http://www.trulia.com/profile/vickygkiza/The latest answers submitted by Vicky Gkiza to questions asked on Trulia Voicesen-ushttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Market_Conditions/How_much_do_you_think_the_condo_prices_in_San_Fran-137428Answer by Vicky Gkiza: thanks Danielle, Would be interesting to compare too very different neighborhoods. Lets say Fillmore and Potrero Hill. How do you think those areas were affected?Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:12:58 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Selling/how_do_i_post_my_house_for_sale_-120520Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hello, Just a kind reminder to please keep the discussion on topic. Econ's goal is to find out how he can post his house for sale. He had some great answers for that, thanks to you! I personally love the discussion that is happening, but maybe you could start a separate thread for that one vicky (from trulia)Thu, 7 May 2009 12:44:07 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/Why_is_now_a_great_time_to_buy_-121063Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hello, this is Vicky from Trulia. The main purpose of the Q&A section of the site is to start a discussion with other people. Molly is asking a question and she also shares her own opinion as an answer. This type of discussion is better suited for blogs, where one can express their opinion and other members can comment on it starting a discussion. I believe that there is no intention from anyone to disrespect the community. We will revisit the guidelines to make sure it is very clear what type of content is more appropriate in different areas of the site so new members (like Molly) understand how to navigate around the community and make the most out of it! On a separate note – I would be interested to hear what you think…is it a good time to buy? :) vickyThu, 7 May 2009 12:29:03 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/Health_of_palo_alto_houses_M_in_-78424Answer by Vicky Gkiza: All, This is an awesome discussion. In fact it has been one of the most popular ones for the last few days: http://www.trulia.com/advice_opinions/ Just a kind reminder to keep the discussion on topic. Please make sure your answers are not off topic and you are respectful towards other members, whether you agree or disagree with their opinion. thanks! vicky (from trulia)Wed, 6 May 2009 11:35:05 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Did_you_know_Trulia_won_the_Webby_Award_today_-120136Answer by Vicky Gkiza: this is great news! congrats to everyoneTue, 5 May 2009 11:46:45 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/Is_home_ownership_still_part_of_your_American_Drea-94689Answer by Vicky Gkiza: I think owning a home is still part of the American dream. Even though nowadays, it ‘s common to see home buyers or owners being disappointment or feeling that the American dream was oversold, I believe this sentiment will soon change. After all, America represents optimism, change and ability to deal with adversity better than any other nation. I am sure even the ones who feel disappointed now will believe again on the American dream more than ever before. Personally, I bought my home about a year ago and I renovated my kitchen and some other parts of it. I cannot say with certainty that it is worth more now (even though I definitely think so) but I can tell with certainty that I love living there! And that is my American dream: owning a home I loveTue, 3 Mar 2009 12:16:35 PSThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Quality_of_Life/What_features_do_you_think_are_necessary_in_a_home-86213Answer by Vicky Gkiza: A large kitchen so you can prepare amazing meals together. And of course her closet...his...optional!Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:55:11 PSThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Where_is_Vicky_Nice_to_see_you_Emily_-82743Answer by Vicky Gkiza: absolutely! do you know the dates yet? we'll make sure to take you out for a fun night in SF!Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:35:32 PSThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Where_is_Vicky_Nice_to_see_you_Emily_-82743Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hey Deborah, I am here! :) how are you?Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:50:34 PSThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Quality_of_Life/Happy_Thanksgiving_To_You_All_-70674Answer by Vicky Gkiza: happy thanksgiving to you too Sylvia and to everyone at the Trulia community vicky (from trulia)Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:10:46 PSThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Hi_Trulia_please_make_the_answer_box_bigger-30740Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hi stacia & ben, we did increase the answer box - in fact we doubled it! what do you think?Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:20:29 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Hi_Trulia_please_make_the_answer_box_bigger-30740Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hi Stacia & Ben, this is vicky from trulia. thank you for sending this suggestion. We are committed in providing the best experiences, so we will definitely look into improving the 'answer experience'. thanks again! vickyMon, 14 Apr 2008 13:32:17 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/What_do_you_think_about_the_new_Trulia_Voices_desi-55316Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hello all! thank you very much for your feedback. Here is what we've done so far - increased the font size when answering a question, posting a comment and on the right rail of all pages. @elvis what do you think? - removed quite a lot of 'noise' from the right rail to make the page cleaner - increased the space where you can answer a question - added keyword search on the www.trulia.com/voices (right below the ask, share and discover section) and in all questions pages (on the right rail). btw - stay tuned on search, much more will be coming in the coming weeks ;) - various updates on navigation to make it easier to find what you need i.e. sort by most recent answers or questions or posts or comments hope that helps! any additional feedback will be greatly appreciated as we are fine tuning the new design vicky (from trulia)Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:03:45 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Whooooaaa_Interesting_new_format_-54614Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hey ute, great feedback member search deserves much more visibility, but until we do some more updates and take it out of 'beta' we decided to not promote it as much. at the moment we are working on search improvements, so we should have soon what you are asking for :) The redesign