Hi - Would it be possible to add Bucknell University to the Class of 2024 RD Discussion Directory?
Today is their RD notification date.
Thanks
@PVB511, I added Bucknell to the Class of 2024 RD Discussion Directory below:
@CCadmin_Sorin will it be possible for us to delete those tags? Most of them are of zero interest to me…and I can see the list getting longer and longer. Some of us just don’t want to see those tags. Give them a “x” too.
@“CC Admin” @CCadmin_Sorin
I am not sure if you are aware. But the thread related to conronvirus has not only shattered the tos related to political posts, it’s become a very unwelcoming place for many who disagree with the prominent voices.
It’s an important thread and it can be useful. However as a campaign blog and a resource to scour the internet for any and all highly opinionated and politically based agenda it’s troubling.
There are a lot of young people who come here and the tone and doom may be very disconcerting.
Perhaps you can add a few new tags.
“Political in nature” or “twitter-like” .
Something that can alert the reader. We have a wide and caring community.
I’ve received both dms and private texts from long time posters who are feeling the same way. Or check out the “the say it here” thread for posts today on the subject and number of agrees.
Thank you
Hi @privatebanker ! Tags tend to be most useful for drawing attention to content rather than warning people away. I certainly feel your pain when it comes to controlling the content you see and, more importantly, avoiding content you want to avoid. (I mostly avoid Facebook for just that reason.) There’s currently no way to hide or ignore tags on the forums today. And that won’t help new readers see that you all are a caring community.
I think we need a two-pronged approach to the problem:
- We're probably going to need to be a little more nuanced about our moderation policies. Sorin and I have been thinking about it and talking with the moderators. I know the COVID-19 threads have been allowed to run wild and that's obviously a pain point right now. It would help me to get a clearer picture from people in the community what content crosses the line so we can establish clear boundaries.
The coronavirus threads are probably a bit of an outlier. In times of crisis, it’s sometimes hard to know how to support each other. I see a lot of caring in those threads, but also strife and dispute. At the moment a lot of people are coming to the site to compare notes about the decisions schools are making about admissions. For better or worse, we are seeing evidence they aren’t browsing other parts of the site as much as users were last year. So they are not likely to see the COVID threads for good or for ill.
Which brings me to:
- We have to fix the damage done by the new theme that was introduced last year. I [wrote up my analysis of the problem on my blog](https://jlericson.com/2020/03/25/CC-design.html) and it's sobering. I don't need to tell you all, but the site is significantly harder to browse today than it was a year ago. That's bad for the community because it means people get a more siloed view of the site. There are other great threads to discover besides the ones about COVID, but that doesn't matter much if people can't find them. Unfortunately, we are trapped in the new theme and the only real way out now is to start fixing one problem after another. That takes time.
Something we can do right now that I think will help is add more tags. But not tag things to avoid. The current list of tags is more or less a reaction to current events. I’ve purposely kept the list small so that we can understand how the feature works and plan appropriately. (We’re also tagging old discussions manually, which is another story.) Adding tags for types of discussions that are scattered across the site that you would be interested in reading could help highlight the positives of the community.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and now is as good a time as any. If you are concerned about the health of the CC community and want to talk with me about it, feel free to message me directly. We can set up a video or phone call so that I can hear your feedback and understand. I’m still very much in the discovery phase as community manager and I’d love to learn more. (Not that I’ll ever stop learning, of course.)
Thank you for your very thoughtful and informational post. And helping me understand the tags better.
Perhaps an occasional speed bump but serious warning from your level that a thread is at risk of being shut down or from the moderators. It’s so out of control there now.
What we do when the chips are down often defines things. It’s easy to lose sight of the basic values during high stress . Imho.
Im sure no one wants campaign twitter feeds here. And that’s not the ethos nor moral core of why so many love it here.
Thanks again and please be safe.
Thank you for acknowledging this.
Please start by explaining what a “community manager” is? Are you folks paid employees who will now manage this forum?
Yes, we are paid employees. Moderators and forum champions still take care of handling flags and that sort of thing. Our philosophy is that College Confidential is run by you. Sorin and I serve as intermediaries between the community and the people who build new features (such as tagging) for the site. I also have a role helping set the strategy for building up our business around the community. We think what you all do here is special and valuable. So we want to highlight excellent content that you all have created. I believe the business goals align with what I see as community goals: help students navigate the sometimes confusing world of college admissions. (That’s the elevator pitch. If we had a longer ride, I’d have more to say.)
I’ve had many years of experience as a community manager on other sites. ([174 of them](All Sites - Stack Exchange), to be precise. 
But every community is different. I’m still learning about College Confidential and will be for a long time to come.
Nice to meet you and good luck in the role. It’s a really unique community in the online space.
All I can add is that I can’t recall another website “upgrade” that was as poorly thought out as the one here. It used to be easy to navigate the site, now it’s a quagmire.
@scoop85 : We’re aiming to fix that. The most critical bit, as I see it, is we no longer have a place to browse topics and subtopics. Our developers are working on a solution as we speak.
Are there other problems you’ve observed? We’d like to get the navigation back into working order.
We still have a long way to go before we have a usable tagging system. I’ve made a few changes:
[ul]
[] Added a [Scholarships tag](Topics tagged scholarships). We’re planning on [updating our Scholarship Search page](What might I need to be aware of when people ask me to promote their scholarship? - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums) and that tag might help.
[] Added a [Class of 2025 tag](Topics tagged class-2025) to get ready for the next round of admission discussions.
[] Renamed the [Class of 2024 tag](Topics tagged class-2024) which was previously called “Fall Admission 2020” because it was being misunderstood. I’m not sure what the right approach is yet.
[] Removed the “College Life” tag which was unclear.
[li] Renamed the “Ask Me Anything” tag to [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussions/tagged/ama%5DAMA%5B/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussions/tagged/ama]AMA[/url] to reduce misunderstandings.[/li][/ul]
We’re looking at adding a bunch of school tags to help people find conversations about the colleges they are interested in. Tags probably aren’t the long-term solution for that, but it’s a step we can take in the right direction. (Or at least I hope it’ll be moving that way.)
Please please make it so I can delete tags that I’m not interested in…from the side bar with the tags.
Also for the “class of” tags…please make it clear that the year refers to the year these students will be graduating from college.
I saw the option to add a tag. I typed in a word and hit space. It just stayed there and did not become a tag. I hit semicolon. Same thing. I hit enter and the thread posted. I had to look up how to edit it, which wasted two minutes of my editing time. I went in and tried to edit. I tried a different tag, which was accepted. I tried typing in more tags, so that the thread can be found. Same problem as I initially had. I noticed it comes up under the word saying “no results.” When I hit that, it asks if I want to show popular tags. I did that and there are only 7 available tags - only one of which relates to my post (and which I had already added). I can’t for the life of me figure out how to add more tags that would make it likely my post would be found. You need to give people more time to edit posts (a few days) and better instructions on how to add tags. Also, the first time a friend of mine posted, she noticed that she put in information she didn’t want out there. She didn’t notice it until the next day. It’s not right that you don’t have an option to pull it down or edit it - especially since there were no replies yet. I understand you don’t want it edited after replies go in, but you can set it so that it allows edits before there are any replies. Also, you can add a feature that allows someone to put in a request for an edit, which would then be sent to the moderators who would evaluate whether the edit can be made without compromising the replies. However, the way you currently have this set up is not ideal.
@carev2020, users cannot add new tags. You can only select from the existing ones. Please make sure to select only those that match your post. We are removing all tags that are misused. Thanks a lot!