Comments on The Official Netflix Blog: Missing Faves?

How do remove Recently Watched instant movie queu...

2008-09-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

How do remove Recently Watched instant movie queue history

And btw, I have no reviews or lists.

2007-10-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

And btw, I have no reviews or lists.

Michael, in case I posted in the wrong thread earl...

2007-10-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

Michael, in case I posted in the wrong thread earlier, just thought you should know that I seem to have the opposite issue to missing faves (flattered as I am) : namely, a sudden fan, despite having been 'private' for 2 weeks. I have a few 'faves', but this wasn't one of them, so there's obviously no transparency on the friends/faves/fans page, the most logical place. So where else might we introverts be visible, do you think? Thanks.

Hey, Talltale : Still no friends or faves? With al...

2007-10-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

Hey, Talltale : Still no friends or faves? With all that great wisdom of yours, surely you know that being loved is totally meaningless unless you can love back at least a tiny bit?

Is there any chance we would be able to search for...

2007-10-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

Is there any chance we would be able to search for faves based on similar to you, reviewer rank, city/state, or anything relatively specific?

My fingers are getting tired clicking through everyone else's favorites to find people that are more than 80% similar to me.

The little "Members With Similar Tastes To You" box doesn't give me the info quick enough. A member search would be nice.

Thanks ...

Mom?

2007-10-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

Mom?

I've only recently visited the Fans & Faves featur...

2007-10-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've only recently visited the Fans & Faves feature, and I'm enjoying it very much. Viewing others' 5-star ratings, both those who rate like me and those who don't, gives me another source of finding films to watch. I hope you'll continue it as long as others find it useful too. Many thanks for adding new features from time to time. In my opinion Netflix is the best movie service available to a very diverse audience of viewers.

You have a website dedicated to the building of a ...

2007-09-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

You have a website dedicated to the building of a website? Hmm.

Visit SecureNetworkOnline.comTrack EVERY SINGLE TH...

2007-09-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

Visit SecureNetworkOnline.com
Track EVERY SINGLE THING that goes on around your computer.

Great for Monitoring Children

Hi Michael,I'll have to disagree with your asserti...

2007-09-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

Hi Michael,
I'll have to disagree with your assertion that data isn't ever lost. It seems that data has been lost, at least in my case. A few months ago I put my Netflix account on hold. Periodically, I would log in and add some movies to my queue. One day I noticed that every movie I added before putting my account on hold was missing. The only ones in the queue had been added after I put the account on hold. That's about 250 movies that were deleted from the queue. Over the 2 years I've had my Netflix account, I spent countless hours browsing and reading reviews for those movies for myself and my daughter to watch. I was pretty happy with the list.
I have a Blockbuster and Hollywood Video both within walking distance of my house. I wouldn't use Netflix if it were not for the queue. The fact that I had so many movies in my queue was the reason I didn't even bother with a trial membership for Blockbuster's mail-order service, so when I saw all of those movies missing, I panicked. I sent an email to customer support. After a couple emails back n forth to explain the issue, I was finally told not to worry, that it would be fixed. I gave it some time, and when it was still not fixed, I sent another email. Again, I was told not to worry, that the movies would be restored to the top of my queue when I removed the account hold. Well, I removed my account from hold, but the movies were not restored. I sent an email to customer service, including the previous correspondence, only to find out out there is no more support over email.
So I called customer service, and explained the situation. They told me I was mistaken. I read back to them the previous messages from support saying the movies would be restored to my queue. After being put on hold twice, the nice lady told me there was nothing that could be done. I found this surprising. I'm a PC/network support tech. My department in my company keeps a backup of everything on our servers. Everything in our databases, all files, even temporary data that gets "deleted" is still retrievable. And nothing is saved on just one server, and most things get backed up offsite on a daily basis.
So did Netflix really manage to lose the data, or is no one willing to make the effort to resolve the problem?
Thanks,
Randall

Would that all of us could so confidently distingu...

2007-09-23T02:04:00.000-07:00

Would that all of us could so confidently distinguish between the real and the hypothetical ones!

Maximum security?! Wow…My hypothetical friends jus...

2007-09-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

Maximum security?! Wow…

My hypothetical friends just keep getting more and more interesting… The real ones are going to start developing a complex. ;)

Thanks for the great reply, Becky, which included ...

2007-09-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the great reply, Becky, which included a response to my last question : "....Or are y'all just ignoring the new community features?". The answer, for you at least, is clearly "no", even though you continue to insist on protecting all those friends of yours that just busted out of Maximum Security..... ;-]

Clover,I understood what you meant anyway. I’d hat...

2007-09-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Clover,

I understood what you meant anyway. I’d hate putting a damper on someone’s Saturday too, especially if I hadn’t intended to.

It’s just way too easy to missread a comment… I know I’ve done it myself on several occasions.

