Last week, Yahoo launched a new “Suggestions” feature that incorporates Digg-like community voting elements. Instead of news items, however, users sample the suggestions that have been submitted regarding Yahoo’s services and vote on which ones they would like to see implemented the most.
Yahoo Silences Unwanted Suggestions
On the face of it, a community driven suggestion forum seems like a pretty good idea. Throw in some Digg-like voting features and a site like this could be a potential hit, right?
Almost.
What I’ve failed to mention is that Yahoo seems to have difficulty accepting criticism of its own services.
In a post last week, David Dalka decided to bring up some issues with Yahoo Mail on the company’s suggestion website. The topic quickly began tallying supporting votes, until it mysteriously disappeared, that is.
Dalka talks about the course of events on his blog:
I made a post on Yahoo! Suggestions – “Yahoo! E-mail – please improve the spam filters – too much spam gets through” in the hopes that it would get voted on by other people caring about the issue and that Yahoo! would respond by putting resources on correcting the issue. At mid-afternoon, the entry had 9 votes.
Then I got the message below stating it was deleted. As I write this I’m absolutely stunned, how can Yahoo! state that the “Suggestion is not actionable by owners of this Suggestion Board, therefore we are removing it.” If this is going to be the normal procedure of Yahoo! Suggestions, I now have serious concerns about the success of the Yahoo! Suggestions initiative. Hopefully, they will review the procedures and improve this.
Perhaps this is just my own narrow perception, but doesn’t it defeat the purpose of even having a suggestion forum if the posts that highlight real problems are just going to be removed?
It’s like buying a shiny new gun to take on the competition, and subsequently shooting yourself in the foot with it.
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