FEEDBACK: How can Yoomoot be improved?

I think i am lost here.  i don't know what i am looking at.  is this a conversation?

this place is Too Complicated.  :)   I think - can't tell for sure  :)  for example, down below where I am writing this, there are a bunch of things like "who is allowed to edit this question".  On systems I build, that IS a design issue -- but I don't stick it right in front of the user. That's too techie -- who cares -- what I want to do is get to the point.  What are we talking about here?    (big smile here)

So -- apparently I am missing the point. If people actually want to "talk to each other" -- there are a ton of simple tools to do that.  The issues isn't the tools -- it's having something to say.  That is THE issue -- big-time.  Eleanor Dyson said that about 1992.  On the internet, "Content is king". Don't be hung up in the tools.  Have something to say -- have some content.  Google itself has almost no form or design, and it's the most powerful thing on the internet.  Craig's List doesn't even use a style sheet (as far as I can tell by glancing at it) -- but it supports zillions of things....

I know, I know... it's the buzz word of the decade, but I think it's worth exploring. If I can access or link my account here to Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook, etc. it makes me more likely to contribute. It connects my existing social circles to new ones, that kind of integration allows me to carry over my existing social capital.

I'm making a lot of suggestions and demands, many of which may not be practical... but why not think big? Right?

Gmail/Google
Color me hipster, but I love my gmail account... similarly, I love my Google Voice account, despite the fact that it doesn't get nearly the traffic that I wish it did. How can I search my address book contents here? How can I integrate my moots with my email compositions? Does it have to be a static link? Or can I respond to a moot via email (this could be any email client really)? What can I attach? Can embed google widgets? What about google docs? Responding to a question with a linked google docs spreadsheet could be increasingly powerful... especially if that's linked to a form that collects data from users.
Twitter
I love cross app integration... facebook status updated via twitter is brilliant. Is there a way to allow users to automatically post tweets about their latest moots? Similarly, could I tweet to a moot? If the question was simple enough, could I designate a twitter account that was directed towards a selected moot that I was following?
Facebook
Like Tiwtter, how do I share with friends/family/co-workers the moots that I've posted, or responded to? Can I embed a moot on facebook (also, can I embed a moot in blogger or wordpress?). Maybe users can't respond from within facebook, but at least they can see what I'm writing and talking about... they can see the conversation. Can I find groups or contacts? Can I seamlessly integrate the photos/video content from facebook into a moot?
Blogger & Wordpress
Can moots be RSS friend? Can they be embedded in a blog? Can I easily direct readers to a moot? Can I encourage them to respond to my ideas/concepts by asking a moot.
Catch-All
Following the trend of Twitter and Facebook, how can I @a_user that I want to include in my thoughts?

Delicious

Exactly like how facebook now does it

Thanks to raganmd for inspiring this suggestion.

It's a pain to have to have to rollover an image link just to see the thumbnail and detracts from reading an article. Also the image then encroaches on the text which looks messy.

How would one invite others to a moot - that is the critical issue for me - that you want to invite many to the moot - but how to market the mooted question as it were... i guess the idea is to pose and issue and then to get as many useful comments as poss... how to get those with an interest in...  and expertise in the area...  to view and contribute is going to be something to work on.
– glynelwyn

Not dissimilar to wave's ability to add collaborators, it'd be great if I could tag a moot with a user's handle to get their attention. More than just linking to a user's profile page, I'd like to be able to get specific input from users who I trust and I know are experts.
– raganmd

I was thinking that the problem with ordering moots by newness (or recently popular stuff) is that old moots get buried forever, whereas Yoomoot is supposed to be about continuously revising good stuff, not needlessly creating new stuff.

They could be ordered by popularity (with an alternative 'new' tab), but this would result in the most popular getting more popular and the new quickly disappearing.

So I wondered whether it would be better to have 'most recently recommended' so that whenever anyone recommends something, it goes straight to the top of the list. You would see the most recent stuff (because new moots are auto-recommended by the user) but you would also see old moots appear, whenever a user recommends it for the first time.


Unanswered questions:

• What would the tab be called?
• Would it result in too many old moots being seen, so not being useful for people who subscribed to the category for a long time?
• Should it be the default tab? for the homepage? For category profiles? For the favorite categories interface?

Change the heading ‘New Answer’ in a person’s profile to ‘Suggestion’ or anything appropriate that doesn’t denote: The End; as this is the danger I speak about elsewhere namely that Yoomoot communicates to newbies like me that that it's about answers rather than exploration. In other words that Yoomoot is close-ended rather than open-ended; a conclusion I reached after noting that the questions listed in each person’s profile had been 'answered'which led me to understand or conclude = full-stop, finito, The End. 

The ability to access the site via a dedicated app (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) would make me more likely to participate. I think long responses require the convenience of sitting down at a computer, but I'd like the ability to mark questions for later contribution while I'm on my commute to work or eating lunch.

[We plan to implement this in the future, but there may be a long wait – cojadate]

Let's say we have no category called 'scarlett johannson' but then in six months time, we notice we have 1,000 moots about Scarlett Johansson. It's definitely time for a 'scarlett johansson' category. Right now it would take forever to add those moots. So I suggest... librarian mode.

If I turned on librarian mode, this would happen:

• all visible moots (except those in the discussion browser), whether summarized in detailed would appear with a checkbox.
• Four buttons would appear somewhere
• Add category to checked moots
• Remove category from checked moots
• Add label to checked answers
• Remove label from checked answers
• This process would work similarly label-adding in gmail
  

Create a Yoomoot plug in for wordpress (and others) that would allow bloggers to have Yoomoot comments (like disqus). Messy responses seem to be a problem, not just isolated to discussion boards.  Perhaps those questions would be reproduced on the main Yoomoot site, or not.  But, bringing content to Yoomoot seems like a much more difficult task than taking Yoomoot to content.

Some things I have noticed:

• The return message for a successful password reset is in red. Red usually indicates a problem.
• Emails are in html format and are difficult to read, darkish font on a slighter darker background.  [update: I think I was viewing the email in Evolution email client on Ubuntu. But it may have been mail on the iPhone. I will take note the next time the newsletter comes through.]

cojadate replies: Thanks for taking the time to give feedback. The colour of the password-reset should be black. It's a mistake which we hadn't spotted. Cheers! We'll investigate the email readability. Probably was just a matter of not testing it on enough monitors.