Anon 9:03,

Sorry, I just don’t know if I can help but I’ll give it a try. ‘Faves’ are actually a steep down from ‘friends,’ so I wouldn’t drop them unless you don’t trust them to have that access to your queue and ratings, etc. (And once you did drop them how would you find them again in order to ‘fave’ them? I don’t know.) And friends just automatically show up to each other on the ‘friends and faves’ page unless they are ‘private.’ (I don’t see myself looking at my friends pages.) Also, the public facing page won’t list anyone as a friend specifically, it mixes them up with faves. That’s the way it seems to work anyway… So far I haven’t had any trouble finding the button when I wanted to. It’s always shown up on that purple slidie-bar to the far right whenever I look at their ratings or list and such. For your ‘friends’ the button says ‘remove friend.’ For your ‘faves’ it says ‘remove fave.’ If you actually did remove them, it would become an ‘add’ button instead, I’m pretty sure. That’s all I got…

Thinking of your dilemma though, it made me wonder how you would find someone who wasn’t a ‘friend’ or connected to a ‘fave’ or ‘fan.’ I mean, say someone gave me their username, a casual acquaintance or online buddy, someone who I didn’t necessarily want to add as a ‘friend.’ If I wanted to search for them in order to ‘fave’ them, could I? Is that something that could conceivably be in the works somewhere down the road? The only method of finding people other than randomly that I know of, would be if they post a link somewhere as Baff and Anglemonkey did.

Curious,

I can only speak for myself, and I’m still somewhat excluded from the new ‘friends and faves.’ Since I’m still set to ‘private’ and am not likely to change that unless I can set my friends as ‘private’ at some point, or my friends decided to drop me as their ‘friend’ or something. Otherwise, I won’t be able to fully participate in ‘friends and faves.’

Still, invisibly winding the web of fans, faves and friends has potential. Even though I do feel like something of a phantom... Right now I’m only using it to help me find all the movies I’ve seen and not rated. (sometimes you just don’t remember until you see it in someone else’s list) But skipping from Baff, to AngleMonkey, to whomever else has a high sim to me, is turning out to be much more productive than the old way. In the past week I’ve found and rated over a thousand new movies, real ratings. That doesn’t include ‘not interested.’ Using the old method it was the reverse, ‘not interested’ outnumbered actual movies I could rate, to say nothing of the countless ‘no opinion.’ And the five star rating pages load so much faster. And it’s just fun seeing how otherwise common interests can suddenly diverge drastically.

I wonder if people realize how much you can infer, (Accurately or not who knows?) from even just their five-star ratings. It’s like people watching at a big-city crossroads. People can’t help but be interesting to other people.

I think when the real serious movie buffs (I consider myself a casual buff.) discover it as a way to bookmark other people with interesting things to share too, winding through this vast web of movie people will be even more rewarding. I think it will encourage the truly invested to give even more time and thought to creating better and more interesting reviews and lists. I’m really looking forward to that top-list so I can find even more people like Talltale. I don’t live in a big city, or even a collage town anymore, so there is a lot of interesting stuff that I just will never hear of otherwise. Given enough time for people to notice and take advantage of it, ‘friends and faves’ could be an incredibly valuable tool. I think right now, or up ‘till now, all those productive people were largely an untapped resource. I hope some day I’ll be able to fully participate and share in that way too.

I’m not sure what your last question meant though… ‘Who ignoring who?

Becky

Apologies, Clover. Misread your tone. You started ...

2007-09-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Apologies, Clover. Misread your tone. You started out rather fierce, and I just thought Michael should be allowed to have his "why do I bother?" moment, just like the rest of us.

Re : "Hopefully you are good at shaking that kind ...

2007-09-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

Re : "Hopefully you are good at shaking that kind of stuff off".

Jiminy Cricket, you don't think he's shown that he is??

You know, all I was trying to do with my comment (first line of the quote) was wish the guy well. I have no idea of what goes through his head when he walks away from his computer screen. From the tone of Michael's post it seemed that he was pretty ticked off. Pardon me for hoping the mood expressed wouldn't bleed over into the rest of his day.

You can't be both a Fave and a Friend. Thats ok t...

2007-09-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

You can't be both a Fave and a Friend. Thats ok though, because Friend is more than Fave. As a Friend, you have access to everything (and more) than you would as a Fave/Fan.

that if you click 'remove friend' it turns into 's...

2007-09-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

that if you click 'remove friend' it turns into 'save to faves'. Maybe give that a shot.

How do you add a current "friend" to your "faves"?...

2007-09-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

How do you add a current "friend" to your "faves"? I've clicked on my friend's reviews, my friends profile, etc. and there is absolutely nothing to click on that says "add to faves" or anything remotely like it.

My friend has added me to his faves. I haven't done any reviews. Why can't I add him to mine?

how? help?! thx.

Becky, since this thread has gone so totally off t...

2007-09-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

Becky, since this thread has gone so totally off the rails anyway, and you were so vocal about the whole privacy thing (among many other things ;-) might I be forgiven for digressing even further in asking how you and your 'don't-even-talk-to- me-about-it!' friends are finding the new features so far? Or are y'all just ignoring them?

On diplomacy: I don’t remember seeing, of those po...

