My “Spank” of the Active Rain Czars

Greg Nino has written a very good post on constructive criticism of ActiveRain, or changes he’d like to see. Good idea, I say. It isn’t bashing; quite the contrary. Who better than the active membership to suggest ways the platform can improve? Here are a few things I’d drop in the suggestion box:

• Active Rain Mobile. I’ve blogged about this before. With so many of us on Smart Phones, it just makes sense. Besides, what else can I do at a closing that is as productive as posting a comment or blog, or cruising the referral exchange?
• Speaking of the referral exchange, it would be nice to see that forum overseen better. People are posting spam, not legit referrals, far too often for the standards we’ve come to expect from this platform. Police the referral forum!
• The little icons under commenter’s pics should be hotlinkswhere I can see Greg Nino’s outside blog, localism channels, and 50 featured posts automatically.
• Make it easy to share or tweet a post that you like on Facebook or whatever other social networking site you like. This eliminates the work we currently have to do, where we have to manually insert a picture with a link to the post, which is cumbersome.
• There has been a development recently where we can import our ActiveRain blog to WordPress. But all a guy like me has to do is devote 3 hours I don’t have to learning how to install a plugin, do something with XML, stand on my head and spit nickels, and contemplate the sound of one hand clapping. I don’t want to do that. I can import LIVEJOURNAL to WordPress for godsake. Make it easier!
• Lenn Harley and 3 others “like” a post I wrote. Who are the 3 others? What good is not knowing?
• Can we link to a response blog like they do on Youtube so I don’t have to worry about being accused of hijacking?
• Make subscribers worth something. Throw me 25 or 100 points when I get a subscriber. I think that is a point-worthy event. It is also something that would be hard to “game,” unlike the boneheads who get 10 easy ones for posting “thanks for sharing, have a great day.”
• Instead of “reporting a concern” of blatant spam, perhaps there could be a hotlink where we could choose between sterilization, an IRS audit, or a case of scorching diarrhea of said spammer.  Just a thought.

That’s my 2 cents. This isn’t complaining. It is suggesting what would be nice to see next as Active Rain grows and improves from one who spends a little bit of every day here and has a vested interest in the platform continue to set the pace.