And perhaps grand totals for all repeat/similar Ideas?

Say it is true...

bnelson,

Thanks for the response.

Just so you know, my inbox is down.

I'm still looking forward to Ideas grand totals.

bnelson,

"In Box" has crashed and why in the hell are "we" using Greenwich Mean Time on the posts??????? Where is Matt?????

OK, Part II, Why under "comments" am I seeing the original post and not the latest comment? What the hell did you guys do to f**k this up last night. I sure hope it's not staying this way.

On the list of house repairs here at MSI:  Whenever I go to Ideas In Action it logs me out of the system so I have to re-sign in. Also, I agree with Breve: I prefer the older system of showing comments. Or perhaps there could be a hybrid where you get the thread title, one or 2 sentences, and the most recent comment in a different color, when you click on the "Comments" linky.

As for grand totals:  It will never be perfect. There will always be questions like "Is that a similar issue" ?  OR "what did that person really mean with that thread"? OR "wait. That thread has 3 or 4 ideas and one seems to touch on the same thing as other threads ..." OR  "Is that close enough?"  --- This is going to have a subjective component to it.  We might get some interesting data to look at, but it won't be perfect.

Brad,

You guys are doing great work. Thanks to all.

New bugs with new launches are just part of software progress. Most of us understand. The main thing is that you are keeping those of us that care well informed.

We are with you all of the way.

Looking forward to your next update,

David

Well, the speed improved on this site. Thanks.

It appears that all the line breaks and formating was stripped out from the old posts during the upgrade. Now long posts appear as hard to read continuous blocks of text.

Can this be undone?

I miss one of the old 'flukes' of the old system:  It used to be that the print preview mode would give you the last 100 votes on your thread. That's been removed. It was fun being able to see who voted on your thread!

It looks no line breaks are allowed even on new posts.

While I appreciate your working hard on this site, I have to tell you, between the formatting and the inbox issues, it looks like more testing should have been done before launch.

I still have no access to my Inbox - bad.

The "Leader Board" has been dead since its introduction - bad.

Come on folks, we are pulling for you. do something right!

Many of my MSI links are responded to with; "Too many script statements: 200001...An unexpected error has occurred. Your development organization has been notified. "

The MSI site is, I am afraid, hopelessly and irreparably  dysfunctional. Much like Starbucks Corporation.

May it RIP.

bnelson and/or Matt, ANY NEWS on: Crashing inbox, GMT, and comments section, line breaks ????????? Awaiting...................

Breve,

If you are "awaiting" for Starbucks to fix their clunky MSI site I hope that you are *** in age if you hope to live long enough to use a fully functional version.

Brad, thanks for the updat. Can't wait to have paragraphs back! On the funny side, I notice now and then that a regular contributor shows up orange. It's a nice passing thought to think "Oh, UrbanVoy is now a moderator!"  or, "Look, I've become a mod!"

"update"   not  "updat".

Sorry!

Brad, Matt and the whole MSI team:

The site is unusable in its current state. It was bad enough before, but now you can't see the latest comments without opening the thread. You can't even tell what's been updated. It has become nearly impossible to follow a conversation.

And the loss of formatting makes any kind of detailed post unreadable.

I can't believe you let this crap go live.  Did you even *glance* through the site before it went live? What monkey tested this update? Everywhere I've every worked you'd be looking for new jobs right about now.

I used to write posts asking Starbucks to demonstrate commitment to its customers through this site.  Now I'm just going to ask for basic competence.

This would be laughable if it wasn't the public relations face of a multi-billion dollar international company. In that light it's just sad.

I'll be back when the site is fixed or at least back to its former, slightly less than pathetic state.

And of course the LOGIN FAILS in the last post so I appear as anonymous. The jokes never stop.

UrbanVoy.

UrbanVoy, You have a "way" with words........ This site will be at a loss without your comments.......

I agree, this site is TOTALLY unusable in it's current state.

I am still waiting to access my in box, have paragraph breaks, have somewhat of a conversation, if I could find a comment and follow a thread and like I said before the "GMT" time is annoying at best.

$tarbucks, this site has slowed down considerably with ideas and comments  and you think  pissing off the last 5 or 6 people that bother to come back here is a good thing ?????

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW...... Where is Matt?????????????

It's great to see paragraphs again. When you click on the tab that says "comments" it would be nice to see "Thread started by Whomever" and then in a different color something that said "Last comment by bnelson."  Even more fun, have the start of the thread text show, and then also the start of the most recent comment show, with the color of the comment matching the words, "Last comment by bnelson on xyz date."  Just an idea for much later - you guys have a million and one things to work on here.

Melody

THANKS!!!!!!! ;-) I can find my friends again, I don't need a chart to figure out what time it is and the posts are again coherant.

Just one more thing..... my inbox....... ;(

At least I get my Inbox Visualforce Error message quicker...  Progress?

Well, 2 of the issues are fixed. I can't bring myself to say "thank you", though, as it was the same team's carelessness that created the problems in the first place.

Starbucks should take a hard look at the MSI team's quality assurance practices. This isn't somebody's hobby site and there are well established practices to avoid these kinds of screw ups.

