HOME | DD
Davecheesefish — deviantART Beta HQ Mockup
Published: 2009-01-19 05:11:12 +0000 UTC; Views: 7436; Favourites: 19; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
I was getting suggestion withdrawal symptoms after so long away from them!
At present, the deviantART beta tester program pretty much runs off the forums - providing the only area for announcement, discussion and feedback on beta features. And to be quite honest... the system doesn't work all that well
Bug reports get swamped in a sea of "OMG this is so cool!!!" comments and before you know it, the admins have to search through several thousand comments of assorted usefulness just to find the bugs people are talking about 
This system is intended to replace both of the Beta Tester forums, and provide a much more structured approach to dA beta testing!
- This dedicated page would take on the role of containing all the beta tester utilities in one place.
- Each beta project has its own main heading, which is clickable to reveal further details (as shown above with "New Profile Pages").
- The "beacons" in front of each main heading indicate the current status of that project:
Green - The project is in beta and the user has it turned on
Yellow - The project is in beta and the user does not have it turned on
Red - The project is on hold or is no longer in beta (but has only been recently released to the public)
- Within each section there is a description and two further sub-sections, one for bug reports and one for suggestions. These work similarly to the forums, except now the reports and suggestions are kept apart from each other and a new voting system is in place.
- Each bug report and suggestion has a number - the higher the number, the more positive votes it has recieved. But Dave, why have a voting system on bug reports?! If lots of people are experiencing the same bug, it's going to reach the top (and thus the attention of the developers) pretty quickly!
- If a stupid suggestion, duplicate suggestion or already known bug is submitted, if a bug is fixed, or if a suggestion is implimented, the voting can be locked down and the suggestion/bug report removed from the list.
- The number of votes is hidden until the suggestion/bug report has recieved more than 30 votes in total either way.
- This shows the suggestions in collapsed overview form, but the same view options are available as are in the message centre for comments, using the buttons at the top right.
- Additions and updates to this page would be sent to a new section of beta testers' message centres, to make them more noticable than posting a notice in the current forum (added by =eXoHeartbeat )
No more "Where do I turn on _________ beta feature?", no more "Where do I go to give my feedback?" and no more bug reports in the wrong place
How spiffingly marvellous! Now we just need work out a way to beta test the beta test page...
For those of you interested in the current system, check out:
FAQ #531: What is an Official deviantART Beta Tester? How do I become one?
FAQ #532: As an Official Beta Tester, how do I provide feedback?
FAQ #541: If I'm a beta tester, may I choose to opt-out of the program later?
Credit also to `electricjonny , who talked over some of the ideas with me in the forum
Concept ideas ©2009 =davecheesefish
Everything else © deviantART, Inc.
Related content
Comments: 52
i'm adding you to #devBUG so you can see (something like) this in action
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
good idea. parsing through forum info is time consuming for sure .. and it'd be nice to give feedback on bug status. out of all beta testers population - how big a slice would be interested in using it? of-the shelf bug tracker wont work and its not a trivial system to build .. and people are buzy
👍: 0 ⏩: 3
I'd use this system, too. I think it would make it much easier for everyone - tech and beta testers - to do their "job". Let's face it, as busy as you guys are, it's very easy for our comments to go unnoticed or at least without replies, and that can make us feel like we're being ignored. The lack of (noticable) updates also can make us feel like the bugs we report and our concerns for features are going unnoticed/ignored as well, which in turn can discourage us from providing feedback.
That's not any criticism against the tech team, it's just something that's going to happen when you have so many comments to sift through and a limited time to do it in.
I honestly think this would make it easier for both sides, and open up better communication. You wouldn't even have to make a reply (to bug reports, at least), simply check a bug report as "fixed" (maybe with options, though I can't think of alternates except "not actually a bug" XD), and all the beta testers who'd voted/reported that bug could be notified automatically with a simple messaged in their message centre that says something like "Bug Report "Title of Bug Report" Fixed".
Suggestions are obviously another kettle of fish, though, as I think those are more deserving and needing of tech-team responses (in some instances more than others), and I think commenting on suggestions would be great because deviants can often steamroller ideas and end up with something through collaborative brainstorming that's better than the original poster's. But, in many other instances, a simple "I agree!" could be done with the voting system suggested here by =davecheesefish .
I definitely think you'd get more feedback - and probably more useful feedback (cutting out the unnecessary comments) - with something like this. And, you know, people seem to like polls, so they're more likely to vote.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I would definitely use this.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thanks for your comments. I understand building this won't be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that not only will it help current beta testers, but new members who join the OBT team as well. We've had a lot of questions throughout the forums asking how to turn on the new userpages lately (during the beta phase), which unfortunately shows that relying on people to check the beta forums regularly just doesn't work well, and isn't entirely intuitive for members who don't usually use the dA forums on a regular basis.
While it may not be entirely accurate for the general beta tester population, I have started a poll on the subject. As it stands at the moment, 12/14 people would rather use this system than the current forum-based one and the comments I have recieved both here on the deviation and on the poll have been extremely supportive.
I believe that a system like this could speed up the future release of beta features to the public, make them easier and more intuitive to find for new OBT team members, reduce duplication of bug reports, and almost autonomously seperate the useful reports from the one-off glitches. While I may be biased as the creator, I truly believe this could be a worthwhile upgrade to the OBT system.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
i really like the idea, and agree that it will make participating in beta program far more engaging and valuable. cant really promise anything, but when we revisit this section we'll keep it in mind for sure.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I fully understand that you can't promise anything, but thanks loads for considering it - even if it doesn't get put into production
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Go to any dA userpage and look at the footer - chances are, it'll be like this one
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
You can't have it expanded on userpages - this is how it looks for all users.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I'm surprised you didn't put a senior tick to any of your names
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Well, I already had the GM ^ and the core admin $ - I didn't want to make it completely unbelievable by making me a senior
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Because core admin is more likely?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
More likely than me being a senior
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
no problem! hopefully they will roll out with something similar.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thank you very much!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This would be fantastic, I hate having to trawl through the posts in the forum to see if what I am writing hasn't been repeated 50,000 times.
I would love to see this implemented, especially if we can access it as easily as every everything else off our pages.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thanks, it means a lot
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I hope it gets implemented.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I say yes!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I say thanks! 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I think anything would be better than the current system and this is a fantastic way of dealing with it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very interesting feature, I think this will help a lot, to know where and what the main bugs are, it will be more easy for the developers, instead of browsing through many comments.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks for the comments
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I agree. This would be so much more effective then the current beta forum.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
You're welcome, personally I hope its implemented
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is great 
I sort of like the idea that all beta features and discussion be on one big main page, not in any forum thread. It keeps it more central so the staff can see it easily. Great job here
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It's completely seperate from the forums, yes
Thanks very much
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
| Next =>