The Announcements category will start being used again for important updates from the Trakt team.
Over time, that category slowly became deserted. Each announcement would turn into a megathread, which made conversations difficult to navigate and even harder to moderate. Eventually we locked it down so nobody could reply, which defeated the purpose of having a discussion space.
Starting today, I’m testing a new approach: replies in Announcements are now open to VIP only.
The goal is to keep announcements focused and readable, while still allowing thoughtful discussion and feedback from our most engaged users.
More Forum Tweaks Coming
This is part of a broader effort to improve how the forums are organized.
Over the next few days, you may notice some categories being shuffled around, renamed, or reorganized. The goal is simply to make things easier to find and more useful for everyone.
As always, we’ll keep iterating based on how things work in practice.
Why not just have an Announcement, and an Announcement megathread? Any important follow up in the megathread from Trakt mods etc could be quoted as a reply to the main announcement. That keeps things organised and readable, with the most important information always in one place, while still ensuring all users have a voice.
This is something we already tested and didn’t work out. There are other places where everyone can post, reply, say almost whatever they want. This is another test to see how something in-between works.
This was a decision we made, yes, as explained in my first message.
It was possible for everyone to comment on announcements, then we had to lock it down, then, because it was too much locked, we stoped using it.
Why?
It is not the same. We have VIP only categories that we are using for VIP only things. If we want to announce something to everyone but want to keep feedback to VIP only, now we can.
Can you explain what you mean when you say it “didn’t work out”? Yes, there are other places to discuss this but then you just end up with two threads – one VIP and one non-VIP – which IMO is surely even more unmanageable.
I don’t see what’s so hard about:
one topic which is just the announcement and any follow-ups to the announcement from Trakt staff alone
another topic for all Trakt users to discuss the announcement.
Because why should non-VIP users not get an equal opportunity to voice their opinion on Trakt decisions? After all, listening to non-VIP opinions – and acting on them – may persuade them to become VIPs too.
For example I’d love to continue voicing my opinion in this discussion as it affects both VIPs and non-VIPs but you’ve closed the discussion to me for no valid reason.
You have once again clearly not listened to your users’ concerns over the last year about transparency, communication and accountability.
You may say this announcement is those things. After all, you have communicated a policy change and have been open about it. But if you don’t allow people to participate, then it is the opposite.
This is once again stifling discussion and debate. It is censorship.
Not going to lie, this is basically telling non VIP members that you don’t care about them or their input on the future of Trakt. Pay up or get lost
Also I feel it’ll cause more threads to be opened about the announcements, rather than consolidating discussions into 1 place, which is probably the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve by opening up comments on the announcements in the first place.
Well… I guess it was only a matter of time for my fears to become reality. You are now forcing free users onto v3 on web and now we can’t even express our frustration in the post announcing it. It should be clear from user feedback that v3 is still not nearly ready and is still missing a whole bunch of features. Free users now effectively lose those features, can’t complain where you announced it and can’t access the roadmap or feature requests. Poor, poor choices all around.
Always suspected it would happen.
Trakt is really getting shittier by the day. Breaking stuff like forcing IMDb/tvdb connections while TMDb is the source of truth.
This would’ve been undone SO fast on the good ol’ Justin-the-kale-hulk-Trakt.
@kcador I am very disappointed. You have just made an announcement that impacts non-VIP users but have locked those same users from commenting on that. And you didn’t even have the grace to respond to my question above. You have absolutely zero clue about customer experience or customer relations.
Exactly as I predicted. The forum is now being flooded with new posts because you’ve restricted free users from commenting on the announcement that directly affects them negatively
More Forum Tweaks Coming