Still no Inbox but some progress has been made - I now get a new Visualforce Error message; "Argument 1 cannot be null".

Thank you MSI team. I was getting tired of seeing my old error message.

@brodave, I'm getting the same inbox message too..... is this progress?

Breve,

Today my Inbox lists the threads that I posted and the threads to which I posted, in no particular order. It is totally useless. All hope of meaningful dialog is lost. The MSI team has now made the site totally irrelevant. Like UrbanVoy, I too am gone. I will occasionally check back to see if the site is any better. The entire Starbucks experience is now totally repugnant to me - no Starbucks purchases until the store experience is significantly improves, no more MSI site participation. At this point I feel that Starbucks is a lost cause.

It's a shame that a website which you don't even have to visit to enjoy a nice cup of coffee turns you away from Starbucks.  The experience at Starbucks, in the stores, is a different reality from this site.  The percentage of customers and partners who contribute here is just a tiny fraction of all the customers and partners. Thus, we get the chance to be the loudest voice heard!

We can even say silly things like: I hate that the new Gold Card is black and not gold!

Melody (& MSI)

We came here to dialog and have an impact. Starbucks has made that nearly impossible. I have to jump through ridiculous hoops to follow a conversation.

I realize that you are a big fan of Starbucks, and in our own way the rest of us are too.  

But Starbucks is not showing us the respect of a usable website and meaningful engagement with the staff.  We are getting very littel of the latter and almost none of the former.

The attitude seems to be "this is all you going get, so be happy with it"

Melody said:

"It's a shame that a website which you don't even have to visit to enjoy a nice cup of coffee turns you away from Starbucks.  "

Consider then how negative & frustrating  an experience this site has become that is produces such a reaction and a dedicated customer.

Melody said:

"The experience at Starbucks, in the stores, is a different reality from this site."

How so? The bathrooms are filthy. The waits are long. The drinks are screwed for me at least 1 in 5 trips. I have to argue for a 10 cents BYOM discount and trivial card benefits.  Getting bold coffee is still a crap shoot ANY time of the day. Managers eyes glaze over when you ask for a changing table or a clean bathroom.

Tell me how this site is any different from Starbucks store experience for me and hundreds of other posters to the site.

Melody said:

"The percentage of customers and partners who contribute here is just a tiny fraction of all the customers and partners. Thus, we get the chance to be the loudest voice heard!"

7 months into this experiment in dialog, what exactly have we gotten.

- an even more dysfunctional web site.

- little or no MSI engagement

- not ONE single feature on this site we have asked for. Not one.

- paltry card benefits that we have to argue for 5 months after introduction.

- a bold policy that STILL does not work.

- vague "we're looking into it" promises on dozens of ideas.

- a v2v site where we can talk more while Starbucks does less.

- a silly wi-fi policy

I'll stick around a for while now that 2 of the site issues have been fixed, but I can understand why Brodave bailed out.

Applause again for UrbanVoy,

And I must report I STILL DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO "MY INBOX".  

It's been 1 week today.

$tarbucks you are out of control and have no control.

UrbanVoy,

You and I are having very different Starbucks experiences. I wouldn't normally re-post from one place to the next, but what *just* happened to me at the Lake City Way Starbucks (store 3402) explains to me why I think that this site is not reflective of the Starbucks experience, and why I'm much more charmed than you:  All the Starbucks stores that I visit with HIGH frequency are in downtown Seattle. This store is not in that group. I get into it, at best, once every 3 to 6 months.

************************************

Posted to store 3402's conversation at V2V:

Wow. Do you guys have some picture of me up in your back room? I was just floored by how amazing the customer service was today.  I was just there at your store. Barista-Krista (?) immediately greeted me by name, and I thought, "what the heck. She hasn't seen me in ages!" What a fabulous memory for names!

Someone immediately started my drip bold coffee, so that by the time that I got to the register is was almost ready. Who did that? I'd love to know that barista's name.

You guys also were happy to get my tumbler pre-heated with hot water, without any questions. Sometimes baristas look at me very confused about that one.

And then the friendly guy who rung me up (John?) knew exactly what to do with my Gold Card so there was no confusion there.

I just walked out a little stunned. What just happened. That was pretty much amazing. I'm still sort of stunned. I don't really even go into this store all that much. Most of my main stores are downtown.

****************************************

Melody

You live in the corporate headquarters city of Starbucks.I expect Starbucks to get it right there if no where else. If the service in Seattle isn't perfect, Howard would see it personally.

I'm thousands of miles away, and if this site is any indication, my Starbucks experience is far more typical.

The service you describe is however typical of what  I get in *indie* shops that I visit about once week or less.  They rinse &  pre-chill my tumbler, they get my drinks right the first time, they get my discounts right - they do coffee like they care. They serve better tasting shots, have lower prices, clean bathrooms, free no hassle wi-fi, and 100% Fair Trade coffee.

That's not the service I get in Starbucks, small or large, in NYC city or not, in the US or Spain.

