The Forum Has Gotten a Makeover

[Kesha]

On 1/4/2024 at 11:26 AM, uk1000 said:

Also can we please have the "all activity" forum section back since that made it easier to quickly see recent posts.

Also shouldn't there be a section for Fiverr Bugs like there used to be? Though they could be posted in a support ticket you might want to check with other forum users their opinions/if they are experiencing the same issue first.

Also couldn't there be forum sections that are accessible depending on a user's forum stats?

There could be something like that, that explains what part if it may be true and what parts aren't (that being active might help in some circumstances but falsely getting something to show you're online would be against the Fiverr rules/or may be and that it's not possible for a human to go without sleep etc).

Hi, feel free to report any bugs in the Feedback boards. Loving all the other suggestions! I will pass them along to the rest of the team as we continue to think of ways to improve the forum. 

[Kesha]

On 1/3/2024 at 10:12 PM, shuvo_va said:

The evaluation system of the forum should be changed. Many people think that  Forum reputation & badges helps them to get more sales. That is why they do unnecessary spamming just getting badges in forum. As a result, it is confusing to find out the right resource.

Good point! We'll keep working on ways to clarify the evaluation system and its connection to the forum to ensure users don't encounter any confusion or misinformation.

[vickiespencer]

12 hours ago, moikchap said:

If I had an actual "just a buyer"-only zone to go to

I am a buyer and a seller on Fiverr and have spent a considerable amount making purchases on Fiverr. I know many other sellers like me are also buyers and have spent much more than I have. @vickieito comes to mind. There are other sellers I see on the Forum who have hired me to proofread content for projects they have outside of Fiverr. I will not mention them due to privacy issues.

 

 

12 hours ago, moikchap said:

Maybe set up a Club which auto-rejects those that have gigs, and if they have a certain amount of completed orders, they go to a manual approval queue.

This would be a better idea rather than creating a buyers-only zone that does not include us, who buy and sell both on Fiverr.

[Kesha]

Hi! Thank you to all who have provided feedback on how we can continue to improve the forum.

Based on your comments we have made the following changes: 

• The “News” board has been moved to the "From the Fiverr Team" section. It is also pinned to the sidebar so you can easily access it from any page.
• The General section has been removed.
• The “Members Lounge” board, previously known as “Casual Conversations”, has been renamed “Lounge” and can now be found in the “From the Community” section. 
• “Fiverr Wins” has become its own section and includes separate boards for buyer wins and seller wins.
• A “Questions” board has been added to the "From the Community" section. This is where sellers and buyers who are not new to the platform can ask questions pertaining to orders and get help from other experienced members. 
• We updated all threads to automatically close to new responses after 8 months. 
• We created a “Latest Topics” area to the sidebar where you can see the most recently posted threads.

We are also working diligently to make the following changes in the near future: 

• Updating the evaluation system and adding new badges. This will include a “Fiverr Edit” badge that our Fiverr moderators can issue after making an official correction to any misinformed post.
• Creating a dedicated buyers section for buyers to connect exclusively with each other
• Updating the forum rules to be more concise and provide clarity on the Forum’s connection to the main site

As always, we continue to welcome any other suggestions you may have. 

[Kesha]

On 1/4/2024 at 8:34 AM, edc_lab said:

About educational resources:
I made a long post to reply to a user about thumbnails and I showed him three images. After posting it I saw a little mistake in one of the images and I tried to edit my post, but surprisingly I found that there is a 30-minute span where you can edit it and I was forced to post the same content twice.
So, if I want to create a new informative topic/post, that could require an edit, how can I update it?
Personally, I would get rid of the limit and just show revisions info such as "Last edit on xx/yy/zz - hh:mm".

In order to maintain the integrity of the forum, we only allow things to be edited up to 30 minutes after posting. If for any reason you need to edit your original statement after the editing window has closed, I would suggest simply adding your corrected response as a reply under your original statement. Hope this helps!

[moikchap]

2 hours ago, vickiespencer said:

This would be a better idea rather than creating a buyers-only zone that does not include us, who buy and sell both on Fiverr.

The proposed idea does exclude those who do both by auto-rejecting those with gigs.
The existing Fiverr Select forums are basically the de facto exclusive club for mixed buyers and buyer-sellers, and it's dominated by seller topics and seller perspectives.

