Fine tuning required

[DiogoRibeiro]

Ten days ago we made controversial changes and introduced new features that made some members of GirlsAskGuys feel like we took away control from them.

In response to that feedback we got from you and from the incredible amount of data we collected and analyzed during this time, we made adjustments to these features. This is what we did:

Your content, your call

First of all, let me share that the number of opinions per question have seen a 5% increase and that the number of question with no opinions fell a whopping 49%! In addition to that, questions now get their first opinion 29% faster.

This data shows that yes, the intended goals I shared with you on this myTake were achieved with Closed Questions. But we felt that it would be only fair to give you more control over your content.

After 24 hours, you'll be able to close your questions with or without selecting the Most Helpful Opinion. It's going to be your call. Just use the "Close" option from the collapsible menu when available.

You can also close it when selecting the Most Helpful Opinion, but that's optional now. Just uncheck "Also close this question" and we'll keep it open until you manually close it or it's become inactive for 48 hours (no new opinions, replies or votes on a poll, remember?).

Keep it secret, keep it safe

The other feature introduced was the ability to share a Private Opinion that's only visible for the Asker and the Opinion Owner. We made some updates to that with one single focus: keep the community safe and healthy.

We now allow the Asker to remove a private opinion immediately by using the "I don't want to see this" option from the collapsible menu. That we'll guarantee you won't have to keep seeing an opinion you just don't care about.

Since this removal isn't vetted by an Admin or a Moderator, it wouldn't be fair to penalize the Opinion Owner at all, so we won't remove the Xper points earned for sharing that opinion.

If the opinion is offensive, spam or reflects any kind of behavior that is not appropriate for our community, we continue to encourage and trust you to report it that so our Admin team can take action.

More tweaking and tinkering

On top of all that, we disabled some notifications that might be annoying (for now you can turn them back on if you want) and fixed several bugs that were plaguing the new notification system.

Closed questions are rarely found on the Live Feed and most other places across GirlsAskGuys, as some of you suggested made more sense.

Other improvements are underway to make sure you'll know exactly which of your questions are still open and how much time does a question have until it's automatically closed. We got some interesting feedback for private opinions and those should see more updates soon too.

---

Thanks again for being here, for your continuous support and for making GirlsAskGuys this amazing community.

[BellePepper]

So... you're basically just letting people close their questions sooner? I'm pretty sure that's specifically *not* what people have been asking for. I suppose people can artificially stretch their question's life out but it doesn't seem like I should have to play the system just to get discussion

**Private Comments should not exist on this site. Period.**

You can still go to a person's profile and see what they have posted in their private comments. It's never anything helpful. It's always something like "message me and I'll tell you more" or "follow me for tips on how I can help you with that" or " exceedingly explicit and inappropriate sexual content that isn't allowed on the site but is being posted anyway."

A) People do not follow site rules. If they did you would not need over 70 moderators.

B) People do not KNOW site rules. If they did you would not need over 70 moderators

C) Private Comments consistently create dangerous, risky, and illegal situations that put users AND the site at risk.

D) There are already many, many issues surrounding Private Messages such as spamming, harassment, sexual harassment, people sending pictures of their genitals to minors, etc... So WHY would you not only give people another way to do these things but also *defend* it?

Yay more updates...
media.giphy.com/media/qpFg2k3Njuq2Y/giphy.gif

[RainbowFanGirl]

^ Exactly. Why can't they just take these stupid features out? I miss the old g@g. :/

[VirginiaBeachBum]

@BellePepper saved me a LOT of typing. :-)

[BellePepper]

@VirginiaBeachBum You should go for it anyway! GaG admins listen to guys more anyway.

[BellePepper]

@RainbowFanGirl Exactly. I feel like I'm constantly fighting against the interface. We're going to need an xkit guy for GaG at this rate...

[VirginiaBeachBum]

@BellePepper, I've let my feelings about the recent changes be known repeatedly to the admins to little avail. :-(

[cinderelli]

Totally agree... it's already an anonymous site.. wtf would someone need private opinion.. and gif is so perfect!

