Thanks Chris. I skimmed those texts just now. I don't have time to read long texts about how to go through the process of submitting feedback, and what steps will be taken. It sounds like there have been some changes, and some sound good to me. On the other hand, it sounds like you still want people to spend a lot of time in the community system in order to make a suggestion. I also note that there is no pointer to a suggestion box or feedback link on the main home page, or on every page. I also didn't notice anything that said that one can pass on suggestions to helpdesk personnel, and they will pass them on. (That's something I've experienced with support terms for other organizations.) So I do appreciate you making available resources to me that explain the current policy, but it doesn't sound like it easy or quick to offer feedback. So it still sounds like it is not easy to offer suggestions and feedback. I still suggest that the process be made easy. Asking me to read two to six webpages in response illustrates the point, but I didn't expect that this would be easy. I'm asking for it to be made easy.
You may feel that the response you gave is a good response to my suggestion. But what it describes is the kind of process I was objecting to. I'm worried now that the Instructure culture makes difficult to understand what I am suggesting. So here is one example from another context.
I have an app for a news organization that I subscribe to. The search function allows me to sort returned articles by date. I searched for an article from the last two days by an exact title, and sorted by most recent, and the search function didn't find the article. I then searched by the author's name, and found the article, but by scrollng down one screen. (Sometimes the titles of articles change from day to day, but in this case it was the same--and searching by an old title ought bring up the article, too.) So there's something wrong with their search function or their data. I reported this to the support staff for the news organization--essentially giving the description I just gave you, but with a little more detail. Within a day I got an email saying that they were concerned about this, and that the help desk person was going to pass it on to the team that works on the app. That's it. I described the problem, and I was told that they would work on it. That's all I wanted. And I'm done with it. Hopefully they'll fix the app at some point, and if so, I'll be happy about it, but it's not my problem any more.
I fully support the idea of a Canvas community system for those users who want that. I have benefited from the community in some cases. I'm not sorry that it's available to me sometimes. But I don't see it as a substitute for a support desk that one can interact with directly in simple ways. Since you probably have users who like this community-based support, it's probably good to continue it. For me it's an hindrance, for most of the suggestions I have had in the past. I still feel that if I have a suggestion, it's usually not worth making it. I'm trying it now, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