was mainly driven by the launch of Trulia Blogs and its goal is to make it easier for you to contribute as well as find content. Personally, i like a lot the simplicity of 'write a blog post' and 'ask a question' pages, as well as the 'most popular' sections for Q&A and Blogs that appear on the right hand side. We are looking forward to hear more feedback from you and incorporate it on the look and feel in the coming weeks :) vicky (from trulia)Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:06:09 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Whooooaaa_Interesting_new_format_-54614Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hehe elvis! seems like you are the first one to see it! what do you think overall? also, which part are you referring to for being small? looking forward to hear more feedback from all! vicky (from trulia)Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:25:43 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Crappy_Answers_on_Trulia_-47673Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hey elvis - we are always listening! We have considered several different scoring systems. The one mentioned below (TUBA) is one of the best in my opinion. However, we find, that if people want to game the system no matter what the system is, they can... and there will always be people unhappy with the scoring method we are using. So, instead we are focusing on adding functionality that does add value to consumers and agents. We are moderating and we believe strongly in self policing. If someone is not behaving well, they might hurt the trulia community to a certain extent, but mainly they hurt themselves. Agents who have been providing valuable advice on trulia voices, have been contacted by consumers, built relationships with other agents and potentially learned something new along the way....people who do not, did not get all that and ultimately leave the community. This being said, we are planning some updates on the scoring system that will be rolled out in the next few weeks. thank you all for your feedback - any other suggestions are more than welcomed (as always!) vicky (from trulia)Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:19:33 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/How_do_I_change_my_alerts_for_questions_I_want_t-41029Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi Leesa and Jan, This is Vicky from Trulia. You can manage your email alerts at the 'My Searches & Email Alerts' page. In detail: 1. Click on the 'My Trulia' link located on the top right of the page 2. Click on 'My Searches & Email Alerts' link 3. Click on 'My Trulia Voices alerts' tab From that page you can edit existing or set new email alerts. You can select category, location and frequency in which you want to be notified for new questions. hope it helps! Let us know if you need any more info Enjoy Trulia Voices vickyFri, 13 Jun 2008 09:59:00 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/I_have_accidentally_signed_up_twice_and_only_want_-40694Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi Diane, This is Vicky from trulia. Please let us know which account you'd like to delete and we will take care of it. Note though, that by deleting an account, all information associated with this account will also be deleted. I hope you are enjoying Trulia! vickyWed, 11 Jun 2008 22:50:52 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/How_can_we_get_the_agent_e_mail_on_the_profile_-39739Answer by Vicky Gkiza: hey peter, If i understand correctly, you are interested in adding your email address on your profile, so people can contact you. To do that: 1. Go to your profile: http://www.trulia.com/account/settings/ 2. Click on the 'edit personal information' button 3. Enter your email address on the email field Make sure that you check the box: 'Yes—it's OK for people to contact me via phone or email (email not displayed publicly)' hope it helps! vicky (from trulia)Thu, 5 Jun 2008 16:41:45 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Distinguish_Real_Estate_PRO_Categories-38781Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hey Sylvia, You are right - having more detailed PRO categories can add a lot of value. We are definitely looking into it we will keep you posted on the progress vicky (from trulia)Mon, 2 Jun 2008 19:05:01 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Can_the_agents_on_Trulia_put_the_city_name_in_the_-37048Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hey Jed, You are free to enter city or zip or neighborhood, depending on what makes the most sense for you. You can have up to 20 locations! Just go to your profile page and click on the edit personal info button. hope it helps! vicky (from trulia)Wed, 21 May 2008 16:59:40 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Trulia_Top_Ten_Fixes_-32715Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Michael, thank you so much for posting this question I’d also I’d like to thank everyone for your feedback. Your suggestions are very important to us and we are always taking them in consideration when planning our next product enhancements ( agent2agent was one of the most popular requests, ability to provide more information about you on your profile was another one and you will see much more coming!) Looking at the comments below, I see many that can add a lot of value on Trulia Voices such as set expiration date to questions, authenticate that someone is indeed real estate professional etc. It becomes a bit more ‘tricky’ when it comes to certain features and self expressions tools. For example we know that some members love the ‘first answer’ but others not so much; some members prefer all real estate professionals to display their real photo, but others feel that by displaying something else (i.e. their pet) they actually share much more about their personality with other members. It is a very delicate balance between providing an open platform where you can express yourself and ideas and suggestions can flourish and monitoring/restricting it, so everyone behaves at its best or has enough flexibility to express themselves. Our goal is to find the right balance! We are listening to you very carefully, we are learning every day and we are constantly fine tuning the Trulia Voices experience so we can provide a superb service. About success stories using trulia voices, you can check out a testimonial video here: http://www.truliablog.com/?p=364 or this thread here: http://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Has_there_been_any_… Thanks again all of you for the feedback! Please keep it coming! vicky (Trulia Voices Product)Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:39:21 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/I_m_a_Realtor_in_Las_Vegas_Henderson_and_would_lik-31420Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi