Your feedback on the new Community Center

[Lizzie]

Hi everyone!

Now that the new community forum is live, after you have had a look around we would love you to provide us with your feedback on what you think and possible ways that we can improve, for example on ease of use and accessibility. 

Click here to access our Feedback Survey. 

We look forward to hearing your thoughts! Additionally, after completing the survey, feel free to reply in this thread with any other comments you might have regarding the new platform. Thank you in advance for taking the time to provide us with your valuable insight -  we will make sure to keep all your comments in mind when we further develop the Community Center.

[Lia---Garry0]

Thanks for putting a section for feedback ... I haven't explored the community center enough yet, but am glad to have options for communicatin and review 😉

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

`Really confused about whether or not I posting in public area open for anyone to read, or host only...can you elaborate please?

[Lizzie]

Hello,

@Lia---Garry0, thank you for your post. I hope you are enjoying exploring the new Community Center and when you have a moment I would love to receive any feedback you have. It is great to hear you would like to have the option to communicate and review the center, it is so useful to us as a community and to make sure the center is a useful as possible and of course an enjoyable place to speak with your fellow hosts.  

Lovely to meet you @Gerry-And-Rashid0. This is a very good question and I am sorry this isn't clearer. To confirm, the Community Center is publically visible, therefore it is open to both hosts and guests to view. The only acceptions to this are the 'Responsible Hosting' and 'Host Circle' boards which are only accessible to hosts with an active listing. Hosts and guests will need to log in before they can interact and comment on the forum.

I would always recommend reading the board description posts in each section before posting to get a better idea of what each area is for. At the moment we are only actively promoting the Community Center to hosts, as we would like to get your feedback and insight.

If you are unclear about anything else regarding the forum, please do let me know as I can make sure this information is better communicated on the platform.

I look forward to speaking with you again soon. 

[Florencia0]

Thanks Lizzie for all the clarification about how the new community center works but I must say I can´t see neither the Responsible hosting nor the Host Circle boards grouped on the menu. Where are they? Or it is a beta-testing version available for a subset of users?

[Lizzie]

Hello @Florencia0, lovely to meet you. These areas are only visible if you are logged in and if you are a host with an active listing. Your profile image should be showing in the top right-hand corner of the page. Do let me know if you are continuing to have any problems with this. 🙂

[Florencia0]

Thanks Lizzie. Yes, they finally appeared on my Menu but believe me they were not there before even with a logged-in session.  

After looking at the community center for a few days I have to say that you have done a great job. Thumbs up! It is much better than it was before 🙂

The only thing that I would suggest to improve is that there is no easy way to know that the area you are using is public or private to hosts-only besides the short descritption under the area´s title. Private areas could be organized under a different Menu sections or you could add some visual hint that help us clearly make the distinction. I'm not sure if everyone posting on the "General Hosting" forum is aware that guests can also see what they write.

[Christine1]

@Florencia0 @Lizzie just as Airbnb have the little lightning symbol for instant book, a symbol for public Vs internal/private posts might help forum posters to get a sense of how visible their contributions will be..... 🐨 eg. Only one person can ride on this bike 🚲 Whereas a whole heap more will be sharing this ✈️ Aeroplane. These symbols would need to be embedded by the site developers. 

[Lia---Garry0]

@Christine1, @Lizzie --

I like the idea of some conversations being less public. If I am correct in who can use this Community Center, it seems that it is open to both hosts and guests who have never hosted themselves.  I don't think it is a good practice to have people who are only Airbnb guests, and who have never hosted themselves, see conversations about the stresses of hosting 😉 .  I also find it a bit stiffling to know that this forum is closely monitored by Airbnb staff -- which prevents a certain level of venting about Airbnb 😉  However, there are other non-official Airbnb host forums that are excellent for discussing hosting issues and Airbnb issues 🙂

Thanks from Lia, Pasadena, CA, USA

[Lizzie]

Hello @Lia---Garry0,

Thanks for your suggestions, I like the idea of having a similar symbol to the Instant Booking lightening bolt, I will pass your suggestion on. 🙂

Yes, the Community Center is publically visible to both hosts and guests, however we are only promoting it to hosts at the moment. This said, as mentioned before the 'Responsible Hosting' board (including the Local Responsible Hosting board within each of the city areas) and 'Host Circle', are only visible to hosts with an active listing. Hopefully you will find these areas useful and a good way to speak with other hosts, plus meet new hosts you may not have previously met through other channels. Do you feel these areas are suitable for what you need?

Do continue to share with me any other ways you would think the Community Center could improve or things you are enjoying. Thanks so much. 

