You wrote:

It is my humble suggestion that you should eliminate the email confirmation, and just allow the voter to simply vote with their own name and email address, which only you should be able to view.

ME: Email verification has been accepted as pretty standard practice on the web. Our system is broken, but having voter's confirm that they're the people they say they are is a simple security measure that we will continue to employ. Thanks anyway for the thought.

Another suggestion re: RSS feed - maybe two sections should be assigned, one with all the feeds that netsquared.org uses - the client can just simply click on that, and it goes to all those feeds, and the second section - the client can have choices, more appropriate for the advanced and knowledgeable people in this field. This will save a lot of frustration on everyone, save time, and promote goodwill and positiveness, rather than a ?...

ME: This is a great idea that we missed when we structured things. We'll be sure to add this to our net2 learnings page (which will be up on the site sometime soon for users & team here to capture valuable and appropriate learnings. Stay tuned for a link on Britt's blog).

Other problems, that I personally am experiencing are the Editing one, the font, and the RSS Feed. The Project proposals, - when I used copy and pasting from my own Word, the font is different that yours, and I was unable to change the fonts, and was disappointed to note that your system did not automatically change the fonts to the rest of the Body. When I tried to go back to Edit, I have experienced numerous problems, and now I don't know if I can Edit at this stage. The Rss feed, I am not sure how to use this, I did follow the directions on your web, but when I tried it, again, it took me all sorts of different pages, with no instructions what to do next, it would be nice if on clicking for instance on Community RSS, it would directly be routed there, instead of going again through a process. There are too many processes, and little time to do the Actual work that we want to do.

ME: This is a drupal (The open-source Content Management System) thing that frustrates me, too. We'll be sure to articulate this to our drupal friends in the community asap.

I hope these suggestions will be taken in the spirit they are being given, because we all want to improve our communications, and be able to use the web tools in a time saving, straightforward and simple manner.
Thank you.
In the Spirit of Humanity,
Nina

ME: Nina, your feedback is TOTALLY appreciated, and will help us make n2 better in the short and long-term. As you know, w/ technology, often there is an up-front investment in learning, implementing and debugging stuff. Though this (voting problem) is a great example of this, we're committed to helping you and other social innovators around the world, learn and benefit from our mistakes. Stay tuned for N2 Learning page via Britt's blog.

-- all of us here are really grateful for your time and thoughtfulness.

Dear Gina,

Thank you for your response.  I am glad that you liked and will implement my suggestion of at least the RSS feed.  What about the Editing and the font problem, can that be fixed Gina?  Because, when I look at my project proposal, I am not pleased with the fonts, since they different in certain areas, as well as, "v" is showing up, what's that? instead of bullets?...not very clean and neat look, and that's not me Gina.  I would really like to Edit it, if I can, or if your system can update it somehow?

One more suggestion, when someone tries to vote, and the system is down, right then and there, a pop up message should come up, indicating "technical problems message, giving a time frame (approx.), try again etc", will save frustrations, and will not turn anyone off either. 

Interesting feedback that I have been receiving is that most of the non-profit companies that are competing are well established and well known ones, so what chances will new non profit companies have of winning?  As well, not fair to the newer and younger non profit companies.  Thought I should pass these along to you and your team. Food for thought.!!

Thanks for extending the time to April 16th. for voting.  Let's hope that the public will have the courage to try again to vote for their favorite projects.

In the Spirit of Humanity,

Nina

I agree, the voting process is an unbelievable pain in the neck. Compared to most things you can do online, it is flat-out exhausting. But compared to going through 150 proposals, even with maximum speed, it's absolutely nothing.

So - what is the benefit of streamlining the process? To make it easier for people to show up just to vote for their friends, without being genuinely interested in finding the best proposals? Is that what we want more of?