Sue, Yes we do have people from Canada visiting Trulia. The majority of our audience though comes from the US. thanks vicky (from trulia)Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:58:46 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/unable_to_register-30454Answer by Vicky Gkiza: To ask a question on trulia voices you need to have an account, so i assume you are not referring to registering for a trulia account. Could you please provide some more information on what you are trying to achieve so we can better help you? thanks! vicky from truliaMon, 14 Apr 2008 18:37:42 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Something_seem_different_on_Trulia_com_-29870Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Elvis, thank you so much for the feedback! This is an excellent idea. We will definitely look into adding it in the future as we further improve the experience.Wed, 9 Apr 2008 22:12:17 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Something_seem_different_on_Trulia_com_-29870Answer by Vicky Gkiza: no worries laura - we really love hearing from our members! keep the ideas, questions, suggestions coming! It doesn't matter at the moment which location you enter first. You can enter up to twenty locations and they are all equally important. I think that the reason you don't appear at Pittsboro on Member search, is because there is a delay in updating the database (member search is still a BETA product, meaning that occasionally there might be some issues...). I will look into it tomorrow with the team and come back to you. thanks for the feedback! vickyTue, 8 Apr 2008 19:30:03 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Using_Trulia/Something_seem_different_on_Trulia_com_-29870Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Laura, thank you so much for your feedback. We are very glad you are enjoying the new profile and very happy to see you already updated it! Currently you can select up to twenty different locations, but you can’t select a primary one. Is this something important to you? About the Q&A section, you are right - it is pretty lengthy. The thinking behind making your answers as visible as possible on your profile is so you can better demonstrate your valuable contributions to people come across your profile. We will look into solutions on how we can improve it. Stay tuned! Peggy, we are looking into this and we will soon come back to you Thanks again for your feedback vickyTue, 8 Apr 2008 17:01:50 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/I_m_noticing_that_there_are_Home_Sellers_Home_Buy-27198Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi Linda, This is an excellent question! For now we allow everyone to participate in any section of Trulia Voices (Q&A, Agent2Agent and Using Trulia). On the Agent2Agent section it is not very common for consumers to contribute, because the questions/discussions are either irrelevant to their lives or just too ‘technical’ so they cannot really add value. In rare occasions where they can, we see no harm in allowing consumers to chime in. I did it once, because I thought I had a good advice to offer, and from comments on the thread it seems that people liked my answer! If we see people abusing the ‘freedom’ and flexibility that we offer, we will definitely consider adding some more restrictions. Your ideas about asking for license number during sign up can be a first step for us to take. We will keep you posted on the progress Vicky (from Trulia)Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:27:58 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Where_has_the_Moderation_gone_on_Trulia_-27181Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi Linda, Thank you very much for posting this idea! Currently we don’t require license number for real estate professionals when they subscribe. The thinking behind this decision was to make the sign up process as easy and as lightweight as possible, so members don’t need to take many steps to start benefiting from a trulia account. I agree with you, requiring a real estate license can be a good solution and it is something we are considering adding in the sign up process vickySun, 23 Mar 2008 08:52:17 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Where_has_the_Moderation_gone_on_Trulia_-27181Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Michael, yes - it is very odd. Many blogs often talk about how strict the Trulia Voices profanity rules are, but we are still sticking to it...so it was a terrible incident that this error occurred... thanks again to all for reporting it so quickly to us vickySat, 22 Mar 2008 21:44:01 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Agent2Agent/Where_has_the_Moderation_gone_on_Trulia_-27181Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi all, This is Vicky from Trulia. First of all I’d like to thank you for reporting those incidents to us. We have already taken action to remove users who have claimed inappropriate names and posted inappropriate content and we are continuing this effort as I am writing this answer. Our system does not permit the creation of such IDs, but it seems there was an error (and of course it happened over a vacation weekend) Thank you very much for your suggestions (Michael, Deborah, J.D., Pam, Ute, Elvis, Marian, Jim, ALL of you)on how we can better moderate the community. There will soon be some updates on the site that will address some of them. We do require name and email address for everyone to sign up, but unfortunately identity check is online is very challenging and we are still working through some issues. Keep the good ideas coming. We are here to ensure that Trulia is a pleasant and safe environment and we are committed in providing the best user experiences. Please send us your feedback, suggestions, ideas and keep reporting any bad activities. We hear you and we act on it! VickySat, 22 Mar 2008 21:19:53 PDThttp://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/Is_there_a_rule_of_thumb_in_giving_a_bid_from_aski-18105Answer by Vicky Gkiza: Hi, This is Vicky from Trulia here I see some heated discussions in this thread that do not belong in Trulia Voices. Trulia Voices is a community destined to help consumers and real estate agents to connect. Additionally, Trulia Voices is a place for real estate agents to enable communication between real estate agents so you can share ideas and knowledge. Diversity of opinions is welcomed, but it has to be expressed in an appropriate and respectful manner. There is nothing to fight about – it is easter weekend after all! I’d like to remind you to review the community guidelines: http://www.trulia.com/guidelines/ and agent best practices http://www.truliablog.com/?p=191 vickySat, 22 Mar 2008 21:40:00 PDT