Focusing Customer Discussions on Recent Product Blogs

[KenzHughes]

Tl;dr – Beginning today, Community members will only be able to comment on Product Blogs published in the last six months.

In 2023, the Instructure Product blog received 298,500+ page views and welcomed over 140 articles. The Product Blog is, by far, the most popular blog in the Instructure Community! 

We’re thrilled that you consider the Product Blog as THE place to hear updates about the Instructure Learning Platform. The messages are directly from Product Managers and those who are closest to the product development process. We are happy that so many people value our transparency regarding our projects and upcoming feature updates. With the earliest post in the blog dating back to 2015, we see an opportunity to make it easier for you to identify the most recent updates and for you to join conversations with Product Managers.

With this, starting today, January 2, 2024, the Instructure Product Blog will close comments on blogs that are older than six months old. This will improve the overall reading and collaboration experience for everyone while making it easier for you to identify current conversations! Each Product Blog newer than six months old will be monitored by the authors as you ask questions and contribute to the discussion. 

Thank you for your ongoing partnership as we work together to improve teaching and learning.

[dbrace]

Thank you for letting us know about this change, @KenzHughes.

I understand and appreciate the reason(s) for not allowing comments on Product Blog blog posts that are older than six months.

As someone that has been tracking (after commenting myself) several posts in the Product Blog, doing this can also have an adverse effect by stopping the community from continuing to provide feedback because there may not be a more recent blog post that applies to the original post.

For example, there are several posts over the last four months or so related to the redesign of discussions/announcements and community members have been actively providing feedback in them (in one, as recently as earlier today and in another, as recently as Wednesday, January 3rd.).

If someone in the community would like to provide feedback related to the content in a specific post (even if a more recent post is available for that feature but the content in the more recent post does not directly apply), if comments have been turned off after six months, where should that feedback be posted?

Should that feedback be taken to our CSM instead of in the community?

I think what I am getting at is we need more follow-up comments and/or posts from product managers based on feedback already made by the community.

I hope all of this made sense because it was a bit of a tongue-twister to type out.

[rake_9]

I was thinking to make the same comment / question as @dbrace .  Sometimes, the comments get made on the older post because there is no update from the product manager that is more recent.  My best example of this is the promise of a way to force logouts for the mobile apps.

Totally understand why you would stop comments.  Totally need more updates from product managers.  If we need to get updates on older topics, is that a thing for our CSM to do for us?

[dbrace]

Yes, @rake_9, Mobile Session Expiration  (originally posted on 02-03-2022 at 10:04 AM and I see that the author is now an "Instructure Alumni") is a great example.