Frustration with User Feedback

[Deozaan]

any suggestions?

-mouser (March 19, 2009, 11:43 AM)

Sounds like a job for DcUpdater!

Of course, that won't be very useful or helpful until you add some requested features to it.

[Target]

sounds like something that should go in a Wiki

tagging would provide the opportunity to quickly find related apps

[wraith808]

I think a wiki in general for the site sounds like an excellent idea.

[Stoic Joker]

I gota go with Target's earlier premise that most folk only speakup if there is a problem (e.g. No news is good news)

From my own experience with T-Clock and poking through the logs.
It has been downloaded approx 60,000 - 80,000 times
Out of those downloads 24,000+ visitors have been to the T-Clock page of my site
Approx 18,000 - 20,000 of those were unique IPs (so some repeat business looking updates as it's a single page)

Out of those numbers I've received only about 100 emails most of which were suggestions for new features or complaints about removed features.

Out of those numbers, less than 5 people engaged in further conversation beyond my initial response.

Only 3 of those requested to be notified of new releases.

Bottom line:
Out of close to 80,000 people that downloaded my 64-bit resurection of a cult classic program, less than 10 Emailed me specifically to say atta-boy/thank you!

Am I bitter? Hell no! that's just life ... I do it because I love doing it ... other wise I go do something else.

No feedback, is feedback ... other wise they'd be complaining like mad

[brotherS]

From my own experience with T-Clock

-Stoic Joker (March 20, 2009, 04:08 PM)

I had to google it: http://stoicjoker.com/TClock/ Thanks, I used TClockEx for years! A readme.txt in the archive would be nice, I want to know if I need to unpack the dll too or not.

Put the site in your forum signature!

[Stoic Joker]

Um... *Sigh* ...The point of my post was to try and assist the OP by sharing my own experience, not hijack the thread for advertizement. But yes it does require the dll, as ShellHooking (which it uses) can not be done from within an exe (odd but understandable security limitation).

[Nod5]

A lot of wise things have already been said so I can mostly sit back and agree 

Regarding where on DC to post new programs:
I'm with justice in thinking the Coding Snacks forum is a good place to post small, free programs that you've made even if it is not made on request from someone else. Most scripts/programs I write are things I need myself. It is like any other coding snack with the only difference that the requester and maker are one and the same.  I associate the Coding snacks section with (1) small sized, free programs and (2) being open to feedback and collaboration, via request or via code suggested by others.

I also agree with mousers point about separating larger, free DC-coded apps (General Software section)  and non-DC, non-free apps (Announce section).

A repository of small apps made by DC folks sounds great! For proper filtering we'd need a common list of tags to use.

Regarding the lack of feedback: sometimes I wish programs had a "thumbs-up" button. The idea would be that when a user has started the program X number of times (100, 1000 and 10000) a small screen pops up politely asking the user if he/she wants to send a "I've used your programs a thousand times and I still love it, thanks man!"-message. The user clicks a thumbs-up icon, the message is sent, end of story. Since there is no textbox involved there is no risk for the function being used to spam the coder. A potential problem is that many users with experience of nag screens from shareware etc might worry that personal data will be sent or that there are some strings attached. Another problem is that such feedback might become a replacement, and not a complement, to going to the program site/forum and posting some more personal feedback or suggestion. That would be a bummer of course. Anyway, I'm thinking it could be cool for a maker of small programs to just get concrete knowledge of the fact that someone out there has used your little program 10.000 times! For larger programs with very many users that might not be so interesting after a while of course. But maybe the numbers can just be increased for such cases. Wouldn't mouser want to know when a user has opened FARR one billion times?

[TucknDar]

Wouldn't mouser want to know when a user has opened FARR one billion times?

-Nod5 (March 22, 2009, 05:49 AM)

Not likely, that would mean daily notifications, since I use FARR A LOT!!