mrzippy
07-15-2006, 09:04 AM
OK.. hear me out before pronouncing death to my suggestion.
I tend to ramble a bit, so I'll try to be organized with my thoughts. :) This is something I think could bring a lot of value to WHT and make it a much more useful "research" and "info" tool for both end-users and web hosts.
Recently, I've been doing a lot of searching for information about outsourced support providers and I think I hit on an idea that might improve.
Now... searching for info is nothing unusual here, as this sort of activity (finding info about something) seems to be a very common task for the many people who come to these forums. They arrive because they followed a link about some company/service/product and are trying to find more info. The "what do you think about " type of threads are very frequent.
I followed the typical WHT user pattern:
[1] Read through about 30 days worth of threads, to get an idea of different topics about outsourcing that interested me. I added each company that was mentioned in these threads to a list on a piece a paper.
[2] Do a general search on various topics like "outsource support", etc. I then added each company to my list.
[3] Do a specific search for companies that interest me, to try and find reviews and comments about them.
I think that's how most people find services and information, and I think the "process" could be improved by making WHT a more valuable source of consolidated information.
For example, there are thousands of threads about the topic of outsourcing support. There are dozens of companies mentioned, and many reviews and recommendations and comments, etc.
The Problems
The first problem is that when searching, many of the posts that came up were "duplicate" posts. They were posts I had already read, or posts that said the same things about the same companies by (often) the same people. I then had to dig through all these posts and somehow filter out the ones I had already read.. to try and find the "new" ones that contain new information. That took a LOT of time and was difficult to do since there were dozens of pages in every search result set.
The second problem is that it took a long time to find the following info:
a list of all the outsourced support providers. They were buried in different posts, mentioned in passing in unrelated posts, or provided in various "review" posts, etc. I had to spend many hours of research to just find the basic list of names and websites.
specific reviews and info about the providers I was interested in. Most of the really helpful/interesting stuff was buried deep inside obscure threads. For example, if you do a search for "supportresort" (a provider) you will find the results include are lot of their advertising posts, just brief mention of them in lists of providers (not a review), etc.. it is necessary to pretty much click and read EVERY post of every result thread... just to find a 1/2 dozen decent reviews on them. I found this same "problem" for all providers where I was trying to find detailed reviews.
The Solution!
I think adding a "Listing & Reviews" category to the forums would add a lot of benefit and value to WHT.
Here's how I see this working. (My idea is just a suggestion, not perfect, and open to improvement/critisism, etc, but my point stands that I think this would add value to WHT as a resource for end-users and hosts.)
- Add a new category called "Non Web Hosting Services - Lists and Reviews".
- Add a sub-category for each "type" of service. So we might add (for example) the following sub-categories:
Outsourced Support
Merchant Accounts
SSL Providers
Domain Names (Including Resellers)
etc..
NOTE: I do NOT recommend including sub-categories for [I]web hosting, because there are thousands of companies and it would be quickly too much info and next to impossible to manage, etc. Besides, WHT already has a hostquote to find/review web hosts. This idea is ONLY for "other" web hosting related services.)
- I envision one "sticky" at the top of each sub-category. Let's take "Outsourced Support" for example. The sticky would be a simple list of all companies/websites that provide outsourced support. The sticky would have the topic/title of "List of outsourced providers". Nice and simple. Any company could request to be added to the list. The moderators would manage this sticky, and would add new companies as they are requested. Each company gets one line, which has their name and/or website URL, and a link to their review thread. (See next part of the my suggestion.)
ie: Company Name (http://www.company.com) Click here to discuss/review this company (http://link-to-review-thread-for-this-company)
- Now comes the tricky part. It's hard for me to explain, so bear with me. There would also be other threads in this "Outsourced Support" sub-category. Each company who is listed would be allowed to have ONE thread. The thread would be titled with the name of the company, and would have some basic text like, "Please discuss or add your reviews about this company here."
So basically, the mods would add the new company to the sticky list, and then create a single thread for the company, and link the sticky listing to it. (So the sub-category is not open to public creation of new threads.)
- And it gets better! People would then be able to add their reviews/comments/opinions about that company TO THAT COMPANY'S THREAD. So this way, there is a single thread about each company.. which has reviews/discussion about them, all in one place!
Comments?
What do you think? The advantage/benefit of this idea is that we would now have a central/consolidated area where all commonly requested services are clearly listed, specific reviews can be easily found, etc. No more having to dig through a thousand duplicate or irrevelant results when you type "touch support", just to try and find a recent review on them.
The idea is that you would simply go to the first sticky topic in the appropriate sub-category and see the list of all the providers. Then, you would do your own research by clicking the links to visit their sites, and you could also visit the appropriate "review thread" about that company to read reviews/discussion dating back from the thread start all the way to recent. If you are a customer, you could post a review to that thread for others to read. Moderators would possibly keep things clean by asking for "proof" that the review poster is an actual user of the service/company, just as they do now when someone writes a review/opinion about another company/service.
