+186
Under review

Public shoutouts to people on their character profiles (eg Shouts)

Varka (Spokesdragon) 8 years ago updated by Digby (Community Manager) 7 years ago 44

Could there be a way to have 'Shouts' on Furry Network too?

Answer

+2
Answer
Under review

Hey everyone,


We're not sure how this feature would be useful in the context of Furry Network, and we want to get more information as to how everyone intends to use it, so we can incorporate it sensibly into the broader site design.


Furry Network is a little different from other sites; I know that "Shouts" are a feature that originally started on Deviant Art, and have kind of been around for a long time on a bunch of different sites.


What purpose do shouts serve, and what do you want to use them for?

+7

I agree to this, definitely would be a good feature! I think it could also use a toggle on/off option though, as I know of many people who prefer not to recieve shouts and the like ^^

+10

Yes toggle if implemented. I don't like shouts.... sometimes they become ways to make privatet beefs public.

+2
Answer
Under review

Hey everyone,


We're not sure how this feature would be useful in the context of Furry Network, and we want to get more information as to how everyone intends to use it, so we can incorporate it sensibly into the broader site design.


Furry Network is a little different from other sites; I know that "Shouts" are a feature that originally started on Deviant Art, and have kind of been around for a long time on a bunch of different sites.


What purpose do shouts serve, and what do you want to use them for?

+10

I mean, It's a social network, you need some way to be social XD

^ This. Come one, FFS you call it Furry NETWORK, not Furry Station *khm*

+15

You call it a network, yet it lacks networking features. Shouts are one way of actually connecting to people. This is also why we need groups and a forum!

The purpose of shouts as I said is to connect. You can say hello, thank something, let someone know you like their character, or whatever else you feel like sharing publicly. Without shouts people woulc only use private messages, but most of us don't want our inbox be full of casual chit-chat and one-liners, that's what shouts are for so PMs can be saved for proper discussions.

This is especially important for us artists, we need our inbox to be clean of noise, conducting business is already complicated enough.

+6

Shouts are a thing where it helps connect users together and it also helps others find each other.
For example: You see someones icon and username and want to check them out
That makes it have potential for others to meet one another and find new people's art.
It is also a nice way to send artwork to the person if some one doesn't like to use the notes system due to it being used to chat, so things get lost easily.
You can possibly put up a check box for users in their "edit user-page" if users don't want shouts on their page or if they do since some users don't use shouts and a lot of others do. This way people can be content.

Currently i really enjoy having a "shouts" area to find people, it is where i find most people i follow. It also feels a bit lonely on my profile without having some new faces on there. it kind of "spices up" the place a bit, making it more homely.



+5

90% of the time, shouts are just used to post a stock "Thanks for the watch/fav!" on someone else's page. I don't know about everyone else, but they're so ubiquitous that I don't even bother reading them anymore, nor do I post them to other pages; they've just become noise, and feel more like an obligation than a sincere gesture.


So what are shouts for, otherwise? To say hello? To send a compliment? To ask a question? Why not send a message, then? Why does it have to be public?

+6

This could be solved damn easily by adding a THANKS button they can press instead. Voila!

+5

People use shouts so differently, it's actually pretty hard to tell what each person wants from them. You can have a short lightheated conversation via them (but you can also message eachother), you can publically compliment someone (but you could also promote a submission they made), you can let the person know if you did something for them (but you can also just mention them), you could thank for a watch (but a lot of people find that pointless), shouts also get targeted by upset people and they're a handy place to check if the new person is trustworthy to commission (although I believe FN is planning to handle that part aswell).


Soooo now that I think of it there's no point to impliment shouts. But you should encourage and somehow highlight the fact that mentioning peoples names gives them a notification! That way people can make public posts directed for you by simply mentioning your name in the post! :D

Was going to make a post about my experience with shouts, but I didn't know about notifications from just mentioning names here. I'm still getting used to many of the features, but honestly yeah, that kind of makes shouts unnecessary. Just *some* kind of quick-contact feature without going through private messages is fine, I would imagine.

+4

Oh yeah - the 'so-and-so mentioned you' aspect of mentioning @someone is actually a pretty good analog for Shouts.


Would simply making the notifications for people @mentioning you suffice for most 'shouts' use cases?

Yes, using this and making it obvious that @mentioning people is how you communicate would cover most all shout use cases to my knowledge. The only other one I can personally think of that would not work with this is posting on your own page to tell people not to leave shouts.

