section it's less problematic as one has to go into that sectionoften to propose a new activity. 

Thanks

M.

@Robi & Maurice - the activity poster is supposed to get a notification when someone posts a comment on the activity page.  If this is currently not working, its a bug we need to fix.

I'm not sure all the people that RSVPed to the activity would be interested in receiving a notification every time someone posts a comment, but I think a 'notify me when comments are added' button might be useful.

Oded

Hi folks.

As you can see from this thread, understanding what improvements / additions will have the most benefit for the most people isn't easy, and this will be an ongoing process.

I like Zonker's comment about solving the smaller/easier issues first and then moving on to the bigger/harder ones, so as a first step, we decided to focus on some improvements to the Things to Do section and the Groups section.

Things to Do Section:

Allow activity posters to -
-Set a ‘Max Participants’ limit for activities and manage a ‘Waiting List’ for full activities
-Add a Google Map to the activity
-Include links in the activity description
-Duplicate an activity they posted instead of having to repost it from scratch

Allow members to -
-Bookmark activities they like without RSVPing
-See the list of activities ordered by time of activity
-Have a better ‘My Calendar’ function
-Get notified when someone adds a comment to an activity they RSVPed for (if they want to)
-Ability to reply to comments instead of having to create a new comment

Groups:
-Ability for group members to be notified when a comment is added to the group wall
-Ability to reply to comments instead of having to create a new comment

We’re aiming to have the above done by December 15, and, while working on that, we’ll also try to figure out the below items, so we can start working on them next:

-A system for dealing with No Shows
-A mobile phone friendly platform
-Ability for activity organizers to post recurring activities
-Ability to export activities to Outlook, Google Calendar and Ical
-Global site search
-Create a separate section for language exchange

Thanks alot for your feedback and please keep it coming so we know what we need to focus on.

Thanks

Oded

@david this glitch has been mentioned at least half a dozen times. Clearly, it's not a priority.

i've mentioned it myself numerous times, publicly and privately. the problem 'goes away' but it always returns.

Hi David

Sorry about that.  This was fixed, and was working fine, and then today it went crazy again for some reason.

Looking into it now and will have it fixed in a few minutes.

Oded

I didn't miss it - just didn't realize you're timing me...

I think the current system is fine.  If someone wants to get invites to activities you post, they can join your group or your friends network,

We don't want people to start getting invites from people they don't know.

Just invite your friend to your network and then you'll be able to invite him to your activities.

Oded

@david, @oded this is not the first time that someone has asked about this problem. Clearly, the system is *not* "fine" or else people wouldn't ask for this to be changed. Oded, your "just do this" or "just do that" "solutions" didn't address the scenario that David described.

Certain users of sites like glocals will add friends to their network, they'll create and join groups, etc. others will just log on to find an apt, read the forums and maybe look at Things To Do. It's not in their on-line DNA to join groups or add friends. So, David's scenario is a very real one and your response seems very short-sighted.

@ David - some of the feedback you raise will be fixed/implemented and some won't.

We don't want people 'spamming' strangers with invites to their events, so we designed the sytem to only allow you to invite friends or group members.

The case you describe seems pretty niche, and can be solved either by inviting your friend to your network or sending him an email with a link to the activity. 

If neither of the above is good enough, and not having this function will make you organize less events and not reccomend glocals to your friends - that's something I'll have to live with.

You're right David - sorry about that.

O

I would hope that some clear policy regarding insults, as well as the deletion of posts could eventually  be established.  It appears is both unfair and unfriendly to let some insults stand while others are deleted.

Hi folks

I was hoping to have all of the above done by today but we encountered a few issues and need some more time.

We'll start uploading the changes that are ready next week and I'll keep updating you about the progress.

Thanks

Oded

Dave...

as a confirmed, proud and dues-paying member of the "riff-raff", I would love the ability to be spared from such inane requests. 

Rich:

glocals.com is not a business-networking site, so going by professional qualifications is less of a fit for what we are. BUT finding a way to ensure each person is able to quickly find the content & people that are more relevant to them is a good thing.

In the past we toyed with the idea of enablong all members to give a rating to each forum thread. Each members could then decide if he/she wants to view all threads, or only threads that passed a certain rating threshhold. The rating would still be based on everyone's opinion, which might be different than your opinion, but it's some sort of basic filter.

What think?

Nir

Oded, can you add the option to electroshock morons via computer when they write something stupid? ;)

Nir, I'm suspecting he was just being ironic. Otherwise hurry up with that electroshock option ;)