Replace Business Account System for XF2

[Justis]

When we upgrade to XF2, I’d prefer if we completely dropped the very clunky, unintuitive and policy confusing business account system in favor of something more streamline and inherently compliant with our multi-account and account sharing policies.

To this end, I’d prefer a content sharing system where the content owner can give other users access to a specific set of permissions over specific content on their account. With resources, they might give a collaborating user the ability to post updates, delete updates, reply to reviews, edit the description, maybe not the payment PayPal address, but allow them the ability to share access with more users, with a more restrictive set of permissions.

I would like to take the opportunity, if we do this, to add more alert and email notification capabilities for shared content. It would also resolve the problems we have with users misunderstanding "business accounts" to mean any account which they decide to share with someone else. It would resolve the problem with content posters hiding behind the identity of a business account when posting their content in order to escape community responsibility or the reputation they have on their personal account. It would resolve the issue with users having conversations in shoutbox on their business accounts. It would resolve the issues with suspension evading, or bans from specific areas of our website. It would resolve the problem of users constantly needing new/more accounts as they continually create more projects, as well as being stuck with business accounts representing projects which are no longer active. It would also allow content owners to share access to content with other people without having to re-purchase supreme/premium, and or maintain additional ultimate subscriptions as people are currently forced to do for their business accounts if they would like to keep their status from falling to that of an unupgraded user.

Going this route would mean that users who have already purchased permanent upgrades would need to either have their upgrades moved to their personal account or be presented something else of equal value. When we made Supreme inherit Premium, those who had already purchased both were given an Iron donation medal to make up for the difference and everyone seemed satisfied with that. Perhaps we could do something similar.

Note that this thread is merely the suggestion of an idea. It is not representative of a current plan or management’s intent. Feedback is the goal here, so please offer up yours.

Stay healthy.

 

[Geek]

While I'm here 100% for it, I feel that lots of suggestions have been denied because of the amount of custom development it would take. With the current amount of development that needs completed (see here), is this suggestion feasible? At the moment, I'm assuming that a add-on doesn't already exist that would solve this.

 

[Justis]

While I'm here 100% for it, I feel that lots of suggestions have been denied because of the amount of custom development it would take. With the current amount of development that needs completed (see here), is this suggestion feasible? At the moment, I'm assuming that a add-on doesn't already exist that would solve this.

There are actually two addons that accomplish something very similar to what we would be wanting: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/collaborative-resources.6755/
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/collaborative-threads.6600/

It’s possible that we could use these and then supplement them with custom development in areas where they lack, rather than doing the whole thing from scratch.

 

[Geek]

There are actually two addons that accomplish something very similar to what we would be wanting: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/collaborative-resources.6755/
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/collaborative-threads.6600/

It’s possible that we could use these and then supplement them with custom development in areas that they lack, rather than doing the whole thing from scratch.

Ah! Thank you for looking and supplying these. I'm 110% in agreement now that the custom development is, potentially, minimized.

 

[Dessi]

My issue with it is that I like to separate BUSINESS from PERSONAL. So in terms of this, I think that having everyone go onto the company owners' account to do business would destroy the idea of a personal account and thus giving the owner no more privacy and that they must always have the company in mind rather than just their personal beliefs.

 

[ShowUp]

When we upgrade to XF2, I’d prefer if we completely dropped the very clunky, unintuitive and policy confusing business account system in favor of something more streamline and inherently compliant with our multi-account and account sharing policies.

To this end, I’d prefer a content sharing system where the content owner can give other users access to a specific set of permissions over specific content on their account. With resources, they might give a collaborating user the ability to post updates, delete updates, reply to reviews, edit the description, maybe not the payment PayPal address, but allow them the ability to share access with more users, with a more restrictive set of permissions.