[BellePepper]

@cinderelli Exactly! Like how much more anonymous do we need to get? Why are we taking away community accountability?

Thank you!!! I get most of my gifs from giphy. com

[cinderelli]

Mostly the users are just spamming..
Users with valid opinions never go private.. I simply don't get the point..

[BellePepper]

@cinderelli Oh I agree. Like I said, it's never "here's a useful opinion". It's always "pm me" or explicit content. Like all you have to do is go to the HDIL or Sexual categories and see all the private posts and you know EXACTLY what's going on.

[cinderelli]

Don't what what admins are on.. 😒lol.. 😆

[BuchitaBuchys]

This! Literally, I keep tagging all the admins, they rarely respond, only a few are nice like menguc and diogo.

That's what I've been saying! Since I joined this site like nearly 2yrs ago, I've seen young teen girls posting pics or questions about their bodies. And then guys, many times much older than them, posting disgusting responses.
And now, it's worse. They've made it a pedos paradise.

I've seen questions like "I'm 14 and 5'1, 100lbs and I'm a 32D, is this too big?"
And then there's already at least 1 or 2 private opinions from males.
It's disgusting and creepy. Incredibly risky of this site.
If they insist on having this feature, they should stop being shortsighted and prevent it from being used on under 18. Because again, this is becoming a pedo's paradise.

I'm going to keep tagging y'all until y'all block me, ban me, or address this issue. Sorry.
@xHoneyxBeex
@RedRain
@menguc
@DiogoRibeiro
@GirlsAskGuys
@tolga

Worst update ever!

[BellePepper]

@BuchitaBuchys I so agree! It's unbelievably creepy to see all the private comments on -18 questions. Why are we encouraging, protecting, and enabling these people?

And we KNOW these girls don't realize the trouble they're getting themselves into because we see them encouraging and accepting that behavior in the comments. Teenagers are NOT experienced or mentally developed enough to make consistently responsible decisions when they're being inundated by adults who take pains to specifically groom and manipulate them.

[RedRain]

BuchitaBuchys, thanks for the mention. We're always striving to make the site as safe as possible. Admins can see reports and suspicious activity, and spammers of that sort are always being spotted out. We care about safety as much as you guys do.

[BuchitaBuchys]

@RedRain thank you. It's just much concern because I remember reading the creepy messages even BEFORE there were private opinions on under 18 posts, and now it just feels like it's mostly men who use it when they ask questions when they're insecure about their bodies. It looks like a pedo's paradise. And who knows? Maybe they are giving helpful advice in private, but based on how it was before, and how @BellePepper mentioned, it's mostly inappropriate content.

If we MUST keep private opinions, it should not be able to be used on anyone under 18 in my opinion.

And also, optional. Like anonymous opinions are optional.

And yes @BellePepper! I fucking HATE how like if you comment, which I have, for the adults to stop sexually harassing these young teens, they get defensive "if she wants to, then let her. It's none of your business". Motherfucker, when you, an adult, are trying to convince a 13, 14, 15yr old girl to send you pics/nudes, hell yes it's my business.

[RainbowFanGirl]

@BuchitaBuchys Preach! 👏

[BellePepper]

@RedRain I feel like if safety was truly a priority with this feature you all should have looked at it, laughed, and tossed it out. It should have never been implimentes based on what is said and subsequently removed on this site and whom it is said to.

[Anonymous]

And the downvotes?

With the closing question thing you consider us being able to close the question faster giving us 'our choice', completely ignoring the fact that we wanted to keep them open longer, not close them faster.
"I want a red car."
-sure the choice is yours. Tan or brown?
"But I want a red one"
-ya here ya go, would you like tan or brown?

[DiogoRibeiro]

By not closing them automatically when selecting MHO, they can be open longer.

Also, as we stated previously, according to our data, most of the questions that are ~inactive~ for 48 hours don't usually get new relevant activity later on.

