The SU plugged Get Satisfaction today at the Student Reps training session!
My student side declares a victory (“Hooray! Advocacy as a Student Rep worked!”) but my staff side now goes “umm… now what?”. See, at the moment it’s impossible to moderate discussions, or to change the state of a topic without posting a reply. This means that if someone answers a question who isn’t a staff member there’s no way to say “this has been answered” without also weighing in and adding unnecessary crud to the thread.
$99 a month for moderation tools… which it’s impossible to justify without a detailed survey and explanation of how it works. Which is impossible to generate without users. Which are difficult (but not impossible) to get without promotion. Which the University won’t approve without some form of moderation tools and staff training in place.
Hmm. Anybody got experience with this kind of ‘just trust me on this one’ promotion? Get Satisfaction is so unique that there’s nothing in the market to compare to, and so new that there aren’t any big case studies. Nor does it help that there are only a scant handful of educational institutions who only half use the service.
Either way I’ve switched the default login method from Get Satisfaction’s own user database to Facebook (although the former is still available) to make it more immediately accessible. We really could do with getting SSO working; but that’s another story and more money.