Because the feedback isn’t addressed to the community, it’s to wanikani. And then people come here to complain, using the “annoyed costumer” tone, and then the other users seem to take it personally and start defending wanikani, and then some not-so-healthy discussion ensues.
When people give feedback they don’t want to be convinced of anything, they just want to express themselves about something. And then people here don’t give the appropriate response to that because they don’t work at wanikani and don’t care, and that really isn’t their responsibility. The community isn’t the proper interlocutor to feedback given to wanikani.
edit: yes I do realize the irony of me posting this to the feedback category lol but the point is not that it never works and feedback can’t be discussed here, but that it does seem to go wrong quite frequently
There is an email that everyone is encouraged to use - hello@wanikani.com. That feeds into a ticketing system, which IS a good way to feedback that type of stuff.
I really don’t know how they could communiate it better. It’s in the FAQ. It’s in the Terms of Use. It’s on the homepage. Oh, and a half dozen people provide it when anyone posts feedback.
In my opinion you are vastly overstating the problem. Some people post feedback here to gather support for or against their feedback before sending it to WaniKani. Others want a feature or other change to the system and responses suggesting scripts or alternative options are valuable to the poster.
The email system is for private feedback or questions, but not everyone needs or wants to use that.
There’s a pinned thread that tells people not to post about “WK is too slow” and “Add a way to undo wrong answers” and also tells them to make sure no one has posted the same feedback, but that doesn’t stop people either. We can expect a few feedback threads to be about precisely those things every month.
But yeah, I already have Campfire muted. I’ll just mute this one as well, no reason to see it.
They could just remove the feedback category. They could redirect people to the email link when when they click the category. The threads could be autolocked, just to count the likes.
I might be, I’m not so active. But in the few times I have been here there were flamewar threads like that and it was very unpleasant.
They need find a way to protect the users against themselves lol
The other thing to take into account is the fact that generally if someone is frustrated, they’re going to prefer posting in a public forum where they can vent their rage rather than an email where they’re obliged to be polite. Of course not emails are polite, and that’s something only the staff would know.
Well, except when someone gets banned for their email interactions and then it says that on their user page. Only one comes to mind, but I can’t think of the username at the moment.
Ah, survival bias isn’t about damage, it’s about being only able to observe one of two (or more) possible outcomes and widely underestimating the unobserved fraction. (Basically, every thread you see is a “survivor”, but you have no idea of how many people “didn’t make it”, i.e. used emails or the chat service).
The point I was making is that you don’t know how many people actually do email instead of posting on the forums. It could be that no one emails, or it could be that only 1 in every 100 people posts on the forums. Obviously both cases are unlikely, but no one knows just how effective the email system really is unless they know both numbers
But the feedback is being posting on a public forum… They have an email and chat set up where you can provide feedback. But also, no, the WK does in fact pay attention to the forums. I’ve posted my criticism on the forums a few times before and while I don’t know if they did anything based on my feedback personally, they have made changes to things I’ve provided feedback on.
There are good and bad ways to provide feedback. Rants disguised as feedback are of course going to be criticized. “WK should change because I don’t like it” is a rant, not constructive feedback.
I completely agree. This post is a great example.
Who defines what’s appropriate? I think giving an explanation of WK’s philosophy and why feedback does not fit in with it is appropriate. Can you point out what specifically you find inappropriate?
I disagree, but if you think this is true, then there are other ways of giving feedback that are not through the community, such as the email and chat mentioned above.
an inappropriate response to feedback from a client is when you respond by explaining why they’re wrong and nothing needs to be changed. the client obviously isn’t going to be convinced and will be displeased, and you might lose their business.
literally on the other thread a person responded by saying the person was just “senselessly complaining” and that showed “how much they’re privileged”. In any costumer service standard in any kind of business that’s an absolutely inappropriate response to give to a client with a complaint.
Personally, I feel like the feedback category works well for input on specific items, especially when it seems the default answer might be regional or uncommon usage.
For general site things that people want changed, perhaps the point of view is that by having this category, script makers might be inspired? I agree with Seanblue here:
WK isn’t giving those responses though, other users are. The relationship on this part of the forum is very rarely business-client unless someone calls mods. Client-client interactions are going to play by completely different rules. Kind of like on review sites that allow responses and a 2nd client responds to the review of a 1st client and either agrees with or refutes what they say.