[Dave-and-Deb0]

There are lots of things I like about the new Community Center:

Things I like:

- the ability to add photos to your posts

- the ability to add links outside of the Airbnb domain

- the ability to search

- the images you upload can be saved in the Public folder so I can use the same images again

Things I would like to see added:

- the ability to add a reply to someones post and it being attached (indented) to that post instead of dropping to the very bottom.  This would be like the old "Groups".

- the ability to edit or delete your post at anytime (right now you have 45 minutes to edit your post).

- adding a text editing tool which allows bolding, underlining, italics, bullet list, number list, etc.

- if someone "flags" a post, they should be updated with what actions were/are taken.  We take the time to report them, you should take the time to respond or at least let us know that something is being done.

- more moderators

- make the entire Hosting section PRIVATE!  Why do guests need to know the information posted there?  You are chasing away a wealth of knowledge by having most of the Hosting section public.  

I am sure there are other things which escape me right now and since I have only 45 minutes to edit this post, I hope I remember quickly or I will be making a new reply.

BTW @Lizzie, how do I bold text.  I have tried Control B and it works when writing my post but then removes it when I submit my post.   I am able to underline with Control U.  Also, what does "Highlight" mean?  Please advise!

[Lizzie]

Hello @Dave-and-Deb0,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this and provide your feedback, sorry for not getting back to you a little sooner.

To answer you question about bold and italics, I have just been doing some tests into this and you are completely right it is rather odd that it is accepting Control U but not for bold or italics. I imagine that as these aren't on the tool bar that the underline is the oddity here, but I have highlighted this with our tech team and the need for this to be added on the tool bar.  

Also, if you press the '...' icon and click highlight on an individual message this is so you can get the direct URL for that's individual's post instead of for the whole page. This is quite handy if you are directing someone else to a particular comment. 🙂 

It is great to hear you like the ability to add photos, links and search, we will also be working to constantly improve these and evolve to how the community wants to use them over time. 

Thanks also for sending over the things you would like to be added, many of these points you raised are functionalities that are in discussion at the moment, but I can't really provide you with much of a idea if or when they will be implemented yet. As soon as I know more I will be sure to share it with you and the rest of the community. All of these are really important and I will discuss them with the team. 

Lastly, I just want to say thank you for all the advice and discussions you are taking part in within the new Community Center, with you knowledge and experience it great to have you involved, providing feedback to help shape the platform and generally aiming to make the CC a place for all of the community to come together. 🙂 

[Dave-and-Deb0]

@Lizzie,

So is the "Highlight" button broken because it does not do anything.  It basically reloads the page but does not take me just to the comment I select.  I think it would be a great feature especially when trying to answer soemone's question I may have already answered in a previous post and they won't have to read through several responses.

Any update on bolding and italics of text?

Please advise. 

[Lizzie]

Hello @Dave-and-Deb0,

Sorry I should have said about the 'Highlight' button - when you click on it it the change isn't very noticable, the only difference is that your URL in the bar above will change slightly. Then say if you copied that and then sent the link to someone, instead of taking the person to the top of the page each time it will land on the view of that specific post instead (the other posts will be still seen if you scroll up or down). I hope this makes sense, do let me know if not. I have checked that this is working on a couple of different browsers, but do let me know if it isn't working. 

In terms of bold and italics, it may take a little bit of time to issue a fix for this, obviously it is something that ideally it will be added on to the tool bar. As you can imagine there are other things that are of slightly higher priority at this stage so the team are busy working on those, but I can assure you it is important (I can completely understand your fustration about this) and as soon as I get an update I will be sure to let you know. 

Thank you so much. 

[Nuno-Y-Daniel0]

Hi Lizzie, 

Here it goes a tip that could improve the functionality and increase the visits as well:

- Get a notification to comments reply; (Updated: this actually comes up in the end of the comment)

- It would be great to have a topic on the Community Center about "Wished Features". This would be quite a good feedback to airbnb and a chance to see through the forum interactions between hosts how wished it's or not.

- I am geting some error when clicking on top left menu (Community Center >  Your Community Activity > Your Latest Posts > "A error comes up when clicking in any of the discussions i am involved") 

- "Search in Community" doesn't give back results if you search for "Lizzie" (users names) for example, i wanted to come back to this post again and tested this way.

There's another suggestion but to the - Blog - that i was taking a look now as well. I would love to receive a notification in my email as soon a new article is posted and probably millions of other users. In order to don't be too much spammy, give the chance to choose the specific topics to subscribe.

Sorry for this long list but just came up now as i was testing this new airbnb feature, don't take me wrong I really appreciate this new community center! 🙂

Warm regards