Last but not least, closing questions enabled us to get quicker answers, more opinions per question and a lot less questions without answers, which was our goal from the start. ;)

[VirginiaBeachBum]

"closing questions enabled us to get quicker answers, more opinions per question and a lot less questions without answers"

But not necessarily better answers, because now it's "hurry up and answer the question before it gets closed." I take it GAG prefers quantity over quality.

[Opinion Owner]

@VirginiaBeachBum exactly. As many people have stated and I have experianced, sometimes the best answers come after a long while, as the right person comes along and offers their perspective. I think you hit the nail on the head with 'quantity over quality'. Because the profits are realized through advertising on this site, quantity is the goal. Evidently quality is not the objective.

[madhatters4]

i'm not a huge fan of questions closing after a MHO is selected, especially since people are prompted to select a most helpful opinion.

aside from that i like the fine tuning

[mooky06]

At least you gave the font a nicer look LOL 😂

[CheerGirl38139]

I have purposely commenting on the recent updates until I could really sit back and let them soak in for a while and not knee jerk a negative reaction.

Personally, since you guys reveresedan the uber annoying million notifications thing, I'm basically happy with the changes.

I don't ask a lot of questions, but when I do, I chose to not allow anonymous opinions. If someone wants to respond, I like to know who they are. Further, I think the private opinion option is more useful than the anonymous feature. However of Belle Pepper is correct , I do agree that if those replies still show up on a user's recent profile feed, that needs to change.

The changes to how questions are posted and how they show up in the feed, etc. Have cut way back on anonymous trolling, which was majorly disruptive to the usefulness of this site, as they buried real questions from the feed.

Lastly, I still don't miss the downvotes. To me they were often abused simply to negatively troll other users. If you disagree with someone's opinion, either take the time to reply and say why you disagree, or simply move on. Downvoting someone's opinion never seemed to actually add anything productive to GaG for me. Whereas informed debate can. If people can be civil and mature.

I'm happy with the fine tuning overall. I say well done.

[CheerGirl38139]

Purposely held off*

And I know I'm in the minority, but brining back down votes adds absolutely nothing productive to GaG. It just makes it easy for negative users to lazily troll, without adding any useful input.

[YourFutureEx]

"I don't want to see this" be like
media.giphy.com/media/q6NoZGqWtH4Kk/giphy.gif
If someone is offended, it should be taken seriously. The culprits should be punished/penalised. By hiding the opinion, asker won't get his/her justice. Plus, you cannot expect users to be knowledgeable enough to report the negative posts, even some mods aren't. Back then when I was a mod, I used to hide things on the mods' post (questions/opinions) so, you can imagine how people are unfamiliar with the guidelines. I understood the fact that we'd not allow mods to see the private opinions, but they need to be reviewed. Maybe you can give answerers a pop up notification that "your opinion will be posted after admin review which will take upto 48 hours"? You can have a list of all the private opinions and review them personally.

People didn't rebel because they had to choose MHO to close the question, they rebelled because of short time period. By the way, congrats for good statistics. But a lot of questions get closed without even receiving a single opinion, having their last hope, lost forever. Could they feature them after having their questions closed?

I didn't check the notification. I hope they're better now. Personally, I didn't like "Someone". It feels like it's a username. Better keep it "Anonymous" because we are used to it :)

PS: Why you guys are taking so much time for bringing back downvotes and follow feature. Make the users happy after a long time. Or you're planning for a surprise? ;)

[Humping_Tornadoes]

I wonder though, how are you giving users control by closing their questions within a 48 hour period and then telling them "hey, you can now close questions even sooner within 24 hours!"? It's not like anyone asked for shorter periods, you all know it's quite the opposite what people want. At least give everyone a full week to keep their questions opened or smth. That way they'll have more time to get QUALITY questions. People are not looking for quantity, but quality and this is what this whole thing is about. So far, this update seems like bs and it doesn't make any sense to me.

