Idea for "News and Feed Alerts" status

[GTR8000]

How about adding the ability for a feed owner to authorize trusted users to change/update the News and Feed Alerts status for their feed(s)?

Each feed owner would have the option of setting up an authorized list of those accounts who could access a limited control panel for their feed(s), where those users would then be able to change/update the News and Feed Alerts status, nothing else. The list would be unique per feed, and need not be the same authorized users for each feed a person runs. I can see this coming in very handy for local/regional feeds where you have a network of friends who monitor at various times during the day and night. If the ability to update those alerts is shared among multiple users, you're likely going to get much better and more timely usage out of that feature.

Whether or not this is even possible without a major re-write of the code, I have no idea, but I figure it's worth throwing out there.

 

[911scanner]

As a feed provider, I like the idea.

Now to just come up with a list of trusted listeners....


MM

 

[SCPD]

LOL

I think that would work with my one and only dedicated listener.

 

[SCANMUNCIE]

I like the idea, dont know if its possible but it would be a very nice feature...

Another nice feature; would be to have the New & Feed Alert information in a scrolling box that appears on the majority of the website pages so while looking at other things it would still be possible to catch something of interest..

 

[texasemt13]

Agreed

I fifth that idea...

 

[Laxplurr06]

What if a user could send the News or Alert to the owners email or Cell Phone then the owner could activate the alert. This would cut down on unwanted News and Alerts. Another great feature would be to subscribe to a feed and receive all alerts by E-Mail.

 

[GTR8000]

What if a user could send the News or Alert to the owners email or Cell Phone then the owner could activate the alert.

That would defeat the purpose of my idea. I'm looking at it from the standpoint that people are awake at different hours of the day and night, when the feed owner might not be around or is sleeping, and is unable to update the News/Alerts.

This would cut down on unwanted News and Alerts.

Again, my idea is based on the premise that the feed owner has full control over which users are authorized to change/update the News/Alerts on their feed. We assume that the feed owner is only going to authorize users he can trust to use the system properly and not spam it up with every minor incident. If a particular authorized user can't seem to exercise self control, then the feed owner need only remove them from the list, problem solved.

Another great feature would be to subscribe to a feed and receive all alerts by E-Mail.

That's not a bad idea.

I'd also like to see a separate page that shows feeds with active News/Alerts. Can't take much more than an SQL statement to pull only those feeds where the News/Alerts field is not null and display them. Same goes for RR Owned feeds and Official feeds, they really ought to have their own page for easy identification.

 

[blantonl]

These are all good suggestions that we'll keep in mind for future enhancements to our services.

Thanks,

 

[Laxplurr06]

I was thinking of keeping the dedicated list of users and then all other users would be able to send alerts to the owner. Thus allowing all of the incidents to be covered.

 

[hoser147]

It does bring to mind one feature that we used to have was to be able to see the IP address of the listeners. Sounds like a good idea to me..

 

[blantonl]

Let me ask, what real benefit does seeing the ip address of a user provide you?

Also, understand that exposes privacy concerns for users of this Web site.

 

[blantonl]

Also folks, please understand that we are not getting in the business of incident notification... we'll send out twitter updates for feed broadcasting something big, but treading down the incident notification path is a whole different ballgame.

 

[hoser147]

Let me ask, what real benefit does seeing the ip address of a user provide you?

Also, understand that exposes privacy concerns for users of this Web site.

Just gives an idea of what area that the listener is from, IE different providers within the area. As around here different telephone and cable co have different area's. I can understand the privacy part , but as stated above it just gives an idea of where the listeners are from, nothing more.

 

[blantonl]

Ok, that's a good point. Maybe we could use some of the openly available geocoding to IP resources and provide that info to you instead of actual IP addresses.

We have to be very careful as a large Web business when it comes to privacy. In addition, every feature enhancement that we tackle, while on the surface appearing easy, needs lots of vetting and planning.

I always want to hear from you on requests regarding updates and enhancements. however, do understand that we're not sitting around waiting for feature requests We get a zillion of them, and we also have a tremendous workload around maintaining our existing environment, in addition to executing on strategic long term projects for the site.

 

[hoser147]

That sounds good to me, it was just kind of interesting to see where your listeners are. Its just something we had in the past, wasn't sure of why we didn't have it now. Im sure that you get all kinds of requests on updates and enhancements, you and the audio team are doing a bang up job of it so far. Keep up the good work. Thanks

 

[blantonl]

We are trying as hard as we can.... remember our initial goal was 1000 feeds by the end of the year. Also remember that we had right about 500 total feeds when the ScanAmerica acquisition happened.

So since we are now sitting on about 1500 feeds, it's been a wild ride so far. And our traffic? Holy smokes it's out of control

 

[GTR8000]

I would like to add to my suggestion to include the Feed Status field as well.

We had a situation today where the DSL line went down on a fairly popular feed, and the owner was unable to get to a browser to update the situation until almost 1.5 hours later. Authorized users would've been able to update the status for him within minutes.

Lindsay, you guys do phenomenal work considering the large scope of things around these parts, not to mention guys like myself always bombarding you with "ideas" and whatnot!