Hey all,
Recently we asked our readers to complete a simple survey to help us better understand our readers and what features we could look to improve. We have received over 250+ replies which is awesome and also our most ever recorded. Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey.
These annual surveys REALLY DO help us here are SpoilerTV to improve the site and focus on the features that people want.
I personally read every single survey form that is submitted.
So lets dive into a selection of the Findings. We're be using the same section headers as last year and a number of areas are very similar.
Self-Praise Section
We've been overwhelmed by how much positive feedback we got. Below are just an extremely small sample of some of the great comments.
The whole SpoilerTV team is AWESOME!
I just WORSHIP Spoiler TV!
You guys rock.For 6 years,this has been my home away from home.We all appreciate your hard work.
Thanks Andy for creating a great site and fostering an even better community. It has been a safe haven for me for over 5 year and I've met some great friends here. I visit multiple times a day, sometimes just to chat, sometimes to catch up on the latest Spoilers. The site really is a reflection of your personality and the hard work you put in, keep up the great work and I'm sure the sit will get even bigger and better!
I've been a visitor to spoilerTV for about 10 years now and it is my favorite TV site. You guys do a great job at keeping up to date on the news, and providing us with a friendly enough community to be part of.
Great site and community! My first, one-stop shop for TV spoilers and news. Thanks for all your hard work!
To Andy and the STV team, thank you for this welcoming and friendly community and all the hard work you do. I think it's a wonderful thing how this website brings people together from around the world, to form friendships and talk about the shows we love to watch. For the last 4 years, I've been through some dark times in my personal life but thanks to STV, I found my way out of the darkness and into the light. This place has become a second home to me.
This is a great site, I use it a lot, and I very much appreciate and admire all the work that goes into making is what it is. THANK YOU!!!!!
Don't change site too much, it's awesome already ^^
The site is great, keep up the amazing work!
Thank you for this website.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for all your hard work! The team is doing brilliantly at keeping up with a barrage of TV news and such. It's a very open discussion everyone gets to have. It's a great network and site to be part of.
This site is awesome! Keep up the great work!
Just thank you. I've taken a peak at other similar sites, but this is by far the most comprehensive in terms of shows and information, and the first and only one that made me feel welcome and comfortable enough to sign up and join the conversation and to obsess and fangirl about every little detail of my favorite shows.
I love STV. I don't go anywhere else for my TV news unless it's a posted link here. It's fun that no matter what, there is something new here everyday that users can either read or talk about. Articles, polls, discussions. It's never quiet or lonely on STV. Also, I love that we're all from different parts of the world, and that we learn so much about other cultures here.
Thank you for all your hard work in making this site so wonderful, year after year! :)
Don't ever stop, you're all doing an amazing job.
Especially like that you try to keep the site civil.
Ok with that back patting out of the way lets look into some of the specifics.
What is the favourite thing you like about SpoilerTV?
We had a vast amount of differing opinion which is great because it means that we're catering to a large audience and making them happy.
Here is just a selection of the things you like most about SpoilerTV.
The community, the speedy posting of news and the variety of shows covered.
Fast notifications about renewed/cancelled and premiere date announcements.
Daily Duscussion Thread, Pilot season.
Have everything you looking for.
Friendly,troll free community
The community and how fast news is posted, it's technically two but I felt both were worth mentioning.
Range of coverage
Voting on episodes
Its fast in getting the latest news
Its mostly friendly, easy-going community
Checking out the latest news/spoilers and talking to my friends
I love form of stvplus.com site - plain and simple - headliners is all I need to access (or not) in article that I'm interested in
The community
It's separated by shows and it's easy to get to the posts I want to check
The news is all in one place
Everything is accurate and so up-to-date.
The community of commenters here.
The timeliness, the diverse writers and number of shows covered, interaction
I can get information about my favorite shows in one spot. I don't have to search the web, it's all at my fingertips.
Large amount of information on TV Shows
The people and kindness of the staff.
The community, how nice everything is, the lack of drama and hate.
The community and moderators. It's a safe place to discuss TV.
conversations after episodes, especially since the death of the IMDB boards.
Reading the comments
Easy to get my TV news in one place.
I'll just give my patented answer: The friendly, inclusive and welcoming attitude of the people here.
"The community here is fantastic. Unlike other sites that tend to have a lot of trolls, it's nice to have comment threads that I actually enjoy reading through. The layout of the site is also great and very user friendly, and I like all the features. The polls are nice, and the USDP in particular helps keep things fresh.
I also enjoy the annual competitions (including bracket predictions), and the banner contest."
Getting spoilers and news about my favorite shows
The news and the community
The great community that is part of it, the variety of opinions that have room here and the amazing amount of information about so many different shows that is updated everyday.
Again, that was just a sample of the comments we got. They gave us a nice warm feel and gives us great encouragement going forward that we're doing things right.
What ONE thing do you dislike about SpoilerTV
Ok, like everything in life we're not perfect. And that's why we like to ask the hard questions about what we're doing wrong. We take this very seriously as this is your site as much as it is ours. You're the ones at the end of the day using it.
I was very pleased to see that the majority of people simply put "Nothing", or "Perfect the way it is" type comments for this section which was nice to see :)
But we did get some great feedback about certain things that I'll try to cover below. This is not all of them but it covers the majority of the popular complaints. These will be split by section.
Comments/Community
We had some feedback about some show threads getting particularly negative comments which are bordering on trollish/hate comments.
We take this very seriously and do all we can to stop these people and comments. If you come across any comments that you feel break our comments policy please do the following.
