Tom asked me to post an idea here for discussion.

I'm hoping that Gather will develop a "memorial staus" for the profiles of deceased members, as Facebook has.  As far as I know, this would include eventual closing of comments on the deceased member's posts, but leaving their profile open to pings.

Chana left a large and touching body of work on Gather.  This is a wonderful opportunity for anyone who feels they didn't spend enough time with her (Gather members or family members) to read through her work.

Hi everyone, feel invited to visit my favorite groups at Gather. This may be an idea for each person's profile page, i.e. to be able to display a panel with one's favorite groups, complete with group description, number of members, number of posts, number of pageviews, etc.

I was away for this but I want to emphasize that no matter how tight the economy is, Gather needs to keep the points, otherwise about half will leave and the other half of the membership will drop activitiy significantly.

Update:

First, I've received NO response to my comments, pings, etc. concerning problems with the new update.  Lots of people dropped by to tell me Tom was away, Tom was busy - so much goodwill and so little done to keep it.

Second, as of this morning I have friends whose icons and photos I can't see.  I have *                          is reading

*                          wants to visit

in my Friends status list

SO... nothing fixed, something new broken.

The only good thing that's happened is that I've learned to italicize and bold comments without using the HTML editor - a good thing, as it 'eat's the text between the <em> and <strong> tags.

Brief Summary - What I Know So Far...

I have been listening to a lot of Gather users, and the consensus seems to be that there are far better and less confusing ways to handle comment threads.  I'll try, if I can, to pull some of these suggestions together.  I'm not sure that the majority of people aren't happy to have *something*, but those with experience of better ways are far from satisfied.  I'm not sure where I stand yet re: better than nothing/worse than the old comments.

The ExtraStep HTML comment editor is a <b></b> bust.  Lots of people have complained.  Not one person has expressed graditude, relief or even a sense that y'all were addressing an actual issue.  Where did the impetus for this thing come from?

You know that inserting those P-tags on every paragraph is going to come back and bite you?  It's already causing me grief on the rare occasions when Iuse the HTML thingie.  P-tags are extraneous.

Broken Spellchecker - quite a shock.  I hadn't realized how much I depend on them.  I just assume it's right unless it's flagged.... WRONG.  I'd get this fixed ASAP before we all forget how to spell and worse, how things *are* spelled.

I'm doing more pinging, because I can still do italics etc. there - but this defeats the whole 'conversation' aspect.  (Btw I, for one, would <b>never</b< have *joined* Gather if it had been billed as a <i>Meet People and Make New Friends</i> site. Are we now trying to be FaceBook Lite?  'Cause that's what your new motto implies.)

Big <b><i>THANKS</i></b> for fixing the ping/line feed bug.  Much faith restored, much ire averted...

<b>BOTTOM LINE</b>

There is still a huge, <i>huge</i> cry for a comment editor.  This is by far the most frequent complaint I hear.  These are writers - they need to be able to control how what they says looks - and typos *matter* to them.  They cringe.  If you are seriously interested in improving Gather, it's time to put the comment-editor on the front burner.

Nice job on the new comments - I'm glad to see the style finally got updated on them, and I haven't noticed that annoying old Firefox bug that was impossible to fix without changing the style.  :)

Also the reply-to functionality is well done, and a nice touch.  Only thing I'd change is the placement of the "reply to this comment" to be beneath the comment you're replying to, instead of under all the replies to it.  But I can see that there would be a reason to have it there too.

Hope all's going well.