Profile Question Updates - Part 2

[Navy for Moms Admin]

Hello N4M Members!!

Awhile back, we made some big updates to our profile questions (see original blog post). We received a lot of feedback from all of you and I wanted to let you know where we are at.

One of the biggest requests people had was regarding location. Unfortunately, Ning has still not offered up privacy settings for this. We are determined to work with them on making this a reality in the future, so please be patient with us while we continue to on a solution! In the meantime, feel free to enter the zipcode of a near by city in your area if you are not comfortable with your page linking directly to your hometown.

Now, on to what we could change!

You may have noticed that most of the new members to the site are not using their full name when they sign up. We realized that our questions previously asked individuals to provide their "Full Name" and as of yesterday, this has been adjusted to ask for a "Username". We hope this helps maintain the privacy of our members and their sailors.

You'll notice today that two of the profile questions have had small adjustments made to them. For the question, "I am here to support or represent my:", we have changed the response of "Child/Stepchild" to "Son/Daughter". We have also added an option, "Prefer not to answer", to the Race/Ethnicity question. Although this question has been private and not mandatory, we feel this will provide you all with an option to clarify your choice if you decide you would rather not offer this information. Remember that the lock icon you see on your page next to the last two questions indicates that your answers are private. Only you and I can view your responses. To learn about your privacy settings regarding these questions and your page in general, take a look at the blog I posted a few months back when we made the first round of updates.

If you have not already, please go in and make the changes to your profile questions through your Settings.

We're still working out a nice graphical breakdown of our membership and will be sharing this with you soon so you can see the makeup of our community as well :)

We welcome any additional feedback that you might have. Just leave a comment here or drop me a line via Private Message :)


Elle

[abbyblue]

I still alot of moms using thier last names.

[Kaye S.]

Hi, Elle,
First off, ya'll do an awesome job maintaining this site (and since I'm a systems analyst, I know good admin when I see it!) Second, it would be wonderful if we could sort our 'Friends' into a few categories. This would be helpful when sending out a message to my friends, say in Indiana, versus my friends who are Sub Moms.
Thanks! k.

[carols_kitchen]

Elle
I also like Kaye's idea of sorting "friends" for the same reason.
Carol

[Navy for Moms Admin]

I like the suggestion about sorting friends - I'll look into that with Ning who handles the site development.

The reason the questions have pre-set answers is that it makes it easier for us to break down everyone's responses so we can get an idea of our membership base. By understanding who our members are, we can make updates and adjustments to the site that benefit all of you. When we first made the changes a few months ago, we told you we would be sharing what we found with you so look for that soon! We've tried to offer the most options to cover everyone on the site - before this change the questions were just targeted towards moms but we realize that our site is now home to people with all types of relationships to our sailors and we wanted to account for this in the way the questions were worded.

The sections that are open-ended give you room to clarify your relationship to your sailor, or the number of loved ones you have in the Navy as well as how you feel about their choice or the experience you've had so feel free to type as much as you need to!

Keep the feedback coming! :)