Originally Posted by
SkiAdcock
One of the points I made in the like thread is that not all FTers will want a public accounting/viewing of likes given/received available to everyone. This obviously shows that masking that may not be an option, given that regular FTers are not involved in the trial but it's showing up anyway in our profiles. So
Quite frankly I think the poll should have been completed first to determine whether to even move forward with a trial.
Sharon, my post was directed at readers, just confirming your information to them. Of course I know that you know what you're talking about, but other readers might appreciate confirmation of that.
The current internal test was initiated by Carol on her own. Blame her if you want but I don't. It's helpful for TalkBoard to see one example of what we're discussing. Don't take this as some beta test when it's just "give us what you've got off the shelf with no customization". We don't even have the word Like changed to Helpful, for goodness sake. That doesn't matter for an internal look at the functionality.
As to whether the counts are visible to others or not, I don't know whether or not that is easily configurable. However I do know that one feature we want is not yet available: enabling the button for some forums but not others. Given that some development work will probably be needed, it makes sense for us to list the set of features we want without regard to whether they are currently implemented.
The TalkBoard can then, eventually, express an opinion of whether or not we recommend proceeding with the capabilities IB is willing to implement. Right now the whole thing is quite hypothetical.
We are still trying to discover what would be the best version of reader feedback. Then we will decide whether we think that version is good enough to use. I have promoted this discussion, but I don't presume that the final answer will be Yes. For example, if we can't disable the feature by forum, I would expect any sitewide trial to fail badly in OMNI/PR.
I am confident that TalkBoard will reach the right answer for FlyerTalk on this issue, even if that answer is to make no change. We still have a long way to go to gather all the information necessary to make that decision. IMHO gathering more information is better. It's good to find and describe all the flaws and hazards, but it's not helpful to treat every attempt as the final proposal which must be defeated. That's not information gathering.
I'd be surprised if anything other than a short trial happens on reader feedback any time before next Autumn. We need to take the time to do it right.