It is ever more clear that there are a multitude of problems with the IWON accounting of even individual coins accumulation. That is exacerbated by the absolute certainty that some of the individual coins are not being properly credited in the MVP races, and possibly not to the team for which one plays. I have had a personal case of near-certainty that my first day of play in January did not add to the team total, and wound up leaving, then re-joining Tigers in order to gain the certainty that they were from that point, credited. Although the team feed has improved so greatly that it now has become useful, there is still such a lack of transparency in the individual totals versus the credits awarded the team from those individuals, that I feel a need to push an earlier informal proposal for a solution to this issue.
This proposal has the advantage of allowing individual players to monitor their contributions to the team. That will relieve us, and IWON, of the vast number of complaints about what those contributions are. Better, when there is a problem, if this proposal is carried through to include the daily totals, both the date of the problem, and the extent of the problem, become visible to the individual. That is a detail of vast import in defining the cause of the problem and seeking to resolve it. It would allow the individual to file a useful complaint - errr, "question" with support, and allow them to look at a specific portion of the log for confirmation or explanation.
Following is the text of the question filed to IWON support:
'090108-002647'
Highlighted by recent problems with team credit for individual player coins, we need a new tool from IWON. I suggest on the profile page, near the Team Name link, that those who are members of teams have a gadget added to show the current (MTD) coin credit contributed to the team by that player. Ideally, it would have a popup either showing or offering, a table by date of the days that month, with a coin total contributed for each.
That would relieve your support of the uncertainty of whether an individual's coins were credited for a given day, and would allow the player, upon review, to specify precisely the date in question, together with any supporting evidence (s)he may offer that the total is incorrect. The elimination of numerous ill-founded, or ill-documented, complaints that I know are being filed on this very issue, would offset the work involved in installing that feature.
Since there are most assuredly some of those complaints that are indeed well-founded, whether or not well-documented, those would be visible to address, leading possibly to getting the numbers right, and the process for accumulating the numbers right, for all time. Sorry, that sounds as though it might threaten downsizing the support staff - but there are so many other problems that require focused effort, that there is surely no immediate danger of staff cuts due to this implementation.
My next step is to see if some Team Founders and/or leaders from other teams will join Tigers in pushing this suggestion (unless I find a better suggestion from them, or other reader's comments).
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Would YOU Like To Write An Article?
If you have an item of interest for the team, or just want to vent - YOU can post an article on this blog - which has the advantage of allowing longer pieces than chat or the team page - and express your point. So state in the comments to this item, together with your IWON player name, and I will get it posted.
There are, of course, limits: nothing obscene, please; no demeaning characterizations, nothing derogatory about teammates or competition. Be brief, be clear, be clean - and I will post it.
There are, of course, limits: nothing obscene, please; no demeaning characterizations, nothing derogatory about teammates or competition. Be brief, be clear, be clean - and I will post it.
IWON Help Requests
You are playing on IWON, & you think something is wrong: the game is somehow cheating you, or your coins are not being registered, or you do something HUGE, and the team totals or your MVP score, don't budge, even after a refresh and a wait past the 15-minute cycle for some updates. OK, time to complain!
Near the bottom of all IWON pages, in the small print of that bottom bar, is the title "Help".Click that, & you are off on a Marco Polo journey into the enchanted lands of "Who can fix this problem?"
Note with dread the bleached skeletons of past travellers as you approach the outskirts of this strange kingdom, littering your passage through the traps & toils of "Top 5 Questions", "How To Play", and the enticing "Technical:". You will not fall prey to such obvious time-wasters, for you have a complaint, and you are seeking someone to fix the problem.
Travel instead to the very bottom of the page, locate "Contact Customer Support for Assistance", and click that.
