Navigating the KivaFriends Forum: Issues of Organization, Fragmentation, Etc.

[Guest]

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[Jill]

      I just now saw your post, Glenda.

     It might be that your idea would work.
     It would be nice to hear what other people might think about it.

     I don't know if this would be excessive,
but I'm wondering about....

      WHAT IF:
   We created Two Threads for trying to communicate with Kiva?

    One would be like the one you're suggesting, Glenda,
where anybody could post any question they wanted to raise with Kiva,

with the understanding that just because we may be creating a centralized location for asking
(maybe two centralized locations),
that doesn't automatically obligate Kiva to stop everything else and answer

      and we'd agree to leave the answering (and the commentary?) to Kiva.Org
on that thread.

        And then, the other one might be
either KivaFriends Calling Kiva.Org or something similar,
which would be reserved for questions that have demonstrably generated widespread interest,
as shown by the number of posts on those subjects that keep showing up in the Forum, and/or
by the threads sometimes almost exclusively devoted to those One Topic Issues.
Again, with this thread, too, if people decide this is a way worth trying,
we'd try to leave the Answering and the Commentary,
for the most part, anyway,
to Kiva and save ours for another thread.

      It still seems a little unwieldy, but maybe it would be a lot less unwieldy
than what we've had up to now, I don't know.

     Never heard back from Richard, Oli or Henry on all the conversation here, yesterday--
on whether I had totally missed their point or what?

     This Remains Totally Open for Discussion....

     and it would be great to get more feedback.

[RichardF]

Joe just posted a teaser about an FAQ section on the forum.  It might be a good idea to see what that looks like and then take it from there.

p.s. "Pinned" means the topic stays near the top of the page in the "Stickies" section of a board.

[Wood Fairy Glenda]

And what does "locked" mean, please? 

[Henry]

Locked means, noone can post in it.

off to a charity event....hope there is nothing to bid on to take my kiva pennies!

[RichardF]

...except who started it...

[wind5001]

Jill,

I believe that the problem with two threads (of which I'd thought first of all, too) is, that after a while we'll get confused. I am proceeding just like Glenda: I only enter the threads by looking at recent posts. So I have hardly a clue where I am at...and if I am not careful, it might happen that I post in the wrong of the two threads and the whole purpose is gone. Not on purpose, but accidentally...

Oli

[Jill]

      This is NOT going to be related to the issue of KivaFriends Communicating With Kiva.Org.
Rather, I want to talk about the
ISSUE OF THREAD PROLIFERATION/FRAGMENTATION/ORGANIZATION.

      Before I came to KivaFriends, this morning,
I first checked the Kiva site to see if any new businesses had been added
since I looked last night.

      I saw what Oli alluded to in his new Tajikistan thread, and felt, maybe/probably
some of the same "consternation" (you stepped in whaaa-t?) that Oli did
upon seeing what looked like ONLY Tajikistan and Home Improvement Loans.
I'd thought about either posting something myself, or, at least,
looking around to see whether other Kiva Friends had posted, already, on the subject
as I'd assumed they had probably done.

      In any event, my mind went through the quick process of trying to figure out
Which Thread Would I Post On-- Which Thread, Probably, Would Others, Already Have Posted On
in regard to the subject.

     Then I came here and saw that Oli had started a new thread called Tajikistan... I think.

    This, I swear, is in absolutely No Way directed at Oli --
it's directed at all of us--
and is connected with HOW HARD IT'S GETTING
both TO FIND ANYTHING that's already been said
(though the spotlight feature really helps-- Thanks, Joe),
and.... TO FIGURE OUT ON WHICH THREAD TO POST SOMETHING NEW
.....
the second part encompassing
TO FIGURE OUT IF THE CREATION OF A NEW THREAD IS WARRANTED
for discussing whatever topic we want to talk about.

      For right now,
I'm just raising the issue
to see if some of you can come up with some ideas.      ??

     As for me,
the only thing that immediately comes to mind is the thought
that when we do think that maybe it would be appropriate to start a new thread
(because we can't think of and/or find any where our proposed topic has already been discussed),

    Maybe it would be helpful to Craft Our Thread Topics as "Expansively" as Possible.
Again, with absolutely no "stickers" intended for Oli....
     Instead, perhaps, of having a Thread entitled (and apparently limited to businesses from) Tajikistan,
maybe it would cut down on the proliferation of threads and make things easier to find
if a thread, with its underlying "intent,"
were entitled something like:

How Kiva Posts Businesses: Issues of Classification, Timing, & MFI-or-Occupation-Heavy Listings

       I'm sure somebody can improve on my unwieldy title,
but I think it will give you the idea of what I'm hoping we can accomplish.


EDIT:   Some time later.....

     I just saw that Joe has posted about his "Coming Attraction" of a FAQ for us.
I think we're all excited at the prospect.
If we're lucky, that will remedy a lot of the problems we've been seeing
as our membership grows and our posts and threads proliferate.
    I still think that we might need to deal with some of the issues I've tried to raise, here,
and with probably a whole lot more that I haven't raised --
just to try to make navigating the forum and communicating with one another
as easy as possible.

[AccountAbility]

Jill, I appreciate your concern.  It is truly getting wild and wooley here in terms of finding conversations within threads.   

If I come with something I would like to discuss, I usually go down the threads in the section which seems most appropriate to see if there already is a thread.  I sometimes am accused of resurrecting old threads because of this, but I think it keeps the topics cleaner than starting a new one.

But the tough one is when I am reading someone's post and there is some element that is "off-topic" but worthy of a response, the tendency is to respond right there-- which just perpetuates the "off-topic" conversation in that thread.  Sometimes so much so that the original topic is buried.

Too bad there wasn't an easy way to say, "meet me over at that other water cooler to have a discussion on that".    Maybe Joe could figure out a way to expand the quote mechanism so that if we go off on a tangent, we could take the quote with us over to a more appropriate thread and continue the discussion there.

Anyway, that's one suggestion that might have merit here. 

Dan

[RichardF]

Too bad there wasn't an easy way to say, "meet me over at that other water cooler to have a discussion on that".    Maybe Joe could figure out a way to expand the quote mechanism so that if we go off on a tangent, we could take the quote with us over to a more appropriate thread and continue the discussion there.

Actually, there is.  Meet me over at Anything Goes!

[Jill]

Thanks Dan and Richard,
     I do think that what you're suggesting would be helpful,
and every little bit.......