[vickiespencer]

17 hours ago, moikchap said:

The proposed idea does exclude those who do both by auto-rejecting those with gigs.

What about the sellers/buyers who have invested over ten thousand dollars in buying on Fiverr? Should they be excluded too? 

[vickiespencer]

@Kesha is this messsage an error? I get it when I click on any headings, i.e., News and so on. 

[moikchap]

12 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

What about the sellers/buyers who have invested over ten thousand dollars in buying on Fiverr? Should they be excluded too? 

For the purpose of increasing "buyer" engagement; yes.
The effect that keeps me from posting more is that sellers have a dog in the fight on any buyer strategy and will be contrary even when it's not valid or appropriate. In my view, a seller/buyer is likely to argue against buyer strategies that negatively impact them, even if the strategy is proven viable by multiple buyers. You see it a lot in the "value vs premium" pricing debates where many sellers come in essentially treating high prices like they're a magic ward against poor service.
 

[smartdezigns]

18 hours ago, smartdezigns said:

Oh one more thing:

Fiverr Forum via App is also needed to be updated. I know the direct link of Forum (Chrome) but still within App, it's also important. 

@Kesha This point is missing.

[vickieito]

6 hours ago, moikchap said:

The existing Fiverr Select forums are basically the de facto exclusive club for mixed buyers and buyer-sellers, and it's dominated by seller topics and seller perspectives.

When I received the Fiverr Select invite two years ago, I reached out to CS because I read the terms of service for the program and it said that sellers are not allowed to join the program. They confirmed that I could not join, even though I received the invite. It was really tempting to click on the green "join" button!

I was really sad that I couldn't join because I would have benefited from having a success manager or better resources on the buying side. Instead of losing thousands of dollars on the wrong sellers. I spend a lot of time going through the forum looking for good buyer-only threads. There aren't many. I wouldn't mind just being a fly on the wall with only "reaction" privileges if I could read and learn from content in a buyer-only forum.

[moikchap]

1 hour ago, vickieito said:

I wouldn't mind just being a fly on the wall with only "reaction" privileges if I could read and learn from content in a buyer-only forum.

Probably there are good "Mixed Access Level" solutions that will work. If this was JIRA, I'd know how to set it up. The permissions schemes have a lot of granularity to give different groups stuff piecemeal, like browse but not write.  

Depending on the desired KPI, maybe the actual "buyer engagement" solution is to not use the forum. If the point is to increase knowledge sharing for the purpose of increasing buyer confidence and activity (ex, reducing waste, which increases profitability, which increases spend)... maybe curating a magazine-style "newsletter" might be a better option. Collect a few opinions, run it by a small committee, edit, publish.

[catwriter]

2 hours ago, vickieito said:

I wouldn't mind just being a fly on the wall with only "reaction" privileges if I could read and learn from content in a buyer-only forum.

This sounds like a good idea, to avoid this problem:

9 hours ago, moikchap said:

The effect that keeps me from posting more is that sellers have a dog in the fight on any buyer strategy and will be contrary even when it's not valid or appropriate. In my view, a seller/buyer is likely to argue against buyer strategies that negatively impact them, even if the strategy is proven viable by multiple buyers

Those who have gigs would still be able to learn what works for buyers, but wouldn't be able to argue.

And maybe it would be a good idea to allow all sellers read-only access to this area, so they can learn what buyers hate and what behaviors to avoid?

Now, I see a possible problem with this "buyers only" area: there are sellers with multiple accounts who use some of those as "burner accounts". On those "burner accounts", they don't have any gigs (which would allow them access to a "buyer only" area), they use those accounts to message other sellers and beg for work. They're not actually buyers, they never buy anything, they just beg for work. I'm not sure if they would even be interested in a "buyer only" forum area, but if they were to show up there, they could quickly make a mess of it.

[yourbrandingpal]

If you ask me, you should block most of the sections of the forum, make it so that only tenured users can respond to questions and post any concerns. Exception, of course, buyers, or sellers + buyers. Everyone else should be encouraged to search the existing posts. Because if you do a Google search with "site:community.fiverr.com" + <question>, you do find most of the answers to questions that are asked to this date. But well, up to you how you want to do it, your forum after all.. funny enough, I do have a feeling that the makeover was done to get rid of Casual Conversations and Ranting Pot sections lol... 

