14 DAY TRIAL // Suggestion Board, the latest Yahoo! Service for the masses, is the buzz that's been keeping diggers and bloggers in alert in the past 24 hours. So what's it all about?
As I perform my daily browsing, it happens to me - as I'm sure it also happens to you - to find glitches or bugs on websites. Being such good visitor as I think I am, I usually have a little fun with it (the glitch) and afterwards try to contact the webmaster or the tech team to let them know about their problem. And that is a good attitude (well, at least the latter part); it's an attitude that leaves room for improvement, for development. It's harder, though, to track down bugs and suggestions when your site is as big as Yahoo!, because there are many smart guys with great ideas using the contact form. So the Yahoo! folks came up with Suggestion Board, a service that gives users the opportunity to submit "the good, the bad and the screwed up" - in Yodel Anecdotal language, and then rate the suggestion/complaint so that the most important ones are always on top. This way, they become a priority.
The way I see it, Yahoo! folks found a fully functional and much appreciated system (the digg rating system) and implemented it successfully. Were they inspired by Digg? Of course they were, they even brag about it. But then again, development is about using what has been discovered so that you may discover some more. Does the design look similarly? Yes it does. It's a good design scheme, too. Why not use it? Has Digg patented its rating algorithm? Has Digg patented its rating design? Then why are we calling this a theft? I declare myself satisfied by the Yahoo! Suggestion Board and I think it's something Google should implement too.
But then again, they could have changed the colors, at least?