+1

If you're able to do the "What's on your mind?" basic Post entry type, I see that being all you ever need if you @someone in that and it notifies them as an alert. It's public on your page, it'd become public on their page after they respond using the same mechanics already on your feed of 'so and so commented on:' type updates.


I wouldn't want notifications trigger when someone @'s you in a media description, maybe perhaps comments so you could bring someone in to the thread of a picture or something? I could see that being abused with people pasting in a thousand names to just draw attention then or spam instead of using Promote like they should for pushing to feeds. I think only in plain Post types would be best rollout or start and is closest thing to shouting, instead of going to their page to leave it on their page, you simply make a post on your own feed with an @someone and they'd see the thread and be able to comment back and forth...

+2

Not really, mentions are a totally different approach.

If I post on my own wall with a mention, the target and my watchers will see. If I shout, then everyone visiting target's profile will see it instead. Thus the two will involve different audiences.

I honestly think this is the best way to do "shout outs." People are so used to @mentioning on other platforms (Twitter, Telegram, etc.). If anything like shouts are implemented, do keep them in the activity feed and not their own separate thing. Keeping things simple is a good goal.

+1

Meh, just add the option to list your @mentions on your profile page with a little post box underneath that auto prepends @user.

+10

We're making some progress on this; more info to come, but in the meantime, here's a teaser screenshot of what we're considering! (this is a user's page being shown here).


+3

I think comments can be smaller then that, because we don't need massive wall-length-text posting feature, just make a separate sidebar for comments on a profile and that way align the available content, I think that is the best way to do it.


As so far the concept of FurryNetwork seems good, but there is very big lack of communication between members as far as I can see it. No one really wants to post comments or anything neither, which would be fun.

+1

Having the shout/message in-line with their posts on dashboard would get lost completely when users post multiple things at once. Profile shouts need to have their own concrete spot on the userpage to be viable

+4

I think this is needed, because so far he entire place seems disconnected. There is literally no communication between members other then private messages, which I find rather stupid at this point. If this place wants to be a real art site, it will need visible comments or shouts on the side of the user's profile. That way the community will become better interconnected.


I find it appalling too that users who post their images get so little amount of image viewrs, perhaps clicking onto an item is not really incentivized.

+3

I think that shouts are important, because they offer a 'public' way of breaking the ice with people. You can post things that you're okay with everyone seeing, because not everything requires the formality of a note/private message - It's equivalent to how you can post messages on people's Facebook walls or Tweet at people. Glad to see this is being worked on!

+6

I would LOVE to have shouts implemented. I cannot tell you how many times I've wanted to comment on someone's profile already but kept forgetting I couldn't. For me, I think this is why the site feels so lonely and isolated. I understand that there is a note system, but for little compliments and things that you don't actually want to start a conversation about, shouts would be perfect.

I agree here. So far FN has felt a little lonely, and I think a profile public bulletin would help make this place a little more personal and, well, social! I'm not a fan of private messaging for small talk. A "shout" section would be perfect for quick "heys".

+13

Some people love shouts, some people hate them.

They're nice in that you can leave a little message saying thanks or something positive.

They're annoying in that they become spam messages a lot of the time with row after row of "Thanks for the fav!"


If you do implement shouts I would suggest a few things:

  • Don't call the section "Shouts", I would recommend calling the section something like "Bulletin" to discourage spam. Or better yet, give the page owner the ability to change the title of the section.
  • Toggle: Give the page owner the ability to hide or show this section
  • Give the page owner easy edit ability to remove any message posted there
  • Let the page owner block specific users from being able to post there
  • There should be a description message close to where a user enters a message with the page owner's guidelines for posting there. I'd love to be able to put something like "Please do not spam this section with 'thank you's for favorites, thanks!"
  • Give the page owner the ability to move this section to the side (goes along with all the requests for multi-column layouts) instead of showing these inline with the rest of the feed.
+1

Shouts are a nice way to initiate conversation, or simply pay a compliment, without having to go to private messages. The lack of such might also end up encouraging spam in the long run. Lord knows we don't want 1N (no subject) "Hi". again. xD

+3

Allowing shouts to be visible on a person's page keeps the experience open. Private messages are private; shouts are meant to be like a semi-open social space where a person can say something directly to someone and others get to see who keeps in touch with them. A few of the artists I follow were only discovered by me after seeing them leave a shout on another artist's page, after which I clicked their profile and looked them up.

