Question

As I said before in mathslover's post, I just wanted to make one for this alone.

Answer 1

OpenStudy is a world class site that enables students to learn like never before, it enables us to teach students in ways that they find "fun" and interactive, ways that get to students and help them learn, this is essentially as @Preetha has stated, the cure to "The Silent Epidemic". It's a website that could do so much more on a large scale, schools provide the curriculum but we provide the nest in which these failing students can learn, prosper, and achieve something in their life's, but with what we have now we are only servicing a handful of what we could do, we have the cure Preetha, but do we have means to distribute this cure? Without prepping our servers for more we cannot possibly service anyone. SO here is my 5 point plan:

1.) Upgrade OS
i.) Upgrade servers.
ii.) Design new UI that is fast, fluid, modern, sleek, and User friendly.
iii.) Design new "Back end", get the server prepped with code that can handle.
iiii.) Fix bugs, add new features, and make it reliable and fast.
iiiii.) Add a tutorial like twitter does for new users

2.) Self Sustaining
i.) Add more ads but in areas tat don't disturb.
ii.) Add more features for subscription so users actually subscribe.
iii.) Get another seed funding for this.*

3.) Rebuild Our Family
i.) Get new developers as admins (ones that are going to be upgrading OS)
ii.) Get new admins (Marketing directors, community managers, development, etc)
iii.) Qualify new mods, (If we are to grow we need more than a handful of mods)
iiii.) Get more ambassadors (We will need more to greet the oncoming masses)

4.) New Ranking System
i.) Tweak SS bugs and enhance it (But still leave the SS system up)
ii.) New badge or merit system (First question asked, first person helped, etc...)^
iii.) Add more ranks (Rookie, lifesaver, etc...)
iiii.) Add more colors than the simple 5 tier level (Orange, light orange, etc...)²

5.) Get The Clientele
i.) Use some money to Advertise.
ii.) Get schools to allow students to put up flyers around campus.
iii.) Get users to invite friends onto OS. ³
iiii.) Use FB and Twitter to grow our popularity †

*Get another kickstart seed fund to make this a reality. ^Just to show achievements and entice new users to stay and achieve new goals. ²Just add more colors than the existing 5 (Orange, light orange, gold, light green, green). ³Give users some sort of reward or merit/badge for inviting more users and maybe have a contest each month to see who can do the most invites. †Give users incentives for liking our page and recommending it to friends. Also use the page more often and post new things.

Well there you have it, my 5 point plan, hope you like it and I am always ready to debate it and add on to it. But Preetha, none of this can be done without putting full focus onto this. And most importantly, if we don't get another seed fund, it's never going to happen, a hackathon can only do so much, it cannot do everything described up there. But now is the time to do this, not next month, not next year, not when the finals are coming, NOW is the time. We cannot spend another year with a deteriorating site.

Answer 2

If we are to do this we would also have to control our cheating, if we do this we will demonstrate to every school out there that we are a website that is here to HELP students, not one to help them cheat! SO let's get together and start this now!

Answer 3

1) Bottom of every question, add "Donate" button

2) Introduced a Premium Version with added feature

Answer 4

We don't want to turn this into a church mod where we pass the basket every minutes asking for cash xD but yes features SOMEWHAT like those would be excellent like the premium version and maybe a donate button but only in some areas.

Answer 5

and maybe ,

Appreciate your dedicated and long time contributors/helpers instead of ones who agrees with everything you say.

Answer 6

Dat comment xD

Answer 7

One of the reason a lot of core helpers/contributors left because they were treated rudely every time they had differing opinions.

Answer 8

That is something I do agree with, it's openstudy, a collaborating site, if it's a bad idea ignore it but if it's a good idea take it to heart.

Answer 9

Truee ^

Answer 10

Boy...chmvijay is writing a book.....

Answer 11

Hai @JA1
I do agree with your thoughts and concern about OPEN STUDY
its one of MY FAVORITE BLOG,Every morning, i first open the OPEN STUDY BLOG followed by gmail and facebook.....

* It is good to have mobile app soon :)
and Serious meeting every month :)
* Objectives of that month and implementation of those objectives have to be be discussed in meeting:)
* Renewal of ambassador and moderators should be done regularly:)
* Some Material should be there to show how open study works and its uses to children and How its different than other sites so that we can send those too our friends, students and schools and colleges so that more students will join:) , it may be in the form of poster or PPT
* We should not expect all should be done by @preetha , we can also share some of the the work among ourselves moderators and Ambassadors, we should work like one team.
*Last time i attended eagerly one meeting but i don't know what are the out comings of that meeting ?
*Some times i feel its only american students blog, let us make students to know about it in all countries,mean throughout the world :)

Hope all Users of open study will get it positively and help in Boosting of the OS to higher level.

regards
VIJAYKUMAR (chmvijay)

Answer 12

HEY by the way i am not a boy @JA1 :P

Answer 13

* he didn't call you a boy

Answer 14

@chmvijay I agree with everything you said, one thing though, I did not say Preetha should do all this, I said we should get new admins to help with this, it's a 5 point plan, you can't do one thing without the other, also I know your a girl in english we use the saying "Boy" to describe something like "Wow" :)

Answer 15

ok fine dude never mind :)

Answer 16

:)

Answer 17

Thommy any thoughts? I see you up there just staring xD

Answer 18

On my phone currently. I would write a paragraph but no computer available unfortunately :(

Answer 19

Oh, LOL ok then :)

Answer 20

look back at into old feedback section.

