The website's layout
9% (7 votes)
Criteria for blogs to count towards the contest
16% (13 votes)
Add more options for creative writing
12% (10 votes)
Number of scholarships being handed out
25% (20 votes)
Give me something to write about! (i.e. Topic of the Week)
22% (18 votes)
Some other feature/problem
9% (7 votes)
Nothing, I love it! Leave it alone!
2% (2 votes)
Stop putting up these polls, or poll me about more important issues.
5% (4 votes)
Total votes: 81
There's always room for improvement, right?
So, if you could pick something to improve about Progressive U, what would it be and how would you improve it? Be sure to let us know the rationale behind your choice so we can discuss your ideas!
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"when you have nothing else to say, "Fwonk" is always the perfect thing."
"yeah well, fwonk"
--Devon
Fanaile Essence,
A-Team Member
There are too many choices! (lol) I chose "Number of scholarships being handed out." We don't need to have more scholarships winners but more awards giving to other people for different activities. I'm not sure how to explain it. Like, there might be a blogger who deserves some sort of awards even though he or she does not have a lot of points compared to the winners of this contest. Maybe a $25 gift card? haha
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http://www.mylot.com/?ref=truelife
Okay...
So, just to be sure I understand you, smaller incentives/awards - not necessarily in the form of a scholarship - to someone who makes a difference at Progressive U without necessarily posting enough to win?
Like maybe the person who gets the most nominations to be featured during the semester (just for example)?
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"when you have nothing else to say, "Fwonk" is always the perfect thing."
"yeah well, fwonk"
--Devon
Fanaile Essence,
A-Team Member
Yes! I am not sure what the awards will be for though. A feature blogger do not get any tangible awards for being chosen, right? Maybe we can have a t-shirt or a mug? lol It will be a little thing to motivate bloggers to keep on writing. I see some bloggers give up on Progressive U because they believe they will not win the contest and have so-why-bother attitude. Will something like that be too costly?
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http://www.mylot.com/?ref=truelife
We could have a Blogger Congeniality award too. Or an award for blog with most reads.
http://www.progressiveu.org/user/bamers
Great suggestion. If 'more scholarships' means giving extra smaller rewards to good writers, then I'd agree with that as my first pick. I think I've mentioned it before, but a few awards given out only a few times per year, for all the work these writers do, isn't generous enough. More prizes and money would be a step in the right direction. Also, make them cooler prizes than t-shirts and coffee mugs, if possible :-)
My next suggestion would have been closest to the creative writing option. I didn't pick this one, though, because high school creative writing is usually tedious to read. I say...maybe advertise ProgU as a place that encourages humor writing once in a while, and maybe more such writers will be drawn here. maybe? it's a stretch. But the entries of EvolegnartsRd and ForenameSurname were some of the most entertaining entries I've ever found at ProgU, and it's clear that those entries weren't very concerned with politics.
Michael Allen Yarbrough (PBUH)
I agree that there should be different awards for different things and that might encourage more people to get involved and possible get more people being more actively working to get the awards.
I definitely think that we DON'T need a topic of the week. Creating that feature is more likely to make ProgressiveU dull and boring because there will be SO many posts about one thing. This is supposed to be a place of creativity correct? Let people create their own topics. I hate all the stupid topics on here sure, but I would hate seeing 50million posts that were ALL THE SAME.
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"We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less." --Colossians1:28
The Topic of the Week feature in developments is not a single topic. Rather, it's a series of very broad topics (we're hoping for 5 per week), with 2-3 questions to guide conversation. So even if everyone blogged on a topic, there would still be 10-15 different topics every week.
~C
Read the news
Nominate a featured blogger!
There are so many happenings in today's news -world.I will like to talk mych more and influence lives through this unique means.
People in burma, Iraq,Darfur and Afghanistan e.t.c are by no means different from us.Let us use this venue to put all agencies concerned in a talking room with a bid to changing many lives globally.
I couldn't decide so I picked Topic of the Week. Give bonus points to the blogger who has the best blog on that topic.
The ones I couldn't pick:
More creative writing options. I'm a poet, I love sharing my poetry. I've posted one or two pieces that have sort of a progressive message or subject. I would love to post more of it.
More scholarships: That'd be great. I don't know what your funding is, but more scholarships means more happy people.
http://www.progressiveu.org/user/bamers
Even though there wasn't an option called, "Three of the above", etc., I would like to change the number of scholarships being handed out, criteria for blogs to count towards the contest, and give me something to write about; why I would want to change the criteria for blogs to count towards the contest and give me something to write about is because sometimes I would run out of ideas to blog about.
I like the idea of more creative writing options.
I know right now people can come up and post all the creative writing they want, and that doesn't bother me at all, but it might be cool to have a section or a link or something devoted to creative writing.
Don't get me wrong, I love poetry and a creative piece here and there, but it's annoying sometimes when you click a link thinking it's going to be a political statement and you get all fired up to read it, but it ends up being a poem about someone's cat.
I don't know how to fix that... but maybe different labels for creative writing or something. I definitely has a purpose and a place at ProU, but I'm not sure that it should be thrown in the same melting pot as news statements and political arguments.
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Even though you could just click my picture :) http://progressiveu.org/blog/burningexample
One thing that drives me nuts is when people get into sub conversations and after four or five comments, the comment box is so skinny that it can only fit two or three words on it, making a fairly short comment look like it's three pages long. It's not as bad in IE as it is in Firefox (Firefox indents a little farther than IE, so IE lasts another two or three extra comments before becoming one word per line).
Another blog site I use has a pretty good system -- comments will be shown in expanded view until they are about three deep, then any comments after that will be collapsed. There are "parent" and "thread" options that allow you navigate to the source or the rest of the comments. The parent option will take you to the one the comment replies to (good for long discussions with a lot of people replying to a single comment). The thread option expands the collapsed comments in a new window (kind of like how replying to a specific comment opens a new window that just has the comment, except instead of the reply box, you have the other comments underneath it).
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
That was EXACTLY my issue. I'm not sure how it could be fixed without alot of work.
I'm afraid I was a computer technician, but mostly dealt with hardware, not software or programming.
Depending on what language was used to do it, it shouldn't be too complicated. They already have part of it with the other options of how it's displayed, but it does depend on how it was done and what language it was done in.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Our theme actually has something where you can just show the titles of the comments. Unfortunately, when it's used, you have to open a new window to read the comment, rather than it just expanding.
~C
Read the news
Nominate a featured blogger!
I saw that, but I find it rather clunky since I'd rather be able to read the first few of a sub conversation, then continue on if I choose to, and having to click on each one just to read even top layer comments is awkward. =/
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I think the SKINNY BOX!!! method works pretty well. Just write a new comment in the reply to box (like, reply to the whole blog) and just start the debate again and then post a link to it where the box is |---| <- that big. That's like 20 points right there for 1/2 the work as is usual.
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
I like it until it gets really tiny, but mostly because it'll take a response about as long as yours and make it look like it's three pages long before someone thinks to start anew.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Topic of the week might be fun. I don't know if it would get repetitive or anything, though.
Peace
Tahni
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"Tell me - if no one ever hears what you say, then why don't you shout it?" -- Floater