"community updates" stuff

Ona, there is at least one link accompanying every update. The link may be to the author's profile page or to the topic on which the update (a comment) was posted. Click on the link and you will be taken to the page on which you can read or reply. I would await Tom's response here but I believe the Community Updates are meant to show us recent activity, new members joining, profile updates, avatar changes, and the like. Community update type stuff that folks might be interested in knowing.

If it appears on the Community Updates, it will appear in the Activity Stream (under "Share"). There you will have the opportunity to comment, in exactly the same was as on Facebook. Or, as you did, you can see the status post on a person's profile page, at which point you can click on "Reply" to...uh...reply. Your reply should appear in the Activity Stream as well.

I don't envision lengthy discussions taking place through stream comments, because we have the forum. But I totally see the value in quick updates or sharing of stuff that is meant to be passively consumed.

A usability question that arises out of this is: do people find value having the "Community Updates" module in the sidebar of the forum pages? The reason I ask is because, to be of value there (and not display redundant information), I have deliberately suppressed each forum update activity item that would normally go into the stream. However this forces people who are viewing the stream from "Share" to *also* look in "Recent Topics" to see what is up in the forum. The option is to not bother with "Community Updates" in the sidebar, and fully express the Activity Stream in "Share" to include forum updates. This makes it much more like Facebook, and gives people the option to simply watch the site from "Share".

Comments?

Likewise, I do not pay any attention to the community updates area.

Anyone else?

Does anyone ever look at this website from the "Share" view?

Can you answer this question --

When you visit here, which view do you immediately access? For example, my browser's bookmark for AN/DFRC is set to access the Recent Topics page, and after that I tend to use the "Discuss" view since the recently used topics all will have a green "new" in the topic list. What I'm interested in finding out is how much of our non-message board content is used. We have a lot of Facebook-like functionality but it seems it's not being used.

Based on the feedback, I am disabling "Community Updates" and making the Activity Stream under "Share" more useful to those that look at it. Clearly new users, such as Tomer, found it easily enough so I think it may grow in use as our members increase. To those that don't use it: carry on, nothing to see.

Just for the record, "Recent Topics" is my bookmark too, and I try and keep my practice thread current so that it is always there!

But I do wish that people would use "Share" a bit more. I know I cannot change habits, but that is my pet peeve. And speaking of peeves, anybody want to step up and write something for the magazine?

In the very top menu bar it's called "Read" and you can find it here:

awakenetwork.org/magazine/

As far as I know, nothing happened. Tempest, meet teapot