I would like to take the opportunity, if we do this, to add more alert and email notification capabilities for shared content. It would also resolve the problems we have with users misunderstanding "business accounts" to mean any account which they decide to share with someone else. It would resolve the problem with content posters hiding behind the identity of a business account when posting their content in order to escape community responsibility or the reputation they have on their personal account. It would resolve the issue with users having conversations in shoutbox on their business accounts. It would resolve the issues with suspension evading, or bans from specific areas of our website. It would resolve the problem of users constantly needing new/more accounts as they continually create more projects, as well as being stuck with business accounts representing projects which are no longer active. It would also allow content owners to share access to content with other people without having to re-purchase supreme/premium, and or maintain additional ultimate subscriptions as people are currently forced to do for their business accounts if they would like to keep their status from falling to that of an unupgraded user.

Going this route would mean that users who have already purchased permanent upgrades would need to either have their upgrades moved to their personal account or be presented something else of equal value. When we made Supreme inherit Premium, those who had already purchased both were given an Iron donation medal to make up for the difference and everyone seemed satisfied with that. Perhaps we could do something similar.

Note that this thread is merely the suggestion of an idea. It is not representative of a current plan or management’s intent. Feedback is the goal here, so please offer up yours.

Stay healthy.

I've spent around $70 on account upgrades and several hundred more dollars on ads on my businees account, what happens to that?

Also, I completely agree with what Dessi said, the point of business accounts is to seperate a business from your personal account, posting company stuff on your personal account can be negative in a lot of ways, mainly shared reputation (a lot of business account rep doesn't directly come because of something you did), and it just looking more unprofessional.

 

[Justis]

My issue with it is that I like to separate BUSINESS from PERSONAL. So in terms of this, I think that having everyone go onto the company owners' account to do business would destroy the idea of a personal account and thus giving the owner no more privacy and that they must always have the company in mind rather than just their personal beliefs.

I’m not sure if you were being literal in your meaning, but just in case, I want to clarify that you are NOT allowing other users into your account with the suggested changes. Everyone would be able to share specific management permissions over specific content with other users. Giving a user access to edit the description of a resource you collaborated on doesn’t give them any additional access to any of the other content on your account.

This website is a marketplace, so it’s impossible to completely separate yourself from the fact that everything is business oriented. Even the feedback on your profile is determined to be relevant and rule abiding based on how applicable it would be to other users wanting to buy from or hire you. I understand your intent, but perhaps this is the wrong platform for it? You can compare MCM to LinkedIn in that regard. In fact, the attempt to act under multiple separate identities can be and has been a source of many problems for a marketplace like ours where it’s important for the community to be able to hold a person responsible for something they’ve done.

I've spent around $70 on account upgrades and several hundred more dollars on ads on my businees account, what happens to that?

Also, I completely agree with what Dessi said, the point of business accounts is to seperate a business from your personal account, posting company stuff on your personal account can be negative in a lot of ways, mainly shared reputation (a lot of business account rep doesn't directly come because of something you did), and it just looking more unprofessional.

Ads are always linked to specific conttent. The content can easily be transferred over to your personal account without disturbing the advertisement’s duration at all. No need to worry about that.
As for the upgrades, I can definitely see that being a valid concern, which is why I mentioned it in my original post. While we don’t want past upgrades to hold us back from improving our website in the future, we also want to make sure that if we do make changes, the people whose previous purchases will be impacted receive satisfactory compensation. Since you are the one that is bothered by it (justifiably so) what form of compensation would satisfy you if your business account was merged with your personal account? You tell us, and we’ll see about making it an option.
For consideration: We could always transfer upgrades that are present on the business account but not on your personal account over to your personal, and then provide donation medals worth the sum of whatever is already present. If this isn’t acceptable, then how do you feel about advertisement credit worth the sum of the upgrades?

Regarding feedback, the problems you mentioned are actually some of the problems with allowing business accounts to receive feedback. We already prevent them from giving feedback, due to potential duplication and the fact that a business cannot have an opinion. It’s the people behind it that have an opinion.
You pointed out that credit for an action often gets attributed to the business, and you’re worried that the owner of the content will receive the positive/negative feedback rather than the actual person responsible for those actions. I want to assure you that the content owner will not replace the business account as the place to leave feedback. We will not allow for feedback to be left on someone for someone else’s deeds. If the person deserving the feedback does not have a business account, then no feedback will be authored.

