Help us design a straw poll to get feedback

Straw Poll We want feedback on what we’ve been doing with Locally Grown the past five years. It’ll help us to plan what features to continue, which to discontinue, which to improve.

Will you help us design a straw poll that will help us get that feedback?

Here’s what I’m thinking so far:

The straw poll would ask you to rate your level of satisfaction (a scale of 1-5 or maybe 1-10) with specific elements of both the blog and the radio show/podcast. For example:

BLOG:

  • Breadth/depth of blog content
  • Blog post quality
  • Comment threads – depth
  • Comment threads – breadth of participants
  • Comment threads – moderation
  • Membership plan
  • Membership sideblog content
  • Community photos
  • Fluff
  • Faux news
  • etc

RADIO SHOW/ PODCAST

  • range of guests
  • frequency of guests
  • etc

See any problems with this approach? Elements missing that should be included?

14 Comments

  1. The only thing I do not like about a straw poll is that there is no room for comment.

    I could sit down with you at length and give you my opinions on what I think Locally Grown should be, its positives, and its faults.

    A straw poll only gets votes, not the thoughts and suggestions behind it.

    I urge you to use more than a straw poll to chart a design of your future.

    P.S. Is the office back open? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind having that conversation F2F? I would like the LG 2.0 / 3.0 / X.0 to prosper, and perhaps leave some of the old baggage behind.

    -J

    September 14, 2010
  2. Griff Wigley said:

    John,

    Yep, I’m back at the GBM, though not everyday. I’m splitting my time between there and the JGC&E by my house.  Check me on FourSquare to see where I am. http://foursquare.com/user/-5279

    We can do a straw poll with comments. The skatepark straw poll we did about a year ago had comments:

    September 15, 2010
  3. Paul Zorn said:

    A straw poll gauging users’ satisfaction with various LoGroNo elements is fine as far as it goes, but such polling is unavoidably backward-looking.

    Maybe you should do some forward-looking stuff, too. You might try, e.g., to assess interest in various possible new discussion topics, or categories of topics: education, national politics, state politics, local politics, economy, environment, science, religion, … .

    September 15, 2010
  4. Griff Wigley said:

    Good point, Paul. Actually, we’re are contemplating some new features, eg, webinars, real-time chats, 10-day issue forums, videos, etc.

    As for your categories of topics, I’ll include those as samples in the “breadth of content” part of the straw poll.

    Thx!

    September 15, 2010
  5. I am of the KISS school. Too many things going on dilutes every part for me, as i can only think of one thing at a time. 🙂 Pick out the most relevant locally and start a new site for national level news. Again, good luck!

    September 16, 2010
  6. Griff Wigley said:

    Here’s a screenshot of the draft of the feedback straw poll. Let me know today what changes you’d like to see. The real thing goes up tomorrow.

    September 21, 2010
  7. Griff Wigley said:

    Just a quick tip for anyone who clicks on the above screenshot of the straw poll draft: whenever an image or photo appears to be too small, it’s often your browser that’s resizing it automatically. If you mouseover it, you’ll usually see your cursor turn into a Plus sign. Click the image and it’ll pop to it’s full size. The cursor then changes to a Minus sign.

    September 21, 2010
  8. Griff Wigley said:

    I got a suggestion to add a question about commenters:

    How often do you add a comment to the discussion on the average:

    * 5 or more/week
    * 2-4/week
    * 1/week
    * 1-3/month
    * Rarely
    * Never

    September 21, 2010
  9. Griff Wigley said:

    Another good suggestion for a question:

    “If you could change only ONE THING about LoGro, what would it be?”

    September 21, 2010
  10. Kathie Galotti said:

    So, where is said straw poll?

    September 22, 2010
  11. Griff Wigley said:

    I’ll post it in the morning, Kathie. I unexpectedly had to crank up the webinar promo today.

    September 22, 2010
  12. Kathie Galotti said:

    Okey dokes!

    September 22, 2010

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