What do you think?
I tend to ramble a bit, so I'll try to be organized with my thoughts. :) This is something I think could bring a lot of value to WHT and make it a much more useful "research" and "info" tool for both end-users and web hosts.
Recently, I've been doing a lot of searching for information about outsourced support providers and I think I hit on an idea that might improve.
Now... searching for info is nothing unusual here, as this sort of activity (finding info about something) seems to be a very common task for the many people who come to these forums. They arrive because they followed a link about some company/service/product and are trying to find more info. The "what do you think about " type of threads are very frequent.
I followed the typical WHT user pattern:
[1] Read through about 30 days worth of threads, to get an idea of different topics about outsourcing that interested me. I added each company that was mentioned in these threads to a list on a piece a paper.
[2] Do a general search on various topics like "outsource support", etc. I then added each company to my list.
[3] Do a specific search for companies that interest me, to try and find reviews and comments about them.
I think that's how most people find services and information, and I think the "process" could be improved by making WHT a more valuable source of consolidated information.
For example, there are thousands of threads about the topic of outsourcing support. There are dozens of companies mentioned, and many reviews and recommendations and comments, etc.
The Problems
The first problem is that when searching, many of the posts that came up were "duplicate" posts. They were posts I had already read, or posts that said the same things about the same companies by (often) the same people. I then had to dig through all these posts and somehow filter out the ones I had already read.. to try and find the "new" ones that contain new information. That took a LOT of time and was difficult to do since there were dozens of pages in every search result set.
The second problem is that it took a long time to find the following info:
a list of all the outsourced support providers. They were buried in different posts, mentioned in passing in unrelated posts, or provided in various "review" posts, etc. I had to spend many hours of research to just find the basic list of names and websites.
specific reviews and info about the providers I was interested in. Most of the really helpful/interesting stuff was buried deep inside obscure threads. For example, if you do a search for "supportresort" (a provider) you will find the results include are lot of their advertising posts, just brief mention of them in lists of providers (not a review), etc.. it is necessary to pretty much click and read EVERY post of every result thread... just to find a 1/2 dozen decent reviews on them. I found this same "problem" for all providers where I was trying to find detailed reviews.
The Solution!
I think adding a "Listing & Reviews" category to the forums would add a lot of benefit and value to WHT.
Here's how I see this working. (My idea is just a suggestion, not perfect, and open to improvement/critisism, etc, but my point stands that I think this would add value to WHT as a resource for end-users and hosts.)
- Add a new category called "Non Web Hosting Services - Lists and Reviews".
- Add a sub-category for each "type" of service. So we might add (for example) the following sub-categories:
Outsourced Support
Merchant Accounts
SSL Providers
Domain Names (Including Resellers)
etc..
NOTE: I do NOT recommend including sub-categories for [I]web hosting, because there are thousands of companies and it would be quickly too much info and next to impossible to manage, etc. Besides, WHT already has a hostquote to find/review web hosts. This idea is ONLY for "other" web hosting related services.)
- I envision one "sticky" at the top of each sub-category. Let's take "Outsourced Support" for example. The sticky would be a simple list of all companies/websites that provide outsourced support. The sticky would have the topic/title of "List of outsourced providers". Nice and simple. Any company could request to be added to the list. The moderators would manage this sticky, and would add new companies as they are requested. Each company gets one line, which has their name and/or website URL, and a link to their review thread. (See next part of the my suggestion.)
ie: Company Name (http://www.company.com) Click here to discuss/review this company (http://link-to-review-thread-for-this-company)
- Now comes the tricky part. It's hard for me to explain, so bear with me. There would also be other threads in this "Outsourced Support" sub-category. Each company who is listed would be allowed to have ONE thread. The thread would be titled with the name of the company, and would have some basic text like, "Please discuss or add your reviews about this company here."
So basically, the mods would add the new company to the sticky list, and then create a single thread for the company, and link the sticky listing to it. (So the sub-category is not open to public creation of new threads.)
- And it gets better! People would then be able to add their reviews/comments/opinions about that company TO THAT COMPANY'S THREAD. So this way, there is a single thread about each company.. which has reviews/discussion about them, all in one place!
Comments?
What do you think? The advantage/benefit of this idea is that we would now have a central/consolidated area where all commonly requested services are clearly listed, specific reviews can be easily found, etc. No more having to dig through a thousand duplicate or irrevelant results when you type "touch support", just to try and find a recent review on them.
The idea is that you would simply go to the first sticky topic in the appropriate sub-category and see the list of all the providers. Then, you would do your own research by clicking the links to visit their sites, and you could also visit the appropriate "review thread" about that company to read reviews/discussion dating back from the thread start all the way to recent. If you are a customer, you could post a review to that thread for others to read. Moderators would possibly keep things clean by asking for "proof" that the review poster is an actual user of the service/company, just as they do now when someone writes a review/opinion about another company/service.
What do you think?