This is actually the resolution of a problem we currently face which relates to what I said before about identity and people hiding behind them. Where a user avoids getting negative feedback for their actions because the feedback gets authored for the business account they are a member of rather than on their own personal account. This change will also ensure that positive feedback gets distributed to the members that deserve it rather than being built up on a masking account. I mentioned it in my original post, but it will also resolve the issue of business accounts which have feedback for a past business that the account no longer represents. That feedback should no longer be relevant to the account, should it, since it has nothing to do with the current business. Business accounts were a broken system to begin with.

 

[ShowUp]

I’m not sure if you were being literal in your meaning, but just in case, I want to clarify that you are NOT allowing other users into your account with the suggested changes. Everyone would be able to share specific management permissions over specific content with other users. Giving a user access to edit the description of a resource you collaborated on doesn’t give them any additional access to any of the other content on your account.

This website is a marketplace, so it’s impossible to completely separate yourself from the fact that everything is business oriented. Even the feedback on your profile is determined to be relevant and rule abiding based on how applicable it would be to other users wanting to buy from or hire you. I understand your intent, but perhaps this is the wrong platform for it? You can compare MCM to LinkedIn in that regard. In fact, the attempt to act under multiple separate identities can be and has been a source of many problems for a marketplace like ours where it’s important for the community to be able to hold a person responsible for something they’ve done.


Ads are always linked to specific conttent. The content can easily be transferred over to your personal account without disturbing the advertisement’s duration at all. No need to worry about that.
As for the upgrades, I can definitely see that being a valid concern, which is why I mentioned it in my original post. While we don’t want past upgrades to hold us back from improving our website in the future, we also want to make sure that if we do make changes, the people whose previous purchases will be impacted receive satisfactory compensation. Since you are the one that is bothered by it (justifiably so) what form of compensation would satisfy you if your business account was merged with your personal account? You tell us, and we’ll see about making it an option.
For consideration: We could always transfer upgrades that are present on the business account but not on your personal account over to your personal, and then provide donation medals worth the sum of whatever is already present. If this isn’t acceptable, then how do you feel about advertisement credit worth the sum of the upgrades?

Regarding feedback, the problems you mentioned are actually some of the problems with allowing business accounts to receive feedback. We already prevent them from giving feedback, due to potential duplication and the fact that a business cannot have an opinion. It’s the people behind it that have an opinion.
You pointed out that credit for an action often gets attributed to the business, and you’re worried that the owner of the content will receive the positive/negative feedback rather than the actual person responsible for those actions. I want to assure you that the content owner will not replace the business account as the place to leave feedback. We will not allow for feedback to be left on someone for someone else’s deeds. If the person deserving the feedback does not have a business account, then no feedback will be authored.

This is actually the resolution of a problem we currently face which relates to what I said before about identity and people hiding behind them. Where a user avoids getting negative feedback for their actions because the feedback gets authored for the business account they are a member of rather than on their own personal account. This change will also ensure that positive feedback gets distributed to the members that deserve it rather than being built up on a masking account. I mentioned it in my original post, but it will also resolve the issue of business accounts which have feedback for a past business that the account no longer represents. That feedback should no longer be relevant to the account, should it, since it has nothing to do with the current business. Business accounts were a broken system to begin with.

The thing is, on my business account I bought a limited time name color (Ablegamers) that matches my companies color scheme, Having that transferred over would serve no good purpose as I already use a different name color for my personal account, but also the thing is branding if all type (this includes name color) on my personal account is way way different than my business account, which would make it look way more unprofessional[DOUBLEPOST=1596325640][/DOUBLEPOST]Another issue this would cause is a lot of users would change the name on their personal account to their business name, making them as a person more distant from the community just to get that bit of professionalism back

 

[Dessi]

I’m not sure if you were being literal in your meaning, but just in case, I want to clarify that you are NOT allowing other users into your account with the suggested changes. Everyone would be able to share specific management permissions over specific content with other users. Giving a user access to edit the description of a resource you collaborated on doesn’t give them any additional access to any of the other content on your account.

