The best way to maintain the quality of the discussion and the input on your platform is to actively take part on your platform. Here are a couple of things you can easily do to show you care:
Comment on ideas to make them better
In a comment you can let people know why an idea was selected or not, or why it was taken to the next phase. You can ask for more explanation in a comment. A user can always change his idea. Don't hesitate to complete good ideas with extra information you for example received in the comments.
Give ‘official feedback’ on an idea or on many ideas at once
A project manager or an admin can post an 'official update' under an idea. This will appear directly below the idea and above the comments. Here, you choose yourself which name will be displayed as 'author’.
Official updates are used to:
Send the author (and the readers) a personal message to thank them for their input;
Ask for more information on their idea;
Share information or contact details that are relevant to this idea;
Give timely updates about what is being done with the idea (e.g. "being discussed on the next city council" or "has been taken up in our project report");
You can give as many official updates as you want. The most recent one will be shown by default on the idea page, while the older ones can be loaded with a simple click.
Uses the statuses to communicate with participants
As an admin or project manager you can easily change the 'status' or an idea. When you do that, the author and the people that commented or voted on that idea, get notified.
The platform has built-in standard statuses, but you can also pick your own statuses. Just let support@citizenlab.co know which ones you'd like to pick and which colour you want to give them, and we’ll add them.
Possible extra statuses: under consideration, seen by project manager, to be completed, not an idea, need more explaining, ... but also ‘status 1’, ‘status 2, etc. Be creative! Statuses are very valuable because they are also visible on the platform and are a great communication tool.
If you want to update multiple ideas at once, you can also mass update or change statuses.
Move ideas to the current timeline phase
Ideas are always immediately visible in the timeline phase during which the idea has been inputted. If you also want an idea to be visible in the current timeline phase, simply bring it to that phase by dragging and dropping it to that phase in the admin panel. You can also just check or uncheck the timeline phase number in each idea. You can also select multiple ideas at once.