"we dislike being told how to do our job"

Answer 21

I got more but I am not going through it

Answer 22

you can go through you self

Answer 23

LOL

Answer 24

Yes I did go into some of the old post, it's somewhat true from what I ahve seen

Answer 25

and there was this whole stint about
"admins being very busy working on something"

Answer 26

admins are gone,what are they talking about lol

Answer 27

Really, you folks do me proud. That means I really appreciate this line of thinking. It is true I have been managing a lot myself - of late. This offer of help is awesome. The suggestions are great. I am going to post a town hall meeting where those who contributed here and we can all discuss this. It will be a link and only allow the first t25 people in to a chat. You need a phone or internet to join. What do you think?

Answer 28

That would be a great idea actually, of course, if the date is permitting for us.

Answer 29

Preetha what about getting more/new admins *cough* *cough* Developers *cough* *cough* or is that not an option right now?

Answer 30

That would help alleviate your strain and would actually get some of those above mentioned things accomplished.....

Answer 31

Isn't there already a subscription system? @modphysnoob

Answer 32

Yeah.

I stand to what I wrote on @mathslover's post.
http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/52104acfe4b0450ed75d00f6

Besides, @chmvijay I totally agree with you, but it's hard to program for OpenStudy when they don't assign us as programmers. We can try as much as we want, but even when I try to help like with their mobile app for their competition, and won, http://blog.openstudy.com/ they still don't program it, even though I suggest that I could give a shot.

In other words, OpenStudy never follows through with their promises when it comes to things like hackathons and mobile apps or anything to help program OpenStudy to be a better place.

Answer 33

This is great

Answer 34

lol @SWAG going for the classic minimalist approach... lol XD although this really is great, I have like nothing more to add other than I completely agree with everything @JA1 said... but this is going to take work and dedication, and teamwork on the part of dedicated OS users...more posts should be made here in feedback so all of us concerned people can receive updates in the status of the 5-point plan or whatever developments are currently happening at OS.
P.S. : Can't wait for the mobile app :)

Answer 35

Guys, especially you @dumbsearch2 I pointed out that we need dedication and a seeding fund for this, this fund could come from numerous places but we need it, after we get it we can invest in programmers.

Answer 36

very interesting && promising ideas, all of them.

Answer 37

IF, and onyl IF they are actually carried through, I have done other post's like this but I still don't see progress ....

Answer 38

yep, the ideas are set, all we need is some action.

Answer 39

I hope so *weeps*

Answer 40

hopefully the OS gods hear your cries lol

Answer 41

Well preetha is like the god of OS LOL

Answer 42

haha you got a point there...

Answer 43

I guess them 'gods' are just too busy.

Answer 44

whatever happened to the hackathon..... to me, it seems like progress on OS is being delayed.... and when the "Owl be back, don't let your heads spin" message appears, updates should actually be getting done lol I don't have any idea what happens during those period of time in which OS is down

Answer 45

The thing is @some_someone we don't have programmers like we used to, and @Jamierox4ev3r we have no one to update the screen to something else so they slap on the usual screen but nothing gets updated only fixed lol

Answer 46

The hackthon got hit head on by a train going 300

Answer 47

yeah some of the admins, which were also some programmers are well gone now; or hardly hardly hardly online.

Answer 48

yupp like shadowfiend, matt fuery, and farmdawgnation

Answer 49

EXACTLY

Answer 50

I was looking at the old Feedback post the other day and it was sad, every single post got answered by an admin, now it's just empty v.v

Answer 51

lol back in the day..... @JA1 do you sound a touch nostalgic or is it just me?

Answer 52

cshalvey, chris, darthsid, JamesJ ... are also long gone...

Answer 53

I never met them but yes jamie, I wish I had :(

Yupp all those wonderful people... GONE ;-;

Answer 54

how do you know they were wonderful if u never met them.... >.> i wish I had the privilege of meeting these aforementioned people .....oh well :|

Answer 55

I met them but not in the context of back then lol

Answer 56

oh......man I feel as if I came on OS shen all the cool people left.... D: darn

Answer 57

They did D:

Answer 58

*when

Answer 59

lol type

Answer 60

Good Ideas @JA1 and @chmvijay .

Answer 61

14 medals??? :O

Answer 62

10* lol

Answer 63

What What What? @chmvijay : You're a girl ?

Answer 64

lol yes

Answer 65

Ah, NOT POSSIBLE , I always thought, he is he ... :D

Answer 66

guess this is an eye opener no? lol

Answer 67

haha... may be

Answer 68

I think he means he's not a boy, but a man :) since he's an adult

Answer 69

That could very much be true thom

Answer 70

can this thread die already?

Answer 71

It is, today to be exact :P

Answer 72

I just wanted to give it one more day before we depart

Answer 73

@thomaster ur right