dw_suggestions | Entries tagged with site: account levels

Title:
Paid Account Trial

Area:
paid time

Summary:
Give users the option to have paid time for a certain length of time so see if they like it.

Description:
LJ had a feature where for free, you get two weeks of paid time. I think this would be useful for DW. By having this, users can preview what it's like to have paid accounts and therefore, if they like it, they would be more inclined to buy it. I would like to preview what it's like myself but am hesitant because I do not want to end up wasting money if I don't like it.

Poll #8877 Paid Account Trial

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 87

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Should be implemented as-is.
21 (24.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (5.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
34 (39.1%)

(I have no opinion)
25 (28.7%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (2.3%)

denise

Title:
Support instructors/teachers/professors using DW for class-related projects

Area:
posting, communities, using DW to conquer the world

Summary:
We get at least three or four instructors per semester asking for promo codes for account creations for their classes (which we're always happy to give!) Since DW is so well-suited to keeping class journals, submitting writing assignments, or requiring class participation, I'd love to be able to code some more support for academic use.

Description:
Obviously each teacher's use of DW would be different, depending on the type of class they're teaching and the level at which they're teaching it (high school, undergrad, graduate work, adult enrichment, etc). This suggestion is less "we should add this" and more "we should brainstorm what we can add that would actually be most helpful".

I'm basically proposing a new category of accounts: "instructor accounts" or "academic accounts" and "student accounts" or "learner accounts" (names obviously subject to change, yadda). This will allow us to set different capabilities for these accounts.

The "academic package" would consist of:

* one promo code per class/class section;
* one "academic community" account per section, with slight changes to the standard community model to make them more appropriate for teacher/class interaction;
* one (or more if co-taught or if class has a TA) "instructor account" to be the admin of the community (or the instructor could use their standard DW account, but all of the instructors I know don't want their students finding their regular DW account!)
* a number of "student accounts" created via the promo code, where the students can choose their own usernames and migrate the student account to a standard account later if they'd like.

Things I can think of, off the top of my head:

* the ability for the instructor to "clear out" a community's posts and comments, moving them to some form of archive (essentially a community rename?) each semester/quarter/marking period/etc in order to store each semester's classwork separately and start each semester with a blank slate

* ability to force a student account created with a specific promo code to be subscribed to/a member of the community for the project, without having to check the checkbox during account creation

* ability to designate an instructor account for each "academic package" that will automatically subscribe to any account created from the promo code (so the instructor won't 'lose' students or have to get them to submit their username to the instructor through some other method)

* ability for the instructor to subscribe to all posts and comments made in the community (without the comm needing to be a paid community, I mean)

What other things would instructors using DW for academic/teaching purposes want to see, or would find useful?

(Edited to remove poll #7997, since this is more of an information-gathering entry than a suggestion!)

deborah

Title:
paid account sandbox

Area:
paid account features

Summary:
There should be a place where people can see the paid account features and play with them to decide whether or not a paid account is worth their while.

Description:
There should be a place where people can see the paid account features and play with them to decide whether or not a paid account is worth their while.

There should be a place where people can see the paid account features and play with them to decide whether or not a paid account is worth their while. Perhaps in the official site communities, for example, most of the entry page features could be automatically enabled. In addition, there could be a paid_sandbox community where people can experiment with the features. This would work for:

1. Ability to receive copies of comments you make in other journals in your e-mail.
2. Ability to post polls.
3. Ability to create custom mood themes (maybe? But only use them in the sandbox community?)
4. Ability to edit comments after posting
5. Thread expanders

And maybe other things?

For some features (e.g. number of icon slots, number of sites you can cross post to, forwarding e-mail address) this of course wouldn't work. But there are lots of paid features, and if you don't have access to them, you have no idea how cool they are. I didn't realize I couldn't live without comment editing until I got comment editing.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement "everyone is a paid user when posting in the following communities".

Poll #7749 paid account sandbox

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

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Should be implemented as-is.
9 (17.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (5.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
15 (28.3%)

(I have no opinion)
24 (45.3%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (3.8%)

callowyn

Title:
Make comment expansion a free feature

Area:
comments, paid features

Summary:
Right now the ability to expand comment threads is a paid-only feature, and I think it would be conducive to the public use of Dreamwidth to allow all users to have it.

Description:
Forum-esque discussion threads, from kink memes to love memes to ONTD, are the type of community activity that promotes growth as a social platform, and as such should be facilitated by the journal default. I think the lack of free comment expansion, minor though it is, has made people reluctant to move their communities here from other platforms, and without active communities Dreamwidth can never really compete with the problematic-but-familiar platforms where the majority of fandom currently resides.

This feature alone is unlikely to significantly impact paid time revenue one way or the other, but because it's taken for granted on sites like Livejournal, its absence on Dreamwidth serves to put off those migrating (even in these times of trial-by-DDoS). Making expandable comments the default would allow the sort of long, rambly discussion threads that turn bunches of people into cohesive communities.

Poll #7727 Make comment expansion a free feature

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 74

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
28 (37.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (4.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
13 (17.6%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (25.7%)

(Other: please comment)
11 (14.9%)

ninetydegrees

Title:
Mention Account Type for Communities on Account Settings

Area:
site interface

Summary:
On Account Settings, the account type (seed, paid, free) and the other info which is mentioned for personal journals on that line doesn't exist for communities. I don't really see why not. It'd be useful to have it there and not only on the community profile. Same as personal journals really.

Description:
.

Poll #7128 Mention Account Type for Communities on Account Settings

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

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Should be implemented as-is.
50 (83.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (1.7%)

(I have no opinion)
9 (15.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

james

Title:
Guest Level Accounts

Area:
accounts

Summary:
Creating a cheaper, minimal-perk account which still supports DW.

