Social Knowledge

I have read on other websites that Social Knowledge now owns RV Park Reviews. Is there any truth to this?

 

Yes, Social Knowledge, the parent company of IRV2.com and numerous other social media sites now owns RVPR. You should expect to see exciting changes and improvements to this site in the near future. In addition, a phone app is being developed. There was a separate thread on which some people were suggesting improvements they would like to see. You are welcome to post some of your ideas, also.

 

Improvements?! How is that even possible, considering that RVPR is perfect already.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. RVParkReviews is an important research tool for my RV travels.

 

New and improved is always scary for me. I like this site as is. Works good for me.

 

I checked them out yesterday after I saw this thread. Not impressed at all.

 

I'm not sure what you saw on the Social Knowledge website that would have elicited your negative reaction. The company runs numerous social media websites. They are not exclusively focused on RVing, but they bring computer resources and $$ that have been lacking on this website. You may not be aware of it, but the server and software running this site are very limited in capability. Many of the extras that people would like to see, such as being able to upload pictures, requires more computer horsepower than we have today. I, for one, am excited about being able to modernize this site and improve its usefulness to users.

 

Yes, RV Park Reviews has been acquired by Social Knowledge. I was in touch with the previous owners for many years expressing my desire to include RV Park Reviews in our network of RV forum communities. The stars finally lined up last year and we became the proud new stewards of such a wonderful resource.

We've been working on building a new back end system (database) that will allow us to build some new features in the future. We are 1,000% aware that most people don't like change and are making every effort to leave buttons and navigational bits in close to the same places. We would much rather an evolution of the site (ie. something very similar with slight changes) not a revolution (ie. something totally new).

Here you can see an example of the individual campground page:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rk0ewk9id8wmngd/r...-campground.png

Currently the navigation is Country >> State >> City and we plan to leave that but also add in ways to see results based on your driving route (ie. all parks within 10 miles of I-35 between Austin and Dallas) and also parks near attractions since many people might want to go somewhere specific but no know what cities are nearby.

We plan to setup a section in the forum to discuss these changes and solicit input from the community. We are looking forward to helping make an already wonderful resource even better!

 

OK Andy R, you've got me excited about the changes that are planned. Thanks for the response.

 

So far I like what is planned. The drop box sample looks clean and easy to read.

 

It's great to hear the positive feedback on the screen shot of the campground page and our development plans. We have been thinking through a lot of the concepts that power the site trying to figure out if there might be a better way. For example, offering the members to vote up/down reviews is a great way to surface helpful info. We are also planning to separate the review process from the campground data submission process. Basically the campground data will turn into a wiki like system with logs of all changes. The review process will be shorter because the person leaving the review won't have to figure out if the campground data is correct or not. When a new campground is added it combines these two process as steps into a single process so you can add then rate a new facility.

Here is a screen shot of a review input form we working on:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtdhapgrkep10x9/r...eview-page2.png

You will notice that we are asking for more info about specific campsites. This is in hopes that we can gather more micro data around the campground on specific sites and other amenities so you can really get an accurate view of the place.

Once the new site is live we plan to roll out phone/tablet apps so you can take RV Park Reviews with you on the road. We have not defined any of the features but I'm pretty excited that we will have the foundation in place to push forward.

 

QUOTE(mdcamping @ Feb 4 2014, 09:34 PM) [snapback]35691[/snapback]
I always thought that would be a good idea with this site because it would help loose credit to the people that post just one or a few ax to grind or advertisement type reviews.
I agree. We are evaluating various methods like this in hopes that we can find a solution to prevent abuse of the system by disgruntled clients & unethical campground owners promoting their own or leaving bad reviews on competitors.

We plan to have a hover over which will let you see a better summary of a users reviews so it will be easy to see if a person leaves only really bad reviews. That might weigh in on your decision of how much value to put into that review.

Our first goal is to get the site switched over to the new platform and get rid of any bugs. We can then tackle projects to further enhance the site in the future. Phone and Tablet apps are also high on our priority list.

Please keep the feedback coming!

 

Andy, I like the new format and I think it will be a great inprovement, BUT, with one comment: Please make sure this does not slow down the opperation of the site, and it is still just as easy to use. I have seen too many websites add "improvements" which slow down performance (e.g. Yahoo mail is now much slower, Craigslist is slower and screen hops around making it more difficult to use).

