contacting members of this community
I don't know the protocol for this or whether its possible, but are we able to contact other members of the community directly through this site or should we take that to a different venue?
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Answers
Right now there isn't a good way unless that person put their twitter/facebook/email on their bio page. The good news is that I wrote the q&a software this site uses, and we can make it better based on your feedback. How do you think it should work? Do you want some sort of "private message" within this site. Do you want it to be easier to publish your social network accounts on your profile. What kind of privacy and controls do you think are appropriate?
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Alright so I hope I didn't open up a can of worms for you. Before I tried to contact someone here, I wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking an unofficial rule. But yes, I do think it would be valuable to be able to direct message people here. I was reading someone's question and now want to know more about the business they are setting up so it seems like a person to person dialogue would make sense. Also, I do think having the option of more easily publishing our social network accounts would be great. For something like that, it could be as easy as having the option of a standard signature line on all our comments or questions like in some email programs, with which we can do what we choose-for some their social media accounts or for others a quote etc.
In the direct message system, I guess one pitfall could be unsolicited/spam messages. I don't know how big this community will become, but potentially you could have people actively searching for business without providing much of value here. I don't know how you both open the door to direct person to person contact, and limit the usability to avoid those kinds of messages too.
I've given this a little more thought to this and think that I'll create a way to send other members a message, but will restrict this functionality to members that have a minimum amount of reputation. That way it would be harder to spam.
— MattI think some kind of internal email would be really useful.
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I think some kind of internal email would be really useful.
I've just put up another post with an error. Allowing users to edit published posts would be good. It might also encourage the posts to be improved over time.
I agree, editing is already on the list. Also, I've also talked with Brandon about having a "wiki" answer that could be edited by anyone.
— MattI have another thought
I understand that you are prioritizing modifications and agree it is important you do this so I will understand if you don't look into this yet.
Anyway heres my feedback
I have posted a number of questions so far and some I may not have closed off properly (eg rated the answers properly). If lots of member do this then the quality of the whole system will suffer.
If default login presented me with my unanswered questions then I would be more likely to update them. I think this would help the product.
Hope it helps
Paul