[catwriter]

@Kesha, a quick question: is "Tips from Sellers" now for asking questions, too, not just for sharing tips? That's what it looks like, based on its new description.

[imagination7413]

3 hours ago, catwriter said:

"Tips from Sellers" now for asking questions, too, not just for sharing tips? That's what it looks like, based on its new description.

I don't like this. Same with "Tips from Buyers." It doesn't make sense, as they are literally filled with advice to help and aid and Sellers and Buyers. 

This is a basic business principle. While the source of a product or service is important (quality, authenticity, and ethically), it's equally as important as who or what the product/service is for.

Plus, as mentioned, we have Sellers who are also Buyers (SwaaBs) who would need to be differentiated and I know of several Sellers would prefer that their SwaaB status not be publicly known, due to getting bombarded with 'buy order from me' spam. 

[uk1000]

4 hours ago, catwriter said:

is "Tips from Sellers" now for asking questions, too, not just for sharing tips? That's what it looks like, based on its new description.

Though there's also now a proper "questions" section (like what there used to be).  So maybe the "tips for sellers" section just needs the description fixing to exclude asking questions so it's just for tips like it used to be.

[imagination7413]

On 1/3/2024 at 6:11 PM, Trisha_Fiverr said:

On 1/3/2024 at 5:46 PM, donnovan86 said:

I do want to suggest something, maybe we can get rid of this hearts counting as engagement for leveling, because a lot of people are "serial likers", they like everything and that's why I stopped notifications for likes, they are just doing it to increase their forum level. They think it will bring them sales, but all that does is frustrate people that actually want to browse the forum and engage with others or people looking for advice.. 

 It seems we don't have the option, but we are going to add some more rewards pretty soon that will grant much higher levels of points for those who are creating and participating in conversations. 

I know this post is a few days old, but I somehow missed it then. According to the Invision guide, it's completely possible to make reactions not worth anything. 
https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/member-functions/reputation-and-reactions-r171/ 

Also, when the forum was on Discourse, there was a cap of... I want to say 50ish reactions per day. While I know some of my fellow Regulars really like to react, it did help before the migration to make people actually think before reacting, and if it was worth spending those limited reactions. Plus, with Invision displaying reactions on our profile feeds (which is just plain clutter), the limit should probably be reinstated. 

[vickiespencer]

I would like to see posts that say the same thing as the emojis to not count for anything, too.

Too many users say things that are covered by using emojis, and all that does is clutter the thread—for example, thanks and congratulations. 

[Kesha]

On 1/6/2024 at 4:04 PM, imagination7413 said:

I know this post is a few days old, but I somehow missed it then. According to the Invision guide, it's completely possible to make reactions not worth anything. 
https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/member-functions/reputation-and-reactions-r171/ 

Also, when the forum was on Discourse, there was a cap of... I want to say 50ish reactions per day. While I know some of my fellow Regulars really like to react, it did help before the migration to make people actually think before reacting, and if it was worth spending those limited reactions. Plus, with Invision displaying reactions on our profile feeds (which is just plain clutter), the limit should probably be reinstated. 

On 1/7/2024 at 9:56 AM, vickiespencer said:

I would like to see posts that say the same thing as the emojis to not count for anything, too.

Too many users say things that are covered by using emojis, and all that does is clutter the thread—for example, thanks and congratulations. 

Thanks for this! We are actively brainstorming ways to update the engagement system for maximum effectiveness. Changes will be implemented in the near future.

[Kesha]

On 1/6/2024 at 7:46 AM, catwriter said:

@Kesha, a quick question: is "Tips from Sellers" now for asking questions, too, not just for sharing tips? That's what it looks like, based on its new description.

On 1/6/2024 at 12:49 PM, uk1000 said:

Though there's also now a proper "questions" section (like what there used to be).  So maybe the "tips for sellers" section just needs the description fixing to exclude asking questions so it's just for tips like it used to be.

On 1/6/2024 at 11:53 AM, imagination7413 said:

I don't like this. Same with "Tips from Buyers." It doesn't make sense, as they are literally filled with advice to help and aid and Sellers and Buyers. 

This is a basic business principle. While the source of a product or service is important (quality, authenticity, and ethically), it's equally as important as who or what the product/service is for.