Private opinions still suck. It defies the purpose of being a mod, even if Askers are able to hide those responses. Actually, by making this new change you're basically proving how useless and nonsensical it really is. It seems redundant that you had to make an update so soon after recently implementing this private opinion thing. Opinions are public, and should be part of the community instead of alienating responses, and pm's are specifically made for one on one private interactions, period.

We still need the downvotes too. But hey, at least you were able to handle the glitches going on, kudos for that...

[RainbowFanGirl]

Thanks for the improvements, but I have some little suggestions for y'all.

• I like how you're giving us more control with the closed questions, but I think it should be OUR CHOICE whether or not we want to close it at all. It irks me that there are so many old questions that are forcefully closed because of the update. It just feels like you guys are trying to control us a bit. We should have the power to close our questions at any time for any reason at least. Not you guys. I love receiving answers on my old questions and sometimes the best opinions come down the line. 😛

• Thank you for adding the "I don't want to see this option" to the private opinions. But... It feels a little redundant with the already implemented PM feature. I mean if they want privacy, couldn't people just send a PM? Seriously, people already do this. When my questions were closed, I got an influx of people answering my questions beck are they were closed, which is a problem that could've been avoided if you'd let me have the opinion to close any of my questions at any time. Also, you can't always count on the Asker to remove opinions. Could you at least give mods the ability to see private opinions so we couldn't have this problem? It would be beneficial to newer members who don't know much about the site.

• Could you guys please bring back the ability to follow questions and takes? That was so convient. I loved being able to save the questions I wanted to answer for later without having to scroll through a bunch of questions. 😛

• I know you guys are bringing back downvotes. Yay us.

Yep, that's about it. Give us more freedom. That's all I ask. :/

[blondfrog]

where is the collaspsible menu anyways lol?

[lordeisqueen]

@blondfrog right. I'm confused on that part too

[Chief16]

Oh, Come On! Stats don't say anything about user experience at all.
-I've had some great questions I've had to close because of that closing questions limit. Four of them were FEATURED. Two of them became FEATURED AFTER I CLOSED THEM. What? Why? What's the point? Please REMOVE it NOW!
-Ok, ok. If a person wants a private opinion, let them ask a PRIVATE QUESTION. This is G@G, not some shady chatroom.
- See that's what it is, you must've probably seen a dozen MyTakes about people voicing their concerns. Please, PLEASE read them. They're worth a look and most takes have many things in common.
- Oh, it's like can you unsee what you've seen? FACEPALM. BIG TIME FACEPALM.
memesvault.com/.../Double-Extreme-Facepalm-05.png

[DiogoRibeiro]

Thanks for the opinion. We do collect and read all the feedback you guys provide.

As far as closed questions go, even though numbers don't always tell the whole story, they are definitely indication that we were able to achieve what we intended. ;)

[ChromAzonyx108]

Who are you referring to when you say 'we'? What the admins/moderators want or what the users want? I'm not sure they're the same thing.

[VirginiaBeachBum]

"As far as closed questions go, even though numbers don't always tell the whole story, they are definitely indication that we were able to achieve what we intended."

@DiogoRibeiro From what I've seen recently, many more questions for which my opinion was selected as MHO I find that I was the only male (and sometimes the only person) to answer the question. I trust that wasn't your intent, was it?

[CHARismatic110]

I still don't like the idea of questions being closed at all, but at least you all are somewhat listening. I've noticed that when I click on the gender color in a question to jump right to that genders answers it doesn't work anymore. Is that a glitch or?

[AleDeEurope]

This is much better, though I still think private opinions should be gone, or at least allow the asker to choose whether to allow private opinions or not, like with the anonymous option. What's the point of not allowing anonymous, when they can simply use the private option?
I don't want people to go private on my questions. I write them so that EVERYONE can post an opinion, AND comment on other people's opinions. I like seeing people debate and show their different opinions, but if they go private, it just kills all that, which in my opinion, kills the whole community feeling of this site.

[Mesonfielde]

So what about the questions in the NO OPINIONS section that are 2 days old or more, and nobody can comment on them anymore because they're closed?

What about the questions that are featured and closed?