A new vista confronts you, the enchanted city at the heart of this mystical land. First, you must provide some details: your email, a topic (my usual is "Technical", for most of my complaints are not about simple glitches such as the game froze, how do I get the coins I had won, once I x that game out, and restart?). You may choose any that seem more similar to the precise complaint you wish to file; if in doubt, "Technical" is probably the best overall choice. Next, the title of the IWON game, if the complaint is specific to only one game - most of mine are not. Your IWON username=playername, so type that in. Security Software: if your issue is connections, or inability to load any games, this might fit: otherwise, choose from the list, but ignore the choice once made. (Note that Spybot DOES NOT LIKE IWON, and should that be your security software, or even running on your system, you may have serious problems with the site.) Select your Operating System from the drop-down menu, mostly some version of Windows. Finally - you arrive at the castle at the center of this city: "Question:". Yes, we know you came here to complain, but, be nice: this IS the royal court & there must be a question that presents your complaint as reasonable, and which with some details describing exactly what is happening, and a date/time or dates/times, will allow the IWON personnel to locate the incident or incidents in their computer logs.
Provide the information first, then refer to supporting documents, screen-shots, or whatever you have that will substantiate your interpretation of what IWON has done to you. The more detail, and the more supporting evidence you present to the court, the greater the chance that the King will agree to hear your complaint. Copy the text of your complaint to notepad. No special need at this time to save that document, which is as yet incomplete; however, it is sometimes a wise thing to save, just in case your machine freezes. When you have finished copying the text of the submission, click "Continue" at the bottom of the box into which you posted your complaint - errr - "question". (One never complains in the presence of royalty.)
That is but the first step to submission, however.If your "question" is long, which mine always are, and involves a lot of fact-gathering to provide the sense of security of knowing that everything in the "question" can be backed by documentation, or is explicitly stated to be an approximation, you may find yourself confronted now by the challenge from the court guards - "submission failed due to timeout" was, I think, the most recent phrasing of the insistence by IWON that this process cannot allow you to reach the King's ear. What that means, is to use the back button to the page containing all that text over which you labored so long as to earn the "timeout". Then you must refresh that page. Now you discover that the text is vanished, and you are back to a blank starter page. This is why we saved the text before submission, though, so a few seconds to re-answer that collection of the inane that IWON passes off as pertinent data, and copy back the text from Notepad to the blanked box, and you are ready once again to "Continue".
The next page will offer some alluring distractions in the apparent hope that even the intrepid supplicant will leave the court without ever actually pleading a case - those mechanically chosen links to things that might resemble your "question". Ignore those links for now. Were you to pursue them, you might either get lost, and never complete the submission, or, finally finding your way back, find that you have once more earned a "timeout". So then you would need to back up all the way past the text box, refresh, and start over. At the bottom of that list of links, click the button "Finish Submitting Issue". NOW you have submitted your "question"!
Copy the "reference number" from the screen to the Notepad copy of the question text, NOW save everything, and begin to wait for the King's messenger.
In a day or so, you will receive an auto-reply message from IWON at the email you provided, which is not intended to be an answer, but only an acknowledgement of the "question" you have filed. If you did not copy the text you submitted prior to submitting it, or did not get the number assigned by IWON, those will be included in the acknowledgement. I save those, in a separate email folder, for easy reference & access. In a while (10 days to three weeks) there will be another email - this one is the attempted answer. It may not be what you wanted, and sometimes will appear totally irrelevant to the "question" - but now you have the means to reassert your question.
Repeat the process above - DO NOT reply to their email to you, for those replies appear to be ignored. Copy in relevant information from the original "question", add refutation or rebuttal to the answer provided. BE SURE to cite the reference number of the original "question" as the header to this "question". I will not guarantee that a linkage will be established, but the very mention of that earlier submission will help them to see that you are not going to accept any nonsense without protest.
You will be assigned a new number for the new submission, so you will repeat the entire auto-response, later response, decision, and possibly even a third submission before you ever get a response that answers the question, or at least states clearly that your self-interest does not permit you to understand the answer already provided, and you are therefore beyond all help. You may then decide whether you wish to pursue the matter further.
Near the bottom of all IWON pages, in the small print of that bottom bar, is the title "Help".Click that, & you are off on a Marco Polo journey into the enchanted lands of "Who can fix this problem?"
Note with dread the bleached skeletons of past travellers as you approach the outskirts of this strange kingdom, littering your passage through the traps & toils of "Top 5 Questions", "How To Play", and the enticing "Technical:". You will not fall prey to such obvious time-wasters, for you have a complaint, and you are seeking someone to fix the problem.
Travel instead to the very bottom of the page, locate "Contact Customer Support for Assistance", and click that.