Description:
I've heard interest from folks who would like to be able to support DW and participate in conversations on communities and journals here, but without having to maintain an entire "presence" here, but with more benefits than just a free-level account. Specifically, the ability to track comments and have replies to comments mailed to them.

$35 a year can be a lot for someone who sees themselves as just commenting on other journals, but a minimal amount of paid-account would enable them to comment and keep copies of their comments via email, and keep track of conversations. But even a $15 a year account could be bare bones, and yet let them interact with others on DW.

I have no idea of how the coding works, so I don't know if it's an easy thing to do, or hard, or if being emailed copies of comments is a high-burden sort of benefit.

Poll #7080 Guest Level Accounts

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
17 (29.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (8.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
14 (24.6%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (33.3%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (3.5%)

iamsosmart

Title:
Privacy & safety concern: Mark all old entries as private should be free?

Area:
Entry privacy

Summary:
Instead of requiring a paid account to set all past or newly imported entries to private, Dreamwidth should offer it as a free option to help protect the privacy and online safety of users. (Caveats below.)

Description:
Currently Dreamwidth only offers free users the ability to set the privacy of all NEW entries to "access list only" or "just me (private)". It is also impossible to set a single privacy level for imported entries as they're being brought in; by default they retain their privacy settings from the original source journal.

This can be a problem, particularly with older journals (imported or otherwise) where, in the past, the user wasn't as careful with the sharing of personal information as they should have been. It can also be an issue if a user suddenly has someone harassing them (online or offline) over the content of their journal and they wish to hide it, or if they wish to privatize their content for any other reason (such as worrying that a new employer may be Googling them, or being found by a family member).

In cases like these, the only option for the user in question is to delete their journal, or to go back and manually change the privacy of each and every public journal entry. For established journals, or journal compiled from a number of imported journals, this just isn't feasible, which isn't really fair or reasonable considering that the user in question may already be very anxious and the situation may be urgent.

Users should have the right to be able to privatize all of their entries quickly. On the other hand, I realize that there are processing and data concerns, and that Dreamwidth has costs to manage.

So my proposal is this: offer free users the option to set all of their past entries to private, once.

However this may, potentially, present problems for users who set their privacy and then later import a journal with entries they also wish to lock. In light of that, offering tokens for mass entry locks, offering the option of setting a single privacy setting for imported entries, or imposing a frequency restriction for mass entry locks (such as one request per three months) might be acceptable. denise has kindly pointed out to me that this can be done - setting a minimum journal privacy before importing automatically makes all newly imported entries match that privacy setting. That leaves only the issue of locking existing entries.

If there are logistical problems to implementing this, I would be curious to know them. I'm a programmer myself and may be able to offer assistance or insight. :)

Poll #5605 Privacy & safety concern: Mark all old entries as private should be free?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
22 (36.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
22 (36.7%)

(I have no opinion)
16 (26.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

brooksmoses

Title:
Allow non-paid users to get email copies of their comments?

Area:
comments

Summary:
To encourage cross-site community, it should be as "frictionless" as possible to comment on DW. One of the barriers for (paid) LJ users is that, in order to get emailed copies of their own comments, they have to have a paid account on DW as well. This means that I can't ask people to only comment on my DW entries without notably inconveniencing several of my friends. I suggest that this particular feature be made available to all commenters, including OpenID accounts.

Description:
One of the goals of DW, as I understand it, is to foster online community -- and, in particular, to make it appealing for people outside of DW (e.g., people on LJ) to comment on posts on DW. In my opinion, this is critical for DW's usefulness to me; the comments that I get from my friends (and the conversations they have in comments) are a key part of the reason that I post.

There is one key reason that commenting on DW posts is unappealing to many of my LJ friends (and was unappealing to me before I got a paid DW account). On LJ, I am used to getting emailed copies of my own comments, which I use for archival purposes. On DW, one has to have a paid account in order to get these copies, even if one is logging in via OpenID from a paid LJ account. This is annoying, and a barrier to conversation; see, for instance, this post from a friend of mine: http://lcohen.livejournal.com/794820.html.

Furthermore, making commenting features paid-only is contrary to the idea of having interworking between sites; if there were a dozen LJ/DW/etc. sites that had thriving communities, a person would either have to (a) limit themselves to participating in communities of people on one site, (b) have paid accounts on all dozen sites, or (c) make do with fewer commenting features even if they have a primary paid account. This doesn't scale well.

In that context, my taking my posts to DW from LJ is an antisocial move for my LJ friends; it takes away their features when they comment on my posts. That's a strong incentive for me to keep my primary posting "home" on LJ.

Thus, I would recommend that commenting-related features not be paid-only, but be open to all accounts including in particular OpenID accounts. And I'd particularly recommend this for the "email a copy of my own comments" feature; as Lisa notes in the post I linked to, that's useful for tracking conversations -- which is particularly important when multiple sites are involved. The aspect of having a copy of one's comment to archive is also something that's to be important to a number of people.

(I recognize that this does risk some revenue loss; in fact, this feature was initially the one reason that I bought a LJ paid account. I do think the problems of not having it outweigh that, though, as it's also one of the main reasons that I'm not currently actively using my DW account much.)

Poll #2805 Allow non-paid users to get email copies of their comments?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
5 (9.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (1.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
39 (70.9%)

(I have no opinion)
10 (18.2%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Dreamwidth Suggestions

Paid Account Trial

Support instructors/teachers/professors using DW for class-related projects

paid account sandbox

Make comment expansion a free feature

Mention Account Type for Communities on Account Settings

Guest Level Accounts

Privacy & safety concern: Mark all old entries as private should be free?

Allow non-paid users to get email copies of their comments?

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