A Change of Scenery

When wis.dm is really hopping, it can feel like a popular party, with everyone crowded in the kitchen, yelling to be heard over the din. Maybe you never even make it past the front door, you are so busy debating the finer points of presidential primaries with a friend of yours on the front step. Who knows what is going on inside? You are too busy to even find out.

These kinds of conversation are what make wis.dm great, but lately we have been thinking the cacophony of the crowd might not be all that welcoming to newcomers. Besides, there is plenty of space inside, and we think you’d like your own comfortable corner so you can continue that conversation with friends.

So that is exactly what we are working on—expanding wis.dm to give you more room to play. In the coming weeks you will be able to explore a bigger wis.dm world, with more places with decidedly different feels and moods. So whether you have a hankering for political debate or pillow talk, there will be a place for you.

and this week's winner is . . .

_Courtney_ is our first weekly winner of a fLip digital camcorder.

For those who were keeping a careful watch on the contest page today, you may have seen a change of name for the declared winner. Oops, we made a mistake, but we worked quickly to fix it. Human, frustratingly so, we are.

It is a tight race for the pole position as we roll into the second week. Who knows if those currently in the top spots will prevail?

Remember, each week’s race to win a fLip digital camcorder is based on accepted invites that have at least 5 yes/no responses to a question during that specific weekly contest time period. You can win a fLip digital camcorder only once, giving others a chance to share in the winnings.

The race to win the grand prize Nintendo Wii game system is based on cumulative accepted invites that have at least 5 yes/no responses to a question over the entire four week contest time period, so keep the invites coming! You just might find yourself crossing the line in first place.

Talk to me

Recently we had our first wis.dm member conference call. Those of you who participated had some interesting things to say! It was great to hear you talk about the friends you’ve made on wis.dm, and the unique nature of relationships that have been forged over questions both profound and pedestrian.

You told us about the features you would like to see and the changes you would make. It was good feedback, and reassuring to hear things mentioned that were on our list, too. We hear you, and are working on making wis.dm everything you want and more.

If you did not get a chance to join us, don't fret. Here is a link to the transcript for your listening pleasure. You can read some post-call member comments at this question posed by Kelly or this question asked by Simone de Beauvoir.

BTW, we expect to have another call in the next few weeks, so stay tuned, and thanks!

Meet team wis.dm : new arrival

While many of you know me, the wis.dm CTO, I'd like you to meet Dexter, my 16-hour old first son.  I expect to have him working in the wis.dm code base by this fall. ;-)

Addressing Community Challenges

Team wis.dm prides itself on listening carefully to our valuable users. We take into account the awesome feedback you all send us, as well as watching closely the activity and sentiments on the site. For quite some time, we've been hearing some sour notes with respect to how people earn points and status within our world, and wanted to provide some perspective.

We offer thumbs-up and thumbs-down on our questions. Not a new concept, and it fits nicely with the binary simplicity we all love about wis.dm. In an ideal world, this feature is used to surface valuable content for the community. We leave this entirely in your hands. We trust you. We also believe that those users who create the best content in the system should get recognized for it, so in that sense, it's perfectly natural to reward users as their questions are given a thumbs-up, and also to cascade negative feedback to users who are spamming, creating inappropriate content, or generally being bad citizens of wis.dm.

We have employed this tactic for quite some time, because we believed ultimately that the sense of our users would prevail, and we would all benefit from such a system. Unfortunately, the egos of some users and the complaints of others have spoiled this experiment. The points "game" took over from the "value" for too many users, and as often happens with these things, a popularity contest emerged.

As of today, the behavior of the site has been changed. Marking a question up or down will only effect its weight in the world, but not have any bearing on the user who spent time to create that question. We're not proud of this change. We also aren't naive, and understand that all communities face challenges like this. We hoped the crowd would work this one out on its own, but have come to the conclusion that they will not. Disappointing, but we'll move forward.

To those folks who've been abusing this feature to either help out your friends or "punish" other members for whatever reason, hopefully this will refocus you on more productive pursuits within wis.dm. To those who have spent lots of time complaining on the site and to Team wis.dm directly, we hope this satisfies your issues so we can return to our regularly-scheduled wis.dming. And to those who don't care at all, we hope this brings back a wis.dm that is less dominated by discussion of wis.dm itself, and brings to the surface more of the great life discussions we enjoy here.

As always, please send us your thoughts, feedback@wis.dm. We continue to listen and our job is to help create a place for everyone here at wis.dm.

Friends Tell Friends About wis.dm (and win)

Busy, busy busy. While we have been busy with the wis.dm expansion project, it occurred to us that you might want something to keep you busy, too.

So we cooked up the Win a Wii with wis.dm contest, so you could compete to be the top dog at bringing new blood to wis.dm.

For each new confirmed member that you invite that asks a question and gets at least five “yes/no” answers, you receive one “wii” point. Earn the most wii points in any week of the contest and you will be the proud owner of a fLip digital camcorder (uhm, perfect for posing those spur of the moment video questions). Earn the most wii points over four weeks, and you’ve earned your ticket to gaming addiction with the Wii grand prize.

The link to enter is here: http://wis.dm/corp/contest, as is all the fine print about inviting real people with real email addresses. More people means more unique points of view at wis.dm, which means more wis.dm all around. So now you have added incentive for telling others why wis.dm is so entertaining (addictive) for you.

Meet team wis.dm: Jen

Hi Everyone!

I'm Jen, wis.dm's newest team member. You'll start to see me around the site asking and answering questions with the rest of you. I am looking forward to helping wis.dm introduce new products and tools to help enhance your experience of the site! Keep a lookout for fun new features in the near future!

Aside from the graphic design and web development I'll be contributing here at wis.dm, I also spend my time performing my original music in the local Boston music scene and doing small tours around New England. If you start to see lots of questions about indie music, they're likely from me ;)

Lately, I have been in a real Leather Tuscadero phase, hence my avatar. I don't know why, I think maybe it's because I recently got a bad haircut and she helps me feel like I can still rock out even with a partial mullet! (slaps thigh twice and shoots... only true Happy Days fans will get that)

I hope you'll add me as a friend (my dream is to one day have more friends than Will). I look forward to exploring life's questions with you all...

"Oh, the Places You'll Go . . ."

. . . as Dr Seuss said. And we have some grand places cooked up in our heads. And the things that you'll do, you'll think they are cool, but we need your feedback and feelings about these new tools.

With all apologies to Theodor Seuss Geisel, wis.dm will be offering new ways to explore people, places and things in the next six months. This is your community. We need help building it. Pick up the phone and pitch in.

Join us for a call (a real live chat in the Gazebo!) Tuesday March 18th at 1:00 PM EDT. Email future@wis.dm to confirm your participation and receive the phone number and passcode.

So what's on your mind? Where would you go and what would you do, if you ran the zoo? The call will be limited to the first twenty wis.dmers. In the meantime, be on the lookout for something new next week.

Building Blocks

Things have been a hectic sort of quiet on wis.dm in 2008. A few new features have rolled out, a number of small enhancements. But mostly, we've let the community thrive. You all have been cranking out just about every Yes/No question you can think of to spark discussion, find others to chat with, and learn a bit about yourselves in the process.

In recent days, Team wis.dm has made some under-the-hood updates that will act as building blocks for amazing upcoming changes. In the coming few months, you'll be seeing a lot more changing around wis.dm, and we're pretty sure you're going to love it. In the meantime, keep using wis.dm, keep pushing the boundaries of the questions you ask, the games you play, and the people you meet. We'll be back in touch soon with some bits of wis.dm on where we're headed!