Find the suggestion box here.

I’m not sure how many of you check the suggestion box frequently, but since its been released I’ve made a habit of visiting at least once a week.  What I’ve noticed in the past month or so is the absolute plummet in the quality of entries!

We have suggestions for things that are already in place, suggestions for things that never WILL be in place(such as free Tiki Tokens delivered to you every day), heck! Some of them aren’t even suggestions!

I think the staff have woefully underestimated the amount of attention that a suggestion area requires.  As of yet, we’ve seen no indication that they’ve taken any of the suggestions into consideration.  We haven’t seen any indication of any use of them at all.  So when you get right down to it, why would you want to put your toiled over and beloved idea out into a place where it will be surrounded and outnumbered by insignificant junk, and not given the attention it deserves?

Enough complaining.  I wouldn’t have gone on so long about this if I didn’t believe there was a way to fix it.  The first step is to actually pay attention to it.  If you’re going to offer users an outlet like this you NEED to at least read through the entries (I am not sure if staff does this already).  There have been issues raised recently about how Club’s (on average, wise) opinion seems to be the only one the staff sees.  Reading through suggestions would be the perfect way to find out what the users want.  Even if you don’t use their idea, you at least see where they’re coming from!

Now, reading them isn’t enough.  A few simple actions and functions would clean things up beautifully.

  1. There needs to be some kind of indication such as a green check mark, or a ‘Read by so-and-so’ beside each suggestion that has been looked at by an admin or staff member.  This helps users know that their suggestion isn’t just rotting. 
  2. Submissions that are not suggestions should be deleted immediately, and a message sent to the user (it can be a generic message, less work!) saying that their suggestion was deleted because of “insert reason here”. 
  3. Commenting/debating an idea would reduce duplicates.  Say a person has a similar idea to another.  Should they create a new suggestion? Well no! Why not comment on the existing suggestion and build on it?  The original creator might like your swing on it better.  Take these two (here and here) for example.  Same concept, different execution.
  4. A search engine.  Because there are so many duplicates, useless entries and poor titles, its nigh on impossible to scroll through to find out if your idea is unique.  I’m assuming most people just don’t bother because of the hassle.  A quick search of the title *AND* the content would lower the amount of duplicate entries.
  5. If the title the user chose is not a good indication of what their actual suggestion is, change it.  Put in the first sentence of the body.
  6. Allow users to approve or disapprove a suggestion while reading it.  Anyone else find it annoying that you have to click on the entry to read it, then go back to the first page to say whether you liked it or not?  The system is a little bit backwards if you ask me, because it encourages people to judge by the title and not read the full suggestion.
  7. Last, but certainly the most important: If an admins see an idea that they approve of or like, they should pass it on to the other admins.  These suggestions should be moved to another category.

The suggestion box in its current state is a stagnant pool; gems hidden among the weeds and dirt.  Staff wouldn’t have to employ HALF of the things I’ve mentioned here to vastly improve its functionality.

Now, if you aren’t sick of hearing about the Suggestion Box just yet, take a gander at some of these suggestions about the suggestions :)

Some suggestions need to be culled. 

Commenting suggestions

Create Categories for Suggestion

Suggestion filter and/or rule set

Ability to separate your own suggestions