Read Me First Before Posting in the Idea Exchange

[DawnM]

First, I want to give a big thank you for your feedback and ideas on improving our products. When you provide your ideas and kudo other's ideas, it gives us visibility as to which features are the most important to you. It also gives us more insight into the various ways in which you use or would like to use our products, and those things are invaluable to us here at NETGEAR. 

In an effort to ensure the ease of which others can find similar ideas to their own suggestions, and to facilitate an accurate count of the kudos for each idea, we are in the process of cleaning up the Idea Exchange board. That means we are working on:

Merging duplicate Ideas:

When we merge them it makes it easier for others to find as they don't have to wade through many pages of ideas. It also ensures that the ideas have the correct kudo count as it merges the kudos when we merge the ideas. So, if an idea regarding alerts had 45 kudos, and a separate post with the same idea for alerts had 30 kudos, when we merge them, it will now show 75 kudos. This then tells us that the alert idea was more important to our users than it seemed at first - it's not just 30 people that agree this is a great idea, it's actually 75! The only exception to that rule regarding merging is that if one user kudo'd both ideas, the kudo will not be duplicated, as it is the same idea.

Adjusting some Idea titles:

We all use different words for different things in our day to day life. So, one person may call something an alert and another person may say notification. So, we may notice that 4 people posted an idea and called it "Customized Alerts", and that 8 other people posted the same idea but referred to it as "Customized Notifications". In this instance, we may modify the title of the Idea to include both alert and notification. This will help more people find the idea and kudo it, again, giving it a more accurate kudo count than multiple idea posts for the same idea. 

Updating statuses:

Due to duplicate ideas being posted, and the large volume of ideas currently in the idea exchange, sometimes we don't update statuses in as timely a fashion as we'd like to. And sometimes we update the status on one, but didn't see that there was a duplicate idea somewhere else on the board. We are working on updating statuses as we are performing the other cleanup activities.

So, with that being said, before posting to the Idea Exchange board, please make sure to search this board to see if your idea has already been posted. If it already exists, make sure you kudo the idea, and if you want to add more details about the idea, you can add a comment to the idea. 

And again, thank you all for your input and contributions. They are greatly appreciated!