[WeeGeeTheSecond]

this

much more important than the so requested downvotes

[RedRobin]

Yeah, I actually saw a couple weeks f questions in the "no options" section that had just been asked (they were less then an hour old) and were closed

[RedRobin]

* of

[BellePepper]

@RedRobin That was supposed to be a glitch that they've fixed and talked about in a mod newsletter that was sent out like... last week or the week before.

[WeeGeeTheSecond]

I think you two are missing the point here..
Having a question automaticaly closed after 48 hours is just stupid.
I had to make the same question twice because of this limit just to get one awnser.
What of the awnsers that take a month to come but are really good? Nope, we won't have them anymore.

[Mesonfielde]

@WeeGeeTheSecond I personally think it shouldn't close unless it has like 10 answers on it at least. Closing "no opinions" questions is really strange, it just shows that the system is completely broken.

[WeeGeeTheSecond]

Exactly

[Riverock]

Thanks. :)

I get why so many dislike questions being closed but with the amount of questions on the site, there would have to be something done to improve the amount of answers. The statistics above show that A) this was the intent and B) it's worked (to some degree).

Private questions can definitely be tricky as @BellePepper says. You could make it so that mods can see them too if that's possible. Or prevent new users from posting privately or perhaps all users from doing it but just for questions by under 18 users.

[redeyemindtricks]

Hiya!

On the mobile UX, the pink/blue horizontal band on top of the comments -- with "What Girls Said" / "What Guys Said" + comment numbers -- doesn't work anymore when it's tapped.

Tapping the numbers used to scroll down to the boy/girl comments; that functionality has apparently been disabled by some bug in the latest update.

I'm on iOS 9. Both Safari and Dolphin have this problem right now. Just thought I'd let you know.

[DiogoRibeiro]

Thanks for the heads up. We'll check on that right away! ;)

[Spirit_Is_Free]

They sound reasonable to me - It should placate a lot of users.

[AzureGirl]

Just curious about an update I noticed that wasn't written about: the whole font situation going on now with the mobile site. I'm not sure if it's the same on the computer though.

It's a lot bigger and more headache inducing :/

I know it's not a big thing but it seems quite a few others don't much care for it either.

[doctorwhofan23]

Thr one thing I disagree with is the 48 hour rule, I think if I see an old question I might still be able to provide feedback. I also think I should be able to answer after a most helpful Is awarded as I can still give feedback.

[Anonymous]

This is my opinion. Remove the closed question options all together, remove the dumb private messaging thing, remove the cluttered notification..
Basically bring Gag how it was before the recent update as well as bring back the downvotes and the option to follow certian questions.
The new font is fine. But like, thats not really what we were asking for. I get you want to make gag a better site, but you guys are making a lot of unnecessary updates that are irrelevant.

[RainbowFanGirl]

That's what I'm saying. Instead of beating around the bush just remove the dumb things all together.

[SnowHearth]

Could you give a 72 hour limit instead 48h?
I think it would be better.

[DiogoRibeiro]

We're gathering some more data before making that call, but it's a possibility. :)

[Zeanobia]

Can it be 48 YEARS limit instead?

[Toad-1]

Well im glad you guys listened this time... still gotta say even if a question is inactive for awhile the option to close it should still be within the power of the QA. Sometimes ill find an old question and want to answer it but now if its closed i can't. You never know maybe the new answers can shed better insight.

Regardless giving us the user the option to close it is a good one

[mikemx55]

It's easy: cheat the system -> they still let you post opinion replies, so leave your opinion there highjacking the original opinion... you won't get mho.. but you will be heard!!!

[teawrecks]

and the downvote is... where?

[musicbrain5]

Nowhere to be found. Same with the promised reinstatement of being able to follow questions. Which would be totally pointless now that we can't answer questions after 2 days.

[Yumix]

a step in the right direction. make the inactivity time for closing longer (or get rid of it completely) and don't link the number of questions you can ask to your open questions and I'd be almost happy...

if you are telling us all these stats, I would have love to know how much the activity on the site changed... seems to have gone down.