Also, what is the purpose of the "is this review helpful (yes) (no)" button. Those of us who use the site find most of the reviews helpful as a collection.

Finally, I love the idea of being able to see RV Parks along a specific route! Make this a priority!

Also, please try to allocate more time to database admin. You may know that within a national park and state park, there can be several campgrounds. The admins have spent alot of time breaking out the campgrounds in the national parks so you can find the individual campgrounds, but the state parks still need lots of work.

 

Looks great to me. I hope you keep the feature of being able to see the basics of all campgrounds in a town on one page. That makes it a lots easier for us. I like the nearby towns with the mileage feature also. I hate to see any changes, but I know there will be coming I assume that the advertising will be increased as that is what pays for the internet. The mobile website has been a great feature for us also. A phone app might make it easier to navigate to.

 

QUOTE(Fitzjohnfan @ Feb 5 2014, 04:42 PM) [snapback]35694[/snapback]

Andy, I like the new format and I think it will be a great inprovement, BUT, with one comment: Please make sure this does not slow down the opperation of the site, and it is still just as easy to use. I have seen too many websites add "improvements" which slow down performance (e.g. Yahoo mail is now much slower, Craigslist is slower and screen hops around making it more difficult to use).



As Andy noted, the entire website is being migrated to an entirely new server in order to provide additional capabilities and to provide the "horsepower" necessary to ensure that these aren't added at the expense of performance.


QUOTE(Fitzjohnfan @ Feb 5 2014, 04:42 PM) [snapback]35694[/snapback]
Also, what is the purpose of the "is this review helpful (yes) (no)" button. Those of us who use the site find most of the reviews helpful as a collection.



As an example, both TripAdvisor and Amazon let readers "vote" on whether or not a particular review is helpful. That way when you encounter someone's review you can see how many "helpful" votes they have received. It doesn't mean their reviews are better but it is another method for evaluating this person's reviews and how much trust you should put in them.


QUOTE(Fitzjohnfan @ Feb 5 2014, 04:42 PM) [snapback]35694[/snapback]

Also, please try to allocate more time to database admin. You may know that within a national park and state park, there can be several campgrounds. The admins have spent alot of time breaking out the campgrounds in the national parks so you can find the individual campgrounds, but the state parks still need lots of work.



A lot of the features many of us would like to add have been limited by the capabilities of the current system. For example, even the excellent re-do of the national parks has resulted in all of the campgrounds in a park being aggregated as if they all were in a single location so that the "nearby" box is meaningless. As a result, someone who wants to know what town a specific campground is near has to use a map or Google maps. Ideally, a campground can have multiple attributes so that it can be tagged, for example, as being in a national park AND that is near a particular town. Not all these improvements will be available immediately when the new system is ready, but moving to the new platform will give RVPR the ability to evolve.

 

I like the new look, but please keep in mind that many of us are dependent on mobile data plans with limited bandwidth. Excessive use of complex pages and graphics can be serious data eaters, and Flash or any streaming media should be avoided, including in any third-party ads. A well implemented CSS layout can be low impact as well as functional and aesthetically pleasing. The security issues related to Java are well known, so best to avoid that as well.

 

They keep telling me that "the only constant is change". As long as I can still get the info I need in a quick and efficient manner, and find interesting topics in teh forum, I'm all for it.

 

Thanks for the great feedback, keep it coming!

Joel's (docj) responses above are spot on regarding those topics.

Dutch, we will indeed take into consideration data plans. We plan to have a responsive style that will keep the page size small on phones/tablets but many use devices like MiFi for mobile data so we will keep the main website trim as well.

I'm looking forward to working with you all on ideas to make the site better in the future!

 

I am the moderator of a high line motorhome manufacturer that is very active. We went to new software and the learning curve was a bit steep but doable for many who are not super computer literate. I would say make the best site you can and do not worry about where the buttons are as the functionality of this site is not very robust. It does serve a purpose. I will say if there is too much advertising you might see a drop off in numbers. Remember that this site was the first to start up but there are now other sites that have been catching up and getting a few reviews on many of the campgrounds.