A new vista confronts you, the enchanted city at the heart of this mystical land. First, you must provide some details: your email, a topic (my usual is "Technical", for most of my complaints are not about simple glitches such as the game froze, how do I get the coins I had won, once I x that game out, and restart?). You may choose any that seem more similar to the precise complaint you wish to file; if in doubt, "Technical" is probably the best overall choice. Next, the title of the IWON game, if the complaint is specific to only one game - most of mine are not. Your IWON username=playername, so type that in. Security Software: if your issue is connections, or inability to load any games, this might fit: otherwise, choose from the list, but ignore the choice once made. (Note that Spybot DOES NOT LIKE IWON, and should that be your security software, or even running on your system, you may have serious problems with the site.) Select your Operating System from the drop-down menu, mostly some version of Windows. Finally - you arrive at the castle at the center of this city: "Question:". Yes, we know you came here to complain, but, be nice: this IS the royal court & there must be a question that presents your complaint as reasonable, and which with some details describing exactly what is happening, and a date/time or dates/times, will allow the IWON personnel to locate the incident or incidents in their computer logs.
Provide the information first, then refer to supporting documents, screen-shots, or whatever you have that will substantiate your interpretation of what IWON has done to you. The more detail, and the more supporting evidence you present to the court, the greater the chance that the King will agree to hear your complaint. Copy the text of your complaint to notepad. No special need at this time to save that document, which is as yet incomplete; however, it is sometimes a wise thing to save, just in case your machine freezes. When you have finished copying the text of the submission, click "Continue" at the bottom of the box into which you posted your complaint - errr - "question". (One never complains in the presence of royalty.)
That is but the first step to submission, however.If your "question" is long, which mine always are, and involves a lot of fact-gathering to provide the sense of security of knowing that everything in the "question" can be backed by documentation, or is explicitly stated to be an approximation, you may find yourself confronted now by the challenge from the court guards - "submission failed due to timeout" was, I think, the most recent phrasing of the insistence by IWON that this process cannot allow you to reach the King's ear. What that means, is to use the back button to the page containing all that text over which you labored so long as to earn the "timeout". Then you must refresh that page. Now you discover that the text is vanished, and you are back to a blank starter page. This is why we saved the text before submission, though, so a few seconds to re-answer that collection of the inane that IWON passes off as pertinent data, and copy back the text from Notepad to the blanked box, and you are ready once again to "Continue".
The next page will offer some alluring distractions in the apparent hope that even the intrepid supplicant will leave the court without ever actually pleading a case - those mechanically chosen links to things that might resemble your "question". Ignore those links for now. Were you to pursue them, you might either get lost, and never complete the submission, or, finally finding your way back, find that you have once more earned a "timeout". So then you would need to back up all the way past the text box, refresh, and start over. At the bottom of that list of links, click the button "Finish Submitting Issue". NOW you have submitted your "question"!
Copy the "reference number" from the screen to the Notepad copy of the question text, NOW save everything, and begin to wait for the King's messenger.
In a day or so, you will receive an auto-reply message from IWON at the email you provided, which is not intended to be an answer, but only an acknowledgement of the "question" you have filed. If you did not copy the text you submitted prior to submitting it, or did not get the number assigned by IWON, those will be included in the acknowledgement. I save those, in a separate email folder, for easy reference & access. In a while (10 days to three weeks) there will be another email - this one is the attempted answer. It may not be what you wanted, and sometimes will appear totally irrelevant to the "question" - but now you have the means to reassert your question.
Repeat the process above - DO NOT reply to their email to you, for those replies appear to be ignored. Copy in relevant information from the original "question", add refutation or rebuttal to the answer provided. BE SURE to cite the reference number of the original "question" as the header to this "question". I will not guarantee that a linkage will be established, but the very mention of that earlier submission will help them to see that you are not going to accept any nonsense without protest.
You will be assigned a new number for the new submission, so you will repeat the entire auto-response, later response, decision, and possibly even a third submission before you ever get a response that answers the question, or at least states clearly that your self-interest does not permit you to understand the answer already provided, and you are therefore beyond all help. You may then decide whether you wish to pursue the matter further.
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