Shouts are also meant to be informal, and people who are less comfortable initiating direct conversation in private use this space to engage with someone without really feeling like they have to maintain the convo. Sometimes comments on a shout page get taken into private message space just because I thought that person was cool and I felt like actually having a 1-on-1 with them.

Shouts are always a great and easy way to thank someone for favoriting something of yours or watching you~

+2

I really llike shouts. Ironically for their name, they're great for smalltalk. Honestly I love giving and receiving compliments in shouts as well as banter, jokes and even just "opening for comms any time soon?" Type things. Idk its a way of talking to the person rather commenting on the content of a submission

+2

Just add shouts to the page. Make a box for them, put them in there. It's that simple.


I use shouts on FA and IB quite often. For when I want to say something without bothering to write a private note.


Oh and you folks can completely scrap the stupid facebook-like activity stream thing. I'd rather have a long series of shouts there. If I want to check an artist out, I don't care about their activity in a chronological way, I'll just check their gallery and their favorites anyway.

Just in general, I love shouts. I love to just pop in and say 'thanks for the fave/watch' or let an artist know in public that I love their stuff.

Not every addition must be useful. It would be kinda like profile comments on Steam - they have absolutely no purpose (actually they can be harmful, because scammers have a lot of fake +rep comments, so some people think they are trustworthy), but they are just fun.

+3

You don't know what shouts are good for? It's good for a quick message! It's good to say thanks.


eg. I love your character, I love your art so on so forth.

It's better than sending a private message that seems important just to say that.

+4

Great work! I have only one thing to remind: please, please, let the users reply to the shouts themselves and not have them run around and bounce back to other people's pages everytime just to reply, and leave a trail of nonsensical comments!

Definitely! I hated that on FA. XD

Personally I've never really liked the idea of shouts. I generally dislike the constant "Thanks for the fave!" spam I get on FA. I don't feel I need to be thanked for liking something. But for people who want that functionality would twitter feed integration serve the same purpose?

The shouts would probably be able to be turned off if you wanted them to be. As for the Twitter integration, it's an interesting idea. I can see people disliking it because it'd be forcing them to get an account they may not necessarily want otherwise.

I got a new follower yesterday -- someone whom I'd never heard of before. I browsed to their page to thank them for taking an interest in my work, but was disappointed to see that there isn't a shout box to do so.

+1

I know several people have said the same thing by now, but while I love the site on the whole, it does feel a little bit like I'm browsing in a vacuum. Even if pages are full of nothing but "thanks for the watch", it still helps it feel like a more connected/social experience.

I consider shouts pointless and just clutter a page.

I like shouts, but it would be nice if they were included in a separate tab or maybe a module that artists could choose to include on their pages? I know some people HATE them, but some people love them! It's a nice way to drop some thank you art or even just a public thank you or "hello" to someone you know.

Because I don't have the focus to sift through all of the replies; I would generally use a shout to connect with someone where commenting on a journal or submission would be inappropriate, while not forcing them to go through the awkward hassle of talking to me privately via a note/PM/IM/whatever.


EG: "Hey, I think I saw you at the con - were you table #4?" or "Neat art style dude!" or "Oh, you like X - I like X too! We should talk about it sometime!"


Of course, the OPTION to have them would be amazing, but the option to NOT have them would also be amazing, since not everyone likes them, but some people raher enjoy them!

I believe every single content page should have support for comments on it. Comments on a user profile are just called shouts.


Comments on user pages are vital because comments anywhere else are expected to be contextual. If I comment on a submission, my comment will most likely be related directly to that submission, not to a general query of the user such as commission openings or whether they go to cons or whatever.


The main issue is that many sites don't allow you to reply to shouts, making them considerably less useful. They also tend to be stuffed into a small corner of the user page, which makes it awkward to hold conversations longer than "Hello!" "Also hello."


My suggestion to enable userpage comments would be that only the first comment in a tree is visible at first, sort of like  forum thread. Clicking on it will then open the entire comment tree at the expense of most of the rest of the page (leaving only the user's profile info and banner), but it can be closed to return the page to its normal layout.


And of course, every user should have the option to disable comments on their page, just like they should be able to disable them on each submission.

We're looking into adding that in the near future, actually; I agree that having networking through shouts on a page is important, and we'd want people to be able to add or remove those from their profile if they want.