2007-09-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

On diplomacy:

I don’t remember seeing, of those posting regularly here, that there is even one Mr. Rogers among us. He’s the only man I can recall ever knowing of who had a reputation of remaining unfailingly civil, generous, and gracious in both public and private life. (Except maybe Tenzin Gyatso.) Maybe he could have participated in a blog without losing his temper, or indulging in an ill-considered or poorly executed comment, reply, or joke. But you know… I’m not sure that even he could have succeeded.

Though it’s apparent that most of us have tried to remain civil at least most of the time, I also can’t recall one person though who hasn’t failed the diplomacy test at least once.

It is so easy to respond to rudeness (genuine or perceived) with still more rudeness.

Personally, I didn’t take Baff’s misquote seriously because it really seemed to be a joke to me. First, Baff hasn’t made a habit of getting ugly so I had no reason to think he intended it that way. Second, because it fit so well with a common and long running joke among the programmers I’ve known… Usually also to busy to immediately address every little glitch in the works… or more commonly, every user request/demand for ‘improvements,’ reasonable or not… I’ve known so many of them to respond ironically to a user’s complaint about something that ‘doesn’t work’ with “It isn’t a ‘bug,’ it’s a ‘feature.’” The joke Baff seemed to be making just seemed to be a continuance or acknowledgment of that. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would take it seriously or see it in a different light. That’s truly regrettable… but also a common mistake.

Anonymous 1:27, and Jaymikey, and others, including myself, at one time or other, could have been more diplomatic perhaps, but I think it would be a mistake to too quickly disregard either their points or their frustration.

It’s difficult to express what I’m trying to say, but I think it is just as important that we each give others the benefit of the doubt as much as we are able, as it is to be civil, generous, and gracious ourselves. And even when we are positive in our own minds that lines have been crossed, that doesn’t mean we still aren’t in full control over how we take it or how we react to it. We always have that choice and responsibility, yet we are each of us only human… and bound to misstep occasionally one way or the other.

In general, I think most of us are trying our best though.

This whole situation reminds me of the joke about how to keep a relationship going for the long haul…

‘We're each allowed to go nuts, just not at the same time.’

Baring even that… at least there’s the hopeful evidence that a little coffee, distance, time… can still lead to better understanding.

Becky

PS:

Michael,

Thanks for explaining about ‘Bob.’ I think these little glimpses of things from the development perspective really help us be more constructive and realistic, because otherwise we are most of us operating completely in the dark and by guesswork. I think we want to help, but just don’t really know in most cases what actually will. And you don’t need to work weekends on my account… I love the ‘sweeties’ as much as anyone, but I’m perfectly capable of waiting… after all anticipation usually makes the reward that much more satisfying.

Fascinating what can happen when I don't check in ...

2007-09-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Fascinating what can happen when I don't check in for 12 hours. I don't have a whole lot to add here. I think a lot has been said already. I usually don't step into conversations unless I feel pretty strongly about the topic. When people started talking about the Loved/Hated section, I started skimming over comments because I knew it was of minor importance to me and clearly wasn't in its final form yet anyway, so why bother dicussing it now.

Maybe it's because I'm in software development myself, but I can usually tell when a feature is clearly half-baked and figure it will get better eventually... especially when so many other features are quickly rolling out the door. And I did also faintly recall you saying something about that feature, like many of the other new features, not really being "done" yet anyway.

Re : "Hopefully you are good at shaking that kind ...

2007-09-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Re : "Hopefully you are good at shaking that kind of stuff off".

Jiminy Cricket, you don't think he's shown that he is?? I'd have either resigned or thrown myself off a bridge after working my tail off and getting a faceful of the occasional vitriol I've read in some of the previous threads (this one seemed pretty tame, by comparison). No, clearly all the man needed was a large cup of coffee.

Earlier:"For some reason you really drag your feet...

2007-09-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

Earlier:
"For some reason you really drag your feet at choice/different views (e.g. the whole bare understanding of those with privacy concerns, and the apparently begrudging concession)"

Jaymikey:
Rude, untrue and completely without merit.

Well, it's all a matter of interpretation, isn't it? Even your take on my comments, Jaymikey. I read the whole discussion about privacy, and Michael's position came across to me as: "yeah, I'll do it, but only because after many, many posts about it, I was finally convinced there was a little bit of merit." It sounded like begrudging concession - and that was my interpretation.

(Note: the quotation marks do NOT imply quotes from Michael's post.)

I did not say that he does not work hard, or that he isn't trying to improve the site, or that I don't understand that upgrades take time. I don't like the way it has all been done, and I said so.

If I came across as inflammatory - it was merely frustration at what I see as the loss of a great feature by overdoing the "improvements." I also conceded that many probably do like the new setup, and I asked to have choice in the matter. I accept that that won't happen.

Crap - I wandered away from my computer, drank som...

2007-09-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Crap - I wandered away from my computer, drank some coffee, go the mail (pretty red envelopes! yay!) and then posted without refreshing to see if there was anything new.

So Michael, I see you don't think that we are all just a whiny bunch of brats after all. At least not all the time ;-)

Enjoy your weekend, and hey, don't spend all of it here, huh?