User:Brokunn/Guild Wars Feedback Community

Advantages

Vote abuse prevention

In a public community with open registration there is always the possibility that people can break the system. There are a few things you can do with Grupthink:

• Integrate with an existing closed member database

Using our remote authentication feature, you can connect your feedback community to an existing member database. Let's say you have customers who pay for subscriptions to an online service. You could connect your grupthink site to that database. This would allow your customers to skip registration and use their existing logins at your feedback community. Furthermore, your community could be restricted to only those active customers who are in good standing, preventing people from adding multiple accounts freely.

In other words, if ArenaNet adopted the site, users could log in to the GWFC with their existing player username/passwords – thus eliminating almost all possibility of manipulating voting results. No other voting system that I can find (including Mediawiki extensions) has this potential. --Brokunn

• Create "control" groups

Create private groups for trusted members in you community, where you can discuss topics and allow users to report suspicious activity.

• "No tolerance" policy

In most cases, it will be obvious when someone has tried to distort results. Grupthink gives you and your staff the ability to take immediate corrective action. Grupthink also allows you to investigate user attributes so you can confidently lock or remove abusive accounts, and even ban IP's.

Note: In cases where having a wide-open, public community is desirable, the threat of "point gaming" often doesn't outweigh the benefit of allowing fast, free registration and getting more minds involved. In fact, the larger the community, the harder it is to distort results. Abusive behavior will happen, but it doesn't have to rule your community management strategy.

Reporting/metrics

• Export Data to Spreadsheets

As an administrator, you will have access to exclusive reports designed to help you mine the rich data in your database. Currently, you can export full voting and answer reports into your spreadsheet program to run detailed, custom analysis of community participation.

• Member reports

Administrators can view all submitted information on members (except encrypted data, such as passwords)

Easy moderation

Most communities will require a small amount of moderation to prevent abuse (e.g., spamming and harassment). Typically, even for communities with thousands of members, a single moderator can accomplish these tasks in just a few hours of participation each week.

Grupthink allows you to promote members in your community as moderators, to whom you can give specific, elevated permissions (e.g., editing topics and locking users).

To get the most out of a feedback community, an administrator should play an active role in establishing codes of conduct and creating incentives for member participation. The time required to be an effective community manager varies widely depending on community size and topic.

Custom permissions

You can create custom classes (eg, "Master") to distinguish members that have only the permissions you give them.

For example, you could create a class called "Contributor" whose members can edit topics and answers, but cannot modify members or see the administrative panel.

Spam/abuse control

The best way to handle abuse is to remove it promptly. Your administrators (and any other members with the following elevated permissions) will be a able to:

• Lock members
• Remove members
• Ban IPs or IP ranges
• Edit or remove any content sumbitted to your community

In communities with open registration enabled, there is no sure-fire way to keep a specific individual from re-registering under a separate email address. However, if the problematic user comes back, posing as a constructive member in your community, you've done your job!

Rumor/expectation control

It is tempting to think that community members are more likely to become "mutinous" if they have a clearer means to communicate as a group. However, we believe that community members are most likely to become discontent when they feel like their voices aren't being heard.

Grupthink improves the communication channel between you and your members. By overcoming the typical chaos of online discussion, Grupthink will help the opinions of your members become clearer. Because of this, you will be more equipped than ever to respond to member feedback directly, "once and for all".

Furthermore, you and your members will be more able to distinguish between "vocal minorities" and "vocal majorities" based on reaction points.

Privacy options

Grupthink provides many options to suit your privacy needs, whether you want a "walled garden" or an open forum. Here are a few options:

• Private Community

Unregistered visitors will not be able to get past the login screen and self-registration is not allowed. As with public communties, you can invite thousands of users at a time via email, or through our single-click, "invite-via-URL" feature.

• Public Community

Unregistered visitors and search engines can view your community and all public topics. You can still create private groups and private topics within a public community.

• Public Community with Integrated Logins

Allow visitors and search engines to see public discussion in your community, but restrict membership to an existing database. If you have an existing member database, you can allow your customers to skip registration and use their existing logins at your feedback community, while disallowing visitor self-registration. You can create private groups and private topics within a public community.

• Private Community with Integrated Logins

Allow visitors ans search engines to see public discussion in your community, but restrict membership to an existing database. If you have an existing member database, you can allow your customers to skip registration and use their existing logins at your feedback community, while disallowing visitor self-registration.

Easy invitations

You have many options to kick-start your community:

• Mass invitation by e-mail: Use our invitation tool import a list of email addresses and send our personalized invites to each recipient.
• "Single Click" Invite: Provide a unique link to each invitee which, when clicked, will instantly create the user account and can optionally take them to the Grupthink topic of your choice.
• Integrate with your existing community: Members of you existing community can use their existing logins and bypass registration altogether. Our remote authentication option allows you to sync a new Grupthink community with your existing community. Your existing community platform will always be authoritative in this case, and Grupthink will not store user passwords.

More than just a survey

Grupthink is community-powered feedback, where your questions can become conversations. In it's most basic form, Grupthink can indeed be used as a survey tool. However, the capabilities of Grupthink go way beyond the limitations of surveys, because it is social. We believe that, although it is important to ask questions, some of the richest information can be found by listening to people talk to one another.

Surveys are great...

• If you have the time to create a polished list of carefully-phrased questions
• If you know, in advance, all or most of the potential answers to questions.
• If you only need to see results for a single moment in time.
• If you have an audience that is receptive to surveys

Grupthink is great...

• If you want to give your members a chance to interact with you and each other regarding their ideas and opinions.
• When you have a questions for which you don't know all the potential answers or don't want to risk biasing the results with your preconceptions.
• If you want a chance to address your members around a particular idea.
• If you don't always have time to build and manage surveys
• If you want to let your respondents rank their answers in order their importance, so you can see even richer results.
• If you want to demonstrate that your organization is open to all questions and ideas

Why doesn't Grupthink use a simple "5-star" (or similar) voting system?

There are a few reasons:

• By letting people create their own ranked lists of answers, new social possibilities for sharing those lists exist (click here for an example).
• The resolution of the voting data is much more rich. For example, you can make other comparisons when viewing reports such as "Among people who voted for an auction house, a level cap was almost always ranked below the option of being able to swim..."
• Ranking an answer just a few places above or below in your ballot can have significant impacts on the overall results, especially in small groups, . With simpler voting systems this fidelity can be lost.