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WELCOME TO NAT GEO DOGS!
WELCOME TO NAT GEO DOGS!
If you're looking for the best canine content from the National Geographic Channel and a place to connect with other dog lovers, dog owners and dog aficionados, then you are barking up the RIGHT tree!
Also, we promise that's the last over-the-top-cheesy dog-related sentence we will write -- in this post!
So what is Nat Geo Dogs, you ask? Today, it's a great place to see the latest video from our award-winning dog shows - Dog Whisperer, Dogtown, Rescue Ink Unleashed and more -- catch clips and watch full episodes. You'll also find a window into our dog forums - see what people are saying, jump in and ask questions, or share your dog-related stories and tips.
What else? Try your hand at the Canine Quiz and learn your Doggie IQ, check out the weekly "Dogs of NatGeo" gallery, and discover other interactive content like the "Dog Whisperer: Diagnose That Dog" game!
Here's what's coming later this year:
NatGeo dogs will be a full-blown community for dog owners and enthusiasts - create your profile page, share pictures of your four-legged friends, and start making connections with others - leave comments on their profiles, rate and comment on other users' photo albums, interact on the Nat Geo Dogs blog and message boards, and get to know other dog-lovin' Nat Geo fans.
When the full community launches, we want this to be your place for you and your dog. We're hard at work getting the full community designed for launch by end of the year, but as we hammer the remaining site together, we want to hear from you - what will make this THE place to share your love of your dogs and the canine species as a whole? As you check out Nat Geo Dogs, please let us know what you think right here! We'd like to know what features you'd most like to see in the community. Featured pet photo of the week? Enhanced listings for upcoming dog-related shows? Dog Whisperer Training Tip of the Week? We can't promise we'll include every feature request, but we'll read everything you post here and do our best to incorporate for our launch.
Until then, keep your tails wagging! (whoops - did it again!)
The Nat Geo Dogs Team
17 Replies
October 5, 2009 9:23 PM
I don't know what you are really planning but leave this forum alone. Don't mess it up with what you think will attract new folks. I like it just the way it is. I get lots of very valuable information and advice from folks who have great backgrounds in training and dog psychology.
October 6, 2009 6:57 AM
Sandie -I'm glad you are getting great information - and the Dog Whisperer forum will remain in place and we're keeping all the posts that have been made. However, it will be getting updated in the next few weeks and be a lot easier to use- we know there are issues in the current forums setup and we want to make sure that its as easy to utilize as we can make it.
October 7, 2009 1:40 AM
Hi Jeff,
Just one concern has risen at this time.
Will the new Nat Geo Dogs be divided into several TOPICS, such as say, DOG WHISPERER, HEALTH & WELL BEING, RESCUE DOGS, etc, etc. So each topic would then work as a "separate entity" from the others?
Because if everyone just post questions or remarks (under the one topic,Nat Geo Dogs) on all different aspects to do with our "canine friends" I could see the forum becoming quite a chaotic and difficult to manage.
Hopefully this is NOT the case :)
Also will there be a PM (Personal or Private Message) possibility?
I have found that sometimes, its easier to send the person a PM rather than post it for all to see, if just need a bit of info to fill in gaps in their original post etc.
Hoping to hear soon in bit more detail, how the layout of the new forum is going to be.
Thanking you in advance
Blizz
October 7, 2009 3:22 PM
Thanks for the comments Blizzard! Some things still in the works, but here's what I know. Dog Whisperer will continue to have its own dedicated forum. Nat Geo Dogs will be bucketed in many of the ways you mention and we're looking for comments like yours to help us figure it out. Many new functions will roll out in the community - PMs eventually in new personas, I believe - new registration system, forums organized in a more traditional fashion and easier to use. We'll post a more thorough list of enhancements here soon to get feedback on. Thanks!
October 5, 2009 11:22 PM
I think this is the first time that Sandie and I ever disagreed but I don't mind. I think some of my suggestions will still strike her fancy!
Live moderators that we can report problems too.
SPAM reporting. Make it easy!
MUCH larger profile icons.
Ability to post photos. It’s a DOG FORUM, we want to show off our dogs!
Ability to receive or cancel email notifications on ANY thread topic.
Make posted URL links clickable.
Ability to block, at least from our current view, any user’s comments in a thread or entire forum. There's always one BAD APPLE who never knows when to shut up.
Ability to block any user from posting on our personal topics. We get tired of repeat trouble making BAD APPLES you know!!!!!
Open the Blog Tool and enable more features and give us more control over content and appearance. Stop being so confounded restrictive in the Blog Tool. It was designed for us the users so let us use it.
Topic browsing. Currently only the most recent 15 Topics are displayed and only the experienced Blog Tool users can get to anything older. Make it EASIER and let us browse at will!
How about having Cesar post here once in awhile eh? You know, make an appearance in what is supposed to be his forum. Let us know what he thinks of the advice being given here. Some Cesar tips and hints!
The ability to take a poll or survey and post the results. We could do online dog shows with voting and post the winner when we feel like it.
Ability to change our username for those of us that didn’t know you were going to let people see our Real Names in the Blog Tool views!
Turn OFF sending our IP addresses to users in the automated email notifications. That’s exactly like giving out our street address and I don’t want some crazy showing up at my house because you told him where I live with my IP address! It also violates your agreement not to divulge anyone’s personal information!
Turn off the bad word filters except for the very most obvious ones. It’s far to restrictive and we’ll be quick on our to let someone know when the went too far. Female dogs are b-i-tches. There are pis-sing and pe-eing problems with dog. They po-op in the yard and po-oh, cr-ap and sh-it in the house. Lighten it up. They are dogs! We are tired of having the filters yank away our posts and not tell us why!
If we give you guys a consensus vote to have a persistently annoying and antagonistic user banned then we expect you to ban their IP address and keep the board healthy! The board is Nat. Geo. private property and not subject to constitutional rights of free speech as user’s rights are solely governed by your rules of conduct and terms of use! So there's nothing stopping you.
Some of this I’m very excited and expectant about. Some of the neglect I am very upset and disappointed about. Please make an OVERALL effort for balanced improvemen and not just fun fluff.
Over 90% of this blogs capabilities are currently turned off. If you are going to turn it up and turn it on then REALLY TURN IT ON!
I readily admit that most users will go basic but it doesn't cost you anything to allow the more experienced users to take advantage of the as yet untapped potential here.
Go BIG and be the BEST instead of just squeaking by.
Be Well and Listen Well.
K-Nine
October 6, 2009 12:40 AM
K-Nine,
This has got my vote!!! :=)
Often I have wished that I could browse over a reply given in an older post to refresh my memory on the particularly interesting advice or training tip only to find it has slipped off the page.
I'm all for making this forum better and more user friendly, better profile pics get my total support too (can maybe put the magnifying glass back on the self then) and security of your e-mail and IP address, IS A NORM on most good forums and something I feel very strongly about.
I hope the new blog will have Private Message option too which I have always found a good tool to use, as then you can avoid having to use e-mail?
To my thinking, only the people one chooses should be able to see and use your profile details, just MHO.
Anyway, it totally has my support!
October 6, 2009 6:58 AM
Okay guys, after readiing your posts I realize I may not have
really understood what all the changes could provide us. I stand
Corrected. I shall remain calm and submissive for a while at least.
October 6, 2009 7:39 AM
Well I think this is BRILLIANT...it's really nice to get something new :=D
October 7, 2009 3:12 PM
I think a HELP link with instructions on how to use the features would be really nice too. We had all those little “Add this:” icons show up one day without any explanations on what they were or how to use them and no HELP link to go find out.
The PM’s Blizzard mentioned would also be better then using emails. Many people get the NGC-email and think that WE sent it personally. They respond to the email instead of the forum because there was nothing that told them how the forum works and why they are getting these emails.
Notification emails should not include any user’s email or IP and the user should not be able to reply to them. The online PM’s would allow us to decide who we want to exchange personal contact info with or NOT!
The Blog Tool definitely needs a HELP and how to link. It takes too much experimentation to figure it out. It also has a bug. If you click Save in edit entry mode it overwrites (updates) your topic. If you click Save in preview entry mode it posts it as a brand NEW topic and now you have 2. Its search engine almost always says No Matches Found so that needs to be looked at too.
EVE, the Science Channel ™ forum is a good example of a feature rich forum and worth a look. It doesn’t use a separate blog tool because it includes (most of) those features in the standard user interface and has a superior search tool.
Post editing and deletion. I want to be able to fix (edit) errors in my posted posts and not have to write a new post that says change this to that in that other post of mine. Hey we all make mistakes and sometimes we want to take it back in the form of deleting our mistakes so please let us delete or edit ANYTHING we’ve authored!
The bad word filters again: If it has a problem then it should return the post to us in edit mode with the offending word(s) highlighted so we can fix it instead of having to completely rewrite it. At the very least it should return it in edit/unpublished mode and say that it had a problem with it so we try to find and fix it on our own.
Sorry I keep adding but other new posts are getting other ideas flowing and we so rarely have an outlet for our ideas. There was once a very brief period the last time the board was revamped but then the topic was locked so I’m giving while the opportunity is hot.
October 7, 2009 4:41 PM
I too find sometimes..due to getting so much junk email that I accidently take away post that has been sent to me :=( PM's are a great idea.. :=D
October 16, 2009 8:17 PM
Jeff,
After the last board I think you guys messed this one up as much as you could have, sorry. Making it better, the time outs would be nice to make longer or not at all, if current writing is going on.
For the old board, it was nice to see the counters on how many might be reading the board. There might be six notes a week asking advice, but maybe 200 would be reading them.
It might be nice to add pics, but I don't know of many boards that do that.
Overall I would like this board to run like all unsecurred boards. Once signed it, then the board has you ie address. No more fooling with haveing to log in. I like the counters on lurkers just to get an idea on how many there might be. I did not like the e-mail stuff but I can live with that and have gotten to the point I kinda like that.
Overall, if you change, just make the board more like every other board. Doesn't need to be fancy, just easy. Lowering your filter on bad words would be reall nice. It really can be hard to talk about dogs with the P words, the P** and P**P ones. Your filters are way beyond that.
Thank you in advance for any changes you make. I would just hope you get to were most have been for years and years. Not a real compaint, just a direction.
October 21, 2009 11:31 AM
Yes, I have no defense,we went from normal to worse but the new boards look good, the software we're using works well on many large and small sites and is, to your point, where we should be. Hope it meets the needs and I look forward to getting it rolled out quickly!
October 17, 2009 10:27 PM
So WHEN is this thing gonna roll out anyway?
If I want an automatic login then I can use my web browser to do that. I don't need or want IP tracking to do it for me. That's what website "cookies" are for. That's what the "Remember me" boxes are for. Besides some ISP’s use Dynamically allocated IP address and your IP might change and then the problem keeps coming back.
Clearly, appropriate security of Personally Identifiable Information is of paramount concern! Everyone wants you dudes to fix all that. Some sites do not deem IP addresses as PII but any computer geek worth his salt would disagree! If your ISP doesn't act as a Proxy Server for you then you are at risk from any crazy person.
Here is an idea that I am surprised that no one ask for. A spelling checker!!! This forum serves an INTERNATIONAL community and for those who can't spell worth a dinksquat or are just TOO LAZY it makes translation from English to another language impossible.
Avatars (personal icons) don't need to be hi-res but they could be at least 2-3x bigger than they are now. I think most postage stamps are bigger.
Comment links. So far I haven’t found a way to give a link to a specific comment. The link will have a comment number in it but it only goes to the main topic and not to that specific comment so that needs fixed or turned on so it works.
Add some font options like color and bold for comments and not just for the main topic which requires that blogtool thingy to get that stuff. Blogtool is too difficult anyway, we should have all that integrated into the normal forum GUI.
Speaking of which, the WYSIWYG feature is NOT WYSIWYG!!! We have had replies that posted like a newspaper column 4-5 words wide. WTH is that???
People blockers are a MUST HAVE and it’s the very first feature I would use!!!
You need completely new software dudes cause what we got now is totally cr@ppy!!!
October 21, 2009 11:27 AM
When is a good question - it will all start to roll out these next few months - we're hoping that by mid-november the blogs and forums are all updated in the new system - won't have everything you are looking for here (great suggestions) but working towards growing quickly.
October 21, 2009 4:58 PM
Cool! Sounds good so far...
Can you give us a red rayon feature so that we can scribble all over someone's post when we don't like it?
I know you can't but it would be a riot to get a message like "K-Nine scribbled you out... click here to see it!" Too funny!!!!
Hey Jeff, Is that REALLY your dog in the pic because he looks pretty toothy there?
October 26, 2009 12:28 PM
As a techno-illiterate, I agree with K-Nine on most of his (her?) suggestions. My favorites are:
"How about having Cesar post here once in awhile eh? You know, make an appearance in what is supposed to be his forum. Let us know what he thinks of the advice being given here. Some Cesar tips and hints!"
He IS what led me to this forum, and we would like to know a couple times a year if he likes it.
"Ability to post photos. It’s a DOG FORUM, we want to show off our dogs!" IF there are instructions for us slow people.
"Topic browsing. Currently only the most recent 15 Topics are displayed and only the experienced Blog Tool users can get to anything older. Make it EASIER and let us browse at will!"
DEFINATELY. With the ability to search for a topic?
That's my newbie suggestions.
November 11, 2009 2:18 AM
Here here, I am in total agreement with the first part of "usually confused"'s comments about having Cesar come on. This is my first time on the site today and this is what led me here as well.
"How about having Cesar post here once in awhile eh? You know, make an appearance in what is supposed to be his forum. Let us know what he thinks of the advice being given here. Some Cesar tips and hints!"
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