This website is a marketplace, so it’s impossible to completely separate yourself from the fact that everything is business oriented. Even the feedback on your profile is determined to be relevant and rule abiding based on how applicable it would be to other users wanting to buy from or hire you. I understand your intent, but perhaps this is the wrong platform for it? You can compare MCM to LinkedIn in that regard. In fact, the attempt to act under multiple separate identities can be and has been a source of many problems for a marketplace like ours where it’s important for the community to be able to hold a person responsible for something they’ve done.

Got it. I misunderstood the suggestion. I thought it would give users the ability to post directly and essentially share from your account. If that is not the case then I am for the suggestion.

 

[Paper Cars]

The thing is, on my business account I bought a limited time name color (Ablegamers) that matches my companies color scheme, Having that transferred over would serve no good purpose as I already use a different name color for my personal account, but also the thing is branding if all type (this includes name color) on my personal account is way way different than my business account, which would make it look way more unprofessional[DOUBLEPOST=1596325640][/DOUBLEPOST]Another issue this would cause is a lot of users would change the name on their personal account to their business name, making them as a person more distant from the community just to get that bit of professionalism back

I have an idea that could solve this. Might be difficult to implement, not sure.

Create a business "face".

What I mean by this:
So when a user makes a post on the forums, there is a little side panel on the left of the screen that has the users PFP, Name, Title, Banners, trophies, stats, etc. What you do is add a section to the personal details tab of the user panel, that allows you to set a business name color, username, and title, and pfp. Then add a tick on posts to make the post using business face.

Personal Details Tab:

Create A Post Options:

User Panel when not business:

User Panel with business ticked:


One could even take it a step further and add a business signature. Combine this with the post/resource share system, and I think it could work out fine.-

 

[Anish]

I'd agree, I want some sort of way to associate a brand with a name not with a person's MCM account. Manual content sucks as its still under your name making you the face of the business account.

 

[Precise]

What would happen with the current content business accounts have?

For example, I have resources uploaded on my business account that I wouldn't want on my personal account as they're representing my team, not me personally. As well as the thousands of views my threads have, that are posted under my business account, I wouldn't want these threads to be removed when/if business accounts are removed due to the fact I would lose all the views, comments, reactions, etc...

 

[BOOP]

I think it's an interesting concept, but there are many advantages to the business account system. The current system allows the separation of a brand from a user. It also makes it a lot easier to recognize content from a specific brand (which is great for people who want to see content from somewhere specific, or who want to ignore specific content). If business accounts were to go away, it'd remove the concept of associating your business with a specific account. The current system is somewhat similar to that of of a Github team, since you can find content from a specific brand/business in a centralized place. From what I understand, the suggested system wouldn't allow that (besides searching for it directly).

Perhaps there could be features available on collaborative threads/resources that would allow easier brand recognition?

 

[Mick]

You're a genius Justis.

We'll be introducing this system in our migration to XF2.

I'll move this to pending. I'd love to see more feedback about this if anyone has any.

 

[Omar]

You're a genius Justis.

We'll be introducing this system in our migration to XF2.

I'll move this to pending. I'd love to see more feedback about this if anyone has any.

You cannot actually be serious about thinking this kind of system that has been suggested is actually better then the current system? Like the current system has way more advantages then the system that has been suggested. The current system essentially allows your business or project to have a separate profile then actually being on your main account, which is better. You are essentially degrading your marketplaces quality by just making it so a business thread would be linked directly to a user which in all ways is just dumb and stupid. Not only that but a donation medal for the rank is just more stupid because I don't see a medal giving you special perks like a rank. I strongly disagree with this suggestion and I just hope you rethink.

 

[GabyTM]

In my opinion, Business Accounts should be replaced not removed. They are great for team projects or other stuff that shouldn't belong to your personal account or which can easily be managed by multiple people.

 

[Omar]

If this actually ends up happening and business accounts are removed I am gonna just quit this marketplace and forums for good. Like seriously how exact can I be in saying this DON'T DO THIS. If anything it will just ruin this forums more and some of the people that are still on here would quit too. But I am serious I will just quit using this forums/marketplace for good if this update happens.