Plus, as mentioned, we have Sellers who are also Buyers (SwaaBs) who would need to be differentiated and I know of several Sellers would prefer that their SwaaB status not be publicly known, due to getting bombarded with 'buy order from me' spam. 

The "Tips from Buyers" and "Tips from Sellers" boards were created as a place where buyers and sellers can offer advice. Users can seek advice or help in the "Questions" board. The description for each of these has been updated for clarity. 

[Kesha]

On 1/6/2024 at 7:44 AM, yourbrandingpal said:

If you ask me, you should block most of the sections of the forum, make it so that only tenured users can respond to questions and post any concerns. Exception, of course, buyers, or sellers + buyers. Everyone else should be encouraged to search the existing posts. Because if you do a Google search with "site:community.fiverr.com" + <question>, you do find most of the answers to questions that are asked to this date. 

Thanks for the feedback! We want the forum to not just be a place for information, but also a place for connection and networking. Therefore, though we encourage users to search and see if their questions have already been asked before posting, the forum remains open for all users to open and engage with others freely.   

On 1/6/2024 at 7:44 AM, yourbrandingpal said:

funny enough, I do have a feeling that the makeover was done to get rid of Casual Conversations and Ranting Pot sections lol... 

"Casual Conversations" has been renamed to "Lounge". You can find it here. Also, we encourage any complaints or concerns to be posted in the Feedback channels. 

[Kesha]

On 1/5/2024 at 5:14 PM, vickiespencer said:

@Kesha is this messsage an error? I get it when I click on any headings, i.e., News and so on. 

@vickiespencer Hmm. That's odd. I see that you have full access to all the boards so that message should not be coming up. It must be an error. Is the problem persisting? If so, may you please message me with more details on what you are clicking that is causing that error? Perhaps a screen record would help!

[yourbrandingpal]

1 hour ago, Kesha said:

We want the forum to not just be a place for information, but also a place for connection and networking

So what's the progress on this so far? Do you see a lot of users connecting and networking on here?  

1 hour ago, Kesha said:

"Casual Conversations" has been renamed to "Lounge".

Would appreciate it if you could add it to the initial post to avoid confusion i.e. the sections that were removed, renamed etc.

1 hour ago, Kesha said:

Also, we encourage any complaints or concerns to be posted in the Feedback channels. 

Can you please list down those Feedback channels?

[Kesha]

On 1/6/2024 at 12:19 AM, vickieito said:

When I received the Fiverr Select invite two years ago, I reached out to CS because I read the terms of service for the program and it said that sellers are not allowed to join the program. They confirmed that I could not join, even though I received the invite. It was really tempting to click on the green "join" button!

I was really sad that I couldn't join because I would have benefited from having a success manager or better resources on the buying side. Instead of losing thousands of dollars on the wrong sellers. I spend a lot of time going through the forum looking for good buyer-only threads. There aren't many. I wouldn't mind just being a fly on the wall with only "reaction" privileges if I could read and learn from content in a buyer-only forum.

On 1/5/2024 at 5:33 PM, moikchap said:

For the purpose of increasing "buyer" engagement; yes.
The effect that keeps me from posting more is that sellers have a dog in the fight on any buyer strategy and will be contrary even when it's not valid or appropriate. In my view, a seller/buyer is likely to argue against buyer strategies that negatively impact them, even if the strategy is proven viable by multiple buyers. You see it a lot in the "value vs premium" pricing debates where many sellers come in essentially treating high prices like they're a magic ward against poor service.

On 1/6/2024 at 2:52 AM, catwriter said:

This sounds like a good idea, to avoid this problem:

Those who have gigs would still be able to learn what works for buyers, but wouldn't be able to argue.

And maybe it would be a good idea to allow all sellers read-only access to this area, so they can learn what buyers hate and what behaviors to avoid?

Now, I see a possible problem with this "buyers only" area: there are sellers with multiple accounts who use some of those as "burner accounts". On those "burner accounts", they don't have any gigs (which would allow them access to a "buyer only" area), they use those accounts to message other sellers and beg for work. They're not actually buyers, they never buy anything, they just beg for work. I'm not sure if they would even be interested in a "buyer only" forum area, but if they were to show up there, they could quickly make a mess of it.

These are all really great points to consider as we continue to brainstorm what that upcoming buyer-exclusive space should look like. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions!