Negative feedback

[ZandraJoi]

How do you deal with negative feedback? Whether it is for your forum or site specifically or on how the Staff is running it? I feel there are those members who tend to complain about every little thing. I consider the source. If it’s from a respected person, I take the feedback & try to figure out how to compromise on all parties involved. What is your protocol?

 

[Kale]

I think it's best to not overreact and to respond to them in a mature way and calm way. If it is obvious they are just trolling or so, then I just remove it from public viewing and move on with my day.

 

[Cory]

I'll listen to any and all feedback generally, but if they're not actively providing constructive criticism and just feel the need to bash aspects of the forum then I probably won't be so willing to listen. If there's room for improvement with their negative feedback, then that's all the power to them.

 

[Cedric]

I welcome any feedback on board whether it's positive or negative. No forum is perfect, and we certainly have room for improvement, so if anyone has any feedback, I'm all ears. If I don't agree on it, I would politely say so.

 

[Arantor]

Try and take it as information to improve but I've had some of the weirdest feedback over the years.

Probably the weirdest - on a self-hosted, custom homebrew roleplay forum, "when are you moving to Jcink?" Like, uh, you want me to move off my domain, my custom theme/software to something that is literally based on a 2003 forum platform? In 2020? Uh... hmm... thanks for the suggestion but I'll pass.

 

[Heatman]

All kinds of feedback is welcome in a forum. It doesn't matter if it's positive or a negative feedback, the most important thing that it's an information you need to work with on your forum. If you only get positive feedback when it's obvious there's still work to be done in your community then something is definitely wrong.

 

[Arantor]

I don't entirely hold to that. Not all feedback, not even all negative feedback, implicitly requires *action* to be taken.

For example, someone who would never otherwise be interested in your forum, wrong demographic, no engagement with the subject matter whatsoever, tells you that they're confused by the site layout and even its existence - this isn't actionable, and even if it were, that's not implicitly a call to action: it's just someone in the wrong audience is... in the wrong audience.

Now if you had someone who was in the right demo/right audience etc. and was still confused, *that* is the time to take action. Not all feedback is equal. And one person complaining is not really enough information to necessarily infer that change is required in any case.