Question

OpenStudy Feedback Session 4/25/2011 - Come one come all and talk with the OpenStudy Team!

Answer 1

Hello!

Answer 2

Here we are folks!

Answer 3

hey

Answer 4

hello

Answer 5

Hi.

Answer 6

BOO!

Answer 7

We just made some changes. What do you all think?

Answer 8

I think... there should be a link to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ somewhere on the page so that people don't waste other people's time

Answer 9

Hello all! We just released some new features - a new study group design, new reward features like medals and achievements - what do you all think?

Answer 10

Pretty nice. I'd like the font size to be a bit larger (tiny print is hard on the eyes with small indexes or exponents).

Answer 11

who has gmial

Answer 12

hmmm so far so good except im waiting to u do the feature so that we can view our asked questions!! ^_^

Answer 13

@tryceo good suggestion - we may contact them to see if we can do that

Answer 14

the achievements is a nice touch, but glitchy
i have the achievement for answering 100 questions, but not the one for 10

Answer 15

haha yep =) it's coming this week @I<3Fun

Answer 16

What would make you tell your friends about OpenStudy?

Answer 17

Yeah, I agree. It'd be nice to be able to keep track of questions in an easy to use interface (either ones you've asked or ones you've answered).

Answer 18

chiaroscuro whoops... That's definitely a problem we'll look into, thanks!

Answer 19

i don't if it is kindof problem on my part, but everything I answer a question I have to leave to question and come back to type something new.

Answer 20

polpak, as Chris mentioned, that's definitely coming to a profile near you sometime this week (both questions you asked and questions you've answered).

Answer 21

see i have to come back

Answer 22

shadowfiend

Answer 23

http://www.wolframalpha.com/ tell people to use this ok?

Answer 24

myininaya we've seen that occasionally, but not as persistently as you're saying. What browser do you use?

Answer 25

I would really like a way to disable the auto-preview and seeing when people are typing, as the box for typing in jumps around alot as people start typing things, or when you're writing in an equation. I'd prefer a preview button I can click once I've finished to show the preview, but doesn't change as I'm typing.

Answer 26

fox fire

Answer 27

Notifications do not load. Please fix.

Answer 28

or fire fox lol whatever

Answer 29

myininaya, okay, we'll have a look. We haven't been seeing that problem much lately, so it's very surprising.

Answer 30

shadowfind

Answer 31

ok

Answer 32

Do you guys have the source code for this website? Cause it is somewhat buggy... There are a lot of misposts?

Answer 33

thx

Answer 34

i agree with polpak on the previewing
also, this might be my browser (chrome)
after i type an equation, typing regular words (or even equations) makes the textbook jump

Answer 35

hey tryceo - what do you mean by misposts?

Answer 36

It does that in firefox and chrome chiaroscuro.

Answer 37

tryceo what do you mean by misposts? (And yes, all the code on the site except for the math typesetting is written by us.)

Answer 38

polpak, fair, we're looking at a way to keep the box steady, but I haven't quite gotten all the bugs ironed out of the implementation.

Answer 39

Will i get a notification for every post that comes after mine now? WTF?? Why would you make it that way????

Answer 40

When I answer 1 question.. it would sometimes appear on another post.. It disappears when you refresh the page, but stilll.. I don't like bugs.

Answer 41

could you somehow make these open sessions separate somehow?
i just got 42 notifications :D

Answer 42

shadow

Answer 43

What new features would you all like to see?

Answer 44

chiaroscuro, yeah, that's a related symptom that I also hope to fix with the aforementioned change.

Answer 45

tryceo, yeah, that's a known one. We're posting a fix in the next few days.

Answer 46

hey shadow how can I ask you somethign one on one

Answer 47

But you will get notifications on the site.

Answer 48

I'd like to be able to ignore people to be honest. There are a few individuals who are either bothersome or rude that I'd just prefer not to deal with (mary1000 in this thread for example)

Answer 49

myininaya we don't have private messaging, but if you want to ask something outside of this context, post it to the openstudy feedback group and I'll have a look :)

Answer 50

lols ditto

Answer 51

ok anyone else missing the ignore feature?

Answer 52

It would be nice to have messaging system, as currently the only way to privately contact someone is to give your email, but you have to do it on a public question so everyone would have it.

Answer 53

Also, private messaging is a great feature that you should add.
It's not hard, just implement a few buttons and download the scripts for messaging.

Answer 54

okay, i'm totally for hte ignore.....

Answer 55

Seriously.. ignore.. This is why.

