Cuusoo User's Guide: Part 4, Comments, Reporting, & Feedback

Welcome to the Unofficial Cuusoo User's Guide.

This is a Part 4 of a short series of articles about Cuusoo for beginners through super users.  It is derived from the presentation I gave at Brick Fiesta earlier this year.

Part 1: What is Cuusoo?
Part 2: Finding Projects
Part 3: Supporting a Project
Part 4: Comments, Reporting, & Feedback
Part 5: Monitoring Activity and the My Page
Part 6: Creating Projects and Verboten Subjects
Part 7: Creating "Successful" Projects (coming soon)

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Comments

Cuusoo has no forum.  None at all.  It does allow you to post little crumb trails, like your twitter account, for  people to contact you, off site, but the only communication that Cuusoo facilitates directly is the "Comment" section on a project.

The Rules

Unlike most websites, Cuusoo is an adult occupied but enforced family friendly environment.  This can be quite surprising to many people who are used to saying things very bluntly on the internet.

Here are the House Rules for conduct on Cuusoo (repeated here without permission) :

1. Be respectful. Keep your remarks constructive and respectful. Don't be offensive, creepy, abusive, humiliating or intimidating and don't attack, harass, or impersonate others.
2. Stay on-topic. Comments for a specific project are intended for that project only. Do not post links to your own project on someone else's project. Off-topic remarks or unintelligible comments (made in ALL CAPS, txtspeak, chatspeak, and the like) will be considered spam and removed by moderators. All content not related to LEGO products will be removed.
3. Don't advertise, preach, or campaign. LEGO CUUSOO is not a venue for preaching or disseminating your political or religious views. It is also not a venue to advertise any business, non-profit, or charitable cause. Comments or projects that intended to advertise, campaign, or promote a political/religious viewpoint as well as content intended to put down a political/religious belief held by another person or group of people will be removed.
4. Keep it clean. LEGO CUUSOO is to be a good, clean environment. Don't create projects or make comments containing hate speech or related to alcohol, drugs, tobacco, politics, sex; or any kind of content containing realistic or extreme violence, or content intended to shock or disgust.
5. We will step in if we must. We reserve the right to remove any projects or comments that violate the guidelines. Repeated violations will result in suspension or ban from LEGO CUUSOO.

Here is a great example of a comment that is not allowed on Cuusoo:

These rules are strictly enforced with the exception of  #2 which is mildly enforced, unless intervention is requested.  It is inevitable that where there is communication, there is a wandering topic.  It is also inevitable that where there are people, there are advertisements.  This is mostly self regulated though.  Most people will chat briefly off topic and then stop on their own, recognizing their impropriety.  There is also the occasional request to "check out my project" but they are infrequent enough to not be a hindrance.

If someone feels that a violation of the house rules has occurred, they can click on "Report" in the upper right hand corner of the comment.  They also have the option to Un-report anything they have reported.  Reported comments are checked by Staff (during business hours) and addressed as they see fit.  Punishment varies from a "parental" rebuke  to "calm down" to expulsion from Cuusoo.

Deleting a Comment

If you are the writer of a comment, you can delete it.  Any comment that is a descendent of that comment is also deleted by this action.

Like/Nah

You can anonymously show your approval of a comment.  Just click on your opinion: Like or Nah,  in the lower right hand corner of a comment.  This will tally all opinions of that variety.  You can give an opinion on your own comment.  Once you have selected a Like or a Nah, you can switch between the two, but you cannot "unchoose" both.  

Special note on Comment "Conversations"

Most people are used to systems where people receive emails or some alternate form of direct notification when comments are posted to them.  This is not the case in Cuusoo.  People will only notice your comment if they come back to the project and see your comment, or if they notice it in their activity feed (more on that later).  If someone does not respond to your comment it could just be that they did not realize it had occurred. Please give people the benefit of the doubt and don't get angry at them for "not bothering to respond."  

Reporting

Reporting is how Cuusoo users notify the Cuusoo staff that something foul is afoot.  The most common form of reporting is the comment report (discussed above).  The other Report is located on the right side of the screen and is titled "Report this Project".

When you click on that button you get the following options

This project appears to be:

Plagiarism or use of someone else's original work.
Spam or off-topic.
Contains hate speech or attacks an individual.
Violence, crime, or self-harm.
Nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content.

As all projects are now vetted by Cuusoo staff prior to being uploaded, the only commonly occurring reportable offense is Plagiarism.  The staff do make mistakes however and they are not omniscient.  Sometimes a Staff member will lack familiarity with a subject matter and mistakingly allow inappropriate IP on the site.  Other times someone will change their project to be in violation after it has passed it's initial review. 

Plagiarism remains the number one reported violation.  Lego Plagiarism occurs when someone posts images of Lego creations created by anyone else.  In most cases this occurs because someone has seen a Lego build or custom figure on the internet and they use that image in their own project.

Any project using a plagiarized image will be taken down within one business day.  Here is the logic behind this:  Regulars on Cuusoo have FUN scouring the internet for cool Lego stuff.  If you happened to see it on the internet, it is very likely that many other people have too.

Feedback (the Cuusoo for Cuusoo)

If you have ever been in Cuusoo you have probably noticed the Feedback tag.  It always hangs about 1.5 - 2 inches from the top right of the screen.

If you click on this it takes you to the Cuusoo Feedback system.  Here you can post feedback to Cuusoo directly on how you think they are doing or provide ideas for improving the site.  It will require you to create a new account though as this system is "powered" by a third party. 

You can even support the ideas that others have posted (just like Cuusoo projects)!

You can get to a list of current idea by following this link or by clicking on "See and Rate more ideas" on the Feedback window that shows up when you click on feedback. 

Note, you will get emails when people comment on ideas you post in the feedback system or ideas you commented on.  This is one of the very rare occurrences in which Cuusoo will send you email.

What Feedback is NOT for

The feedback system, though evidence to the contrary, is NOT for posting suggestions for Cuusoo projects. 
If you have an idea for a project, make the project.