I am a longtime lurker and I have been thinking about what would make CC a better and more helpful community? Any thoughts or suggestions?
Good question. This isn’t the fault of CC, but I wish people would spend five seconds looking at forum choices before posting. It is really annoying to see threads in the right forum get bumped off the first page because people can’t be bothered to think. This is especially true on the college admissions forum, where people endlessly post chances questions, instead of posting them on the chances forum.
I wish we could embed videos and photos.
I wish we could tag a given forum for notification when someone posts in it. It would be easier to monitor forums for specific schools.
@intparent , excellent idea. Let’s see if @skieurope can suggest this, because skiurope is probably one of the most responsive mods.
@lindagaf Thanks for the kind words, but that’s above my paygrade. 
The admins do read this forum, however.
Here’s one idea: Everyone who hits the 1000-and-above comment count automatically receives a $10,000 scholarship from CC.
CreativeThinking #ThisCouldWork!
Thanks for the suggestions, guys! While we’ll make sure to propose those to the management, we cannot commit to when and if they will be implemented. Some of these things (like the subscription option) require intensive development work and we’ll need to work with the software provider to see if that’s even possible. Btw, we’ve had that on the list since day one, it’s just that so far we weren’t able to get it addressed.
I wish notifications were calibrated so that we get one notification per thread (or board) with new activity, not one notification per new message.
I wish I could “mute” certain threads so they wouldn’t pop up on the Latest Posts list. I’m sure some people love talking about Kelly Ripa making $20M a year, but sheesh, it’s the thread that never goes away.
@STEM2017 and @intparent - I’ve thought the very same things (though not about the Kelly Ripa thread) - I second those!
I’d like to see the colleges listed by states, the way they are also listed by Ivy League, Top Universities, Top LACs, etc.
I’d also like to see a place where popular links could be posted (maybe Featured Links). There are probably a dozen or more links ( automatic tuition scholarships, colleges that don’t require SAT/ACT, FAFSA, etc.) that get referenced every day in CC. It would be nice if there were one place to go to access the most often referenced links.
CC lost some features in a software change a couple of years ago which ought to be restored to improve forum functionality:
- The ability to bookmark forums and sub-forums (not just individual threads)
- 'Activity indicator' for forums/sub-forums which have had activity.
These suggestions have been brought up over and over again, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard a status report. Can an admin chime in with any news?
The “ignore” feature needs to be improved. The current feature only blurs out your ignored person’s posts. So guess what? I un-ignore them to see what annoying things they wrote - lol! It would be better if the poster you “ignore” would not appear at all.
They put the new post first when you call up a thread- I hate scrolling all the way to bottom and selecting the last page!
I think I get taken to the most recent post in the thread since I looked at it… but maybe that is not working for everyone?
I completely agree with the item about flagging a forum that has had activity since last time you looked. I’d regularly look at the “main college page”, and if it was a school I knew about (had attended, kid attended, one I lived in the neighborhood of, etc), I could hop in and see what the post is and if I could help. Now I only regularly check the forums where my kids attend(ed).
On my phone, I wish I could see who “liked” or found a post helpful – I can’t figure out a way to do that on the phone. I can see how many likes or helpful upvotes there are, but can’t see whose.
I also don’t like that when looking at latest posts on my phone, I can’t see what forum the post is in. I know real estate is limited, but I have to be careful not to hop into the prep school forum and post when the answer would be different if it were about college admissions. And you can’t tell at a glance.
@intparent On my phone, if I press the like button and hold it down a few seconds before releasing, it shows who liked the post. Pressing it and letting go right away “likes” it, so one has to be careful. Not sure if this works on all models/browsers, but worth a shot.
Improving the search feature! Its awful! You should be able to search and sort the results by date, for example, or filter the results.
@elliebham, that is not what happens for me. I get some kind of menu, asking if I want to Open, Open in New Tab, etc. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe it is different on different phones? I am on an iPhone 6.