Answer 56

i just wanted to say how do we deal with spammers i have only seen one, but it is annoying

Answer 57

Yes ignore is cool

Answer 58

;)

Answer 59

yes i agree with Tryceo bc i mean when u ask a question certain people either rly rly help u or they just confuse u more :P so its good to be able to ask the people that rly rly help u ^^

Answer 60

Or if there was another way to self-moderate I'd be ok with that too.

Answer 61

shadow, or chris,
you said i shouldn't get notifications if i'm on the thread...
i'm on the question and i'm still getting notifications
browser problem

Answer 62

yes i am too

Answer 63

polpak how do you mean self moderate?

Answer 64

We're actually working on on-site moderation, yes. We'd love to hear thoughts.

Some ideas:
- community moderators who can delete posts and suspend users
- everyone can `report abuse' and after a certain threshold (say three reports) the question/post auto-hides or auto-suspends for a user

Answer 65

Woah.. this is a company? didn't know that... How do you even make money? Ad spaces?

Answer 66

Well, like redit for example, you can downvote responses and after a certain threshold they would not be visible unless you click a link to see them etc.

Answer 67

chiaroscuro you shouldn't be getting *emailed* notifications, but you will get them in the browser, sorry :/

Answer 68

Thumbs up for reddit!

Answer 69

And to be clear, we have stuff in the works to reduce notifications, too. Including only emailing you once per question until you visit it again.

Answer 70

oh no biggie, i understood you wrong, thanks
i turned off my email notifications :P
thanks

Answer 71

Only notifying you once per question until you visit again*

Answer 72

polpak exactly that concept, yes.

Answer 73

@tryceo - we're actually not making money at the moment - we're funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the NGLC initiative by the Gates foundation. While we're a for-profit, our main goal is to build the most engaging, free, open learning community we can - and then worry about it. But what you use today will always remain free.

Answer 74

this might be count as spam but...
I GOT A MEDAL FOR THIS QUESTION
^_^

Answer 75

Also, you should add private messaging.

Answer 76

you know what would be cool. an instant messenger you could type math equations on easily.

Answer 77

myininaya - currently we manually moderate by deleting inappropriate content. We also, when necessary, suspend or ban users.

Answer 78

Tryceo, I see you refer WolframAlpha a lot. Do you think WRA explains answers better than people?

Answer 79

lols mininaya, i imagine that to be very hard

Answer 80

instant messenger would allow private chat

Answer 81

myininaya there's actually already some scripts to add that functionality to Google Chat; I forget what the project is called.

Answer 82

I will sometimes refer to wolframalpha to show a graph or something, but I think most students will go there if they just want answers. They should be coming here if they want explanations of answers.

Answer 83

WRA answers way better than people, because they don't make mistakes and they show the steps for 90% of the problems

Answer 84

tryceo, not attacking you or anything..but if you like wra so much....why are you here??

Answer 85

Private chat has quite a few issues, including concerns with abuse. What's the kind of thing you would think you'd want to discuss over private chat?

Answer 86

Not really though. Sometimes the steps can be confusing, and other times it will (for example) pull something from a table of integrals instead of showing how that formula is derived.

Answer 87

Also @chris... You should really add a PM system... here is a PM script I just found.. http://pmsys.sourceforge.net/

Take a look at it or something. I'm pretty sure there are tons out there, but the implementation should be of little hassle.

Answer 88

in the equation section can you add equations for combinatorics?

Answer 89

I don't think implementation of private messaging is the problem as much as making sure it fits with the use case of the site.

Answer 90

No one is here trying to learn how to prove integration formulas, if they wanted that, they can go to wikipedia.

Answer 91

polpak, tryceo, precisely. That's why I'm asking about the specific interactions you would like to resort to private messaging for. We're not opposed to it, and effort isn't the problem. It's a question of whether we think it's important to the fundamental OpenStudy experience.

Answer 92

@polpak that's correct - that it's needed for our site and it won't be abused by our users (e.g. harassment) . We want to be very sure that stuff isn't happening on our site.

Answer 93

But people can be abusive in public chat just as easily.

Answer 94

deeprony7, you can use any LaTeX in the equation editor, but we only have toolbar buttons for a subset of the functionality.

Answer 95

polpak yes, but it's easier to catch then, and particularly as we add the moderation features it's easier to take care of.

Answer 96

I don't know why it won't be good? Most of the time, questions will get lost in the answered place, and when you have a private messaging, you can fully engage with the student, and answer any private follow-up questions.

Answer 97

Polpak, people are much less abusive in the public chat, just because they know others are watching. Also, public chat allows us moderators to easily curb offensive content.

Answer 98

Additionally, the public aspect is typically a strong disincentive (though it doesn't eliminate abuse entirely by any means).