Why do I go to Starbucks. Well, the coffee is still pretty good, it's convenient, there's always one nearby. Where I work, there are 7 nearby Starbucks and just 2 indie coffee shops - one is always packed and the other is not very good.  So Starbucks gets my money.

But on the weekends, when I'm closer to home (in a different part of NYC), when I have more options, you won't find me in a Starbucks.

UrbanVoy, that you're right about:  I live in a place where there's a Seattle-effect.  (And I occasionally wonder if I'm somehow a known customer, but that's a crazy thought).  Which is why I repeatedly complain (probably much like a broken record) that Starbucks needs to make the Seattle experience the standard experience everywhere. But it also explains why I'm much more enamored with the Starbucks experience than others here.

Criticizing this site is like shooting fish in a barrel. Time for something different.

How about this for the next 30 days:

- Fix the inbox (obviously). No errors. See the latest posts in date order

- Ability to vote down an idea. Do it. Please.

- Use the regular posters to help consolidate ideas. Call it the "Big Ideas" section and put it on the main page.

Start with the 10 most repeated ideas. Give us the ability to link an idea to a one of those 10. Let us help you do the work; you don''t have enough people.. Have your programmers make a script to count unique votes and post that as the big idea total.

To format it, have a "expand" button that show/hides the related ideas.

Roll out each of these in succession, and please, please, please test it.

What do you think?

**[quote]Start with the 10 most repeated ideas. Give us the ability to link an idea to a one of those 10. Let us help you do the work; you don''t have enough people.. Have your programmers make a script to count unique votes and post that as the big idea total.[/quote]**

Wait. Like what do you mean? The ability to merge threads? I wonder though how many votes are duplicate threads.  If there are 2 threads which are both "Bring back almond syrup!" and identical in their theme, what would you do? Linking one to another doesn't seem effective because as it is right now, lots of people don't find the IIA area of the site - they don't find the links too well.

If you merge the two threads, if I have voted on both threads, then what happens with totals? I just get extra votes?

I'm just confused.

But hey, I'd support making a few of us here moderators. ;) LOL (I'm playing right now - don't have a heart attack Starbucks).

Her's waht I'm thinking:

Send a message to "Bring Back Almond Syrup 57" That her idea has been joined/merged/linked to "Bring Back Almond Syrup #1", please continue the discussion there. Provide a link to the "#1" idea, put the same message as the last post on the thread and close that thread.

At the same time, add the votes of the Almond Syrup #2 to Almond Syrup #1 that are not duplicates - Melody still gets 1 vote on teh nw total, not 7 cause she voted on 7 similar ideas.

It could this:

BRING BACK ALMOND SYRUP

  blah blah happy kittens blah blah

  blah fat puppies blah yada yada blah

                                    (click her to see duplicate/related ideas)

When you click on the link, a list rolls down - but since all those threads are locked, the discussion takes place on the main thread.

I'm not in favor of non-MSI staff being moderators, but I do think some of us could help bundle together similar ideas. No delete or edit permissions.

Ohh hey got in my inbox.......

Now can it be organized better?

Where is Matt?

Here's a idea web site that works well. It's an open source called Brainstorm

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

They have some very good ways to organize content and a way to merge threads an votes. Please take a look.

Wow, got the in-b0x back......... but wait,  I didn't get the matrix on it's use. Does the "new" in-box come with instructions???????

AGAIN, why are we seeing the original thread and not the last comment??????

If you are trying to discourage any and all conversation on this site you are succeeding.

So how's that inbox fix coming. I'd like to see the latest comments, with like the old inbox so I follow a conversation.

Any idea when it's coming? Is it still on your fix list?

Hello MSI team, Are we EVER going to get the "comment" section back to the original version????? Please respond. Thank you.

Is there a correlation between the the drastic drop in numbers of   "ideas and comments" and the "comment" section revision.

It's  almost impossible now to find a replying  "comment"?

Anybody?

Breve's right. Any fix in sight so that we can see new comments rather than the original poster in the inbox?

Hello.......................... Matt I see your real "proud" of the free coffee...... but any word about the "comment" section revision??????????????

OMG........ I meant "in box" NOT "comment section..... oppps!

THIS SITE, JUST LIKE YOUR STOCK, REALLY SUCKS.  KEEPS SIGNING MY OUT WHICH IS QUITE FRUSTRATING AND PRODUCES A FEW BAD WORDS SO............................................................................................

FIX IT NOW!!!

IT DID IT AGAIN AND I'M NOT GOING TO REPEAT WHAT BAD WORDS I SAID.  I SIGNED IN, CHECKED MY FAVORITES, ADDED A COMMENT, THEN WENT HERE AND...WHAMO...I WAS SIGNED OFF.  LAST NIGHT THE SAME THING HAPPENED AND I SIGNED BACK IN AND STARTED TO TYPE A POST AND ALL OF A SUDDEN IT CUT ME OFF.  WHAT'S WRONG??  FIX THE DAMN THING!!   ALSO IT WOULD BE NICE WHEN YOU GO TO YOUR IN BOX THE ACTUAL MESSAGES IN YOUR IN BOX WOULD BE AT THE FIRST OF THE LIST.  BUT FIX THIS NOW!!!