1) DO NOT reply to them
2) Click the Flag link so that the moderation team can deal with.
Trolls
Similar to the above.
We take our community very seriously and it's one of the things we want to get right. If you think someone is trolling or spamming, simply report the comment using the Flag option next to the comment and we will take action. We want the comments to be as friendly and welcoming as possible.
The majority of the feedback was extremely positive in terms of our community, but we know that a few rotten apples can spoil it for everyone. If you see someone trolling, please use the Flag button/link on their comment and our moderation team will deal with it.
Mobile Site
A few people on older phones/operating systems had some issues with the new mobile site. If you do still have specific issues, please email us at support@spoilertv.com.
Also note that you can use the old version of the mobile site by clicking on the Classic Version link at the bottom of the page.
Reality Shows
A few (misguided :) ) people suggested reality, competition and other non-scripted shows.
We will NEVER cover these types of shows ever. I personally hate them with a passion and is one of the reasons I started SpoilerTV so that we can focus on scripted dramas. There are plenty of other sites that cater for those shows, SpoilerTV will not be one of them :)
Misc Items
- Arbitrary decisions to not post things (interviews, pictures, etc.) (We get 100's of submissions a day and can't possible post all news/items. The site would be flooded. We look at each submission and decide as a team if the item is worth posting). We believe that we're doing a pretty good job here. If you disagree, please feel free to email me.
- The same shows always win in polls (Not sure what you want us to do about that)
- Power crazy Moderators with carte blanche to do as they please. ( We would rather be too sensitive than running the risk of ruining the great community we have here)
- Background color (Use the Site Config to set it to any color you like)
- Not anything on reality competitions (See above)
- How I'm blocked from making comments by Disqus ( Email us and we'll investigate)
- Too much censorship (We don't censor anything apart from trolls, spammers, racists etc)
- video not available in your location - Over 98% of the videos we post are region free. Sometimes we simply cannot get a region free version
- I'm not the biggest fan of the episode/character contests, it's usually the same fans voting over and over, leading to the same shows winning. But that's just my two cents.
- Coverage of movies feels a bit redundant and it's not something I read (That's cool, don't read them :) )
- I guess I don't care all that much about the podcast (That's ok, don't download it :) )
- I sometimes can't find what I'm looking for, e.g. character polls (Use the Labels or Menu to locate, or the Search Form)
- Search bar is finicky; difficult to find old articles without knowing the exact title. (We will see if/how we can improve that)
- The "you have the adblock on, so we won't let you see the image gallery" one. It's the reason I've stopped viewing this site's galleries and now look for the pictures on other resources. (Ads are the only way we pay for all this, sorry but that is how things work)
- Spoliers for other shows in the comments section. (Use the flag option and we'll deal with it)
- Not enough coverage on UK shows (Unfortunately we only have a limited about of time,money,resources and people. We already cover over 400+ shows and we look to increase our coverage all the time).
- The Performer of the Month polls feel pretty stale sometimes, and are always heavily tipped toward certain popular fanbases, which makes it less meaningful to participate if you are outside of those few fanbases. ( We will be looking at various suggestions for next year to improve things)
- The results on some polls. For example, lots of people here voted Awful on a Flash episode, but I liked it and when I went to IMdB I saw it had 9.0 on its average rating. (not sure what you expect to do about that?)
- I would allow people to participate in end of year competition polls without a social media account being required it has to suppress voting and I'd think you would want to be inclusive of your readers. (It's the only way to prevent cheating, sorry)
There were also a number of items that people did not provide enough detail on. If one of these are yours please use the Feedback Forms to send us detailed suggestions.
Below are some of the items that unfortunately we can't act on as they were not detailed enough.
- The form of some content that are just blocks of texts
- Sometimes I have troubles checking the Ratings Database, it's not as intuitive as the rest of the website
- Too easy for fandoms to take over
- Some poster keep repeating the same question asked in the same thread.
Some people had obvious support issues. If you ever have any issues with the site just email us at support@spoilertv.com and we'll get you up and running.
- I'm never able to leave a comment on the site, log in errors out.
- sometimes the video player doesn't work
- sometimes hard to navigate
- I need to switch my email accounts for the newsletter and can't figure out how!
- When the mouse crosses the menus up top and opens one and it doesnt go away when i want something that its blocking.
The Site Owner Dilemma
This is the same as I post every year... nothing changes so I'll include it again :)
Being the site owner it's always a VERY hard balancing act between adding more features, maintaining levels of coverage, site speed, costs, technical capabilities etc.
This is why we ask you want you like, dislike and would like to see.
Here are a couple of examples of the problem we sometimes face. These are real comments from the Survey
What ONE thing do you dislike about SpoilerTV
what are you watching tonight....?
Too Much Movie news
The emphasis on The CW shows
Heavily moderated comments section, clearly biased moderators.
Too many polls
What's your favourite thing about the SpoilerTV/ New Feature Requests
The Daily What are You Watching polls
The Movie News
Great coverage of my favourite CW shows
The great moderation and friendliness of the comments
more polls
As you can see 2 sets of totally opposing views. I've always been of the opinion that we would rather have something on the site like "More Sneak Peeks" rather than less. It's easier for someone just to ignore something rather than not posting the info for those that do. That is our philosophy.
And as I've repeated MANY times above use STVPlus to filter out news that you don't want. That's one of the reasons we built it ;)
IF you could add ONE NEW feature to SpoilerTV what would it be?
Lots of great ideas here, some of them we've already implemented or already have available. Some are not practically possible. Below is a run down of some of the items posted. It's not all of them just some.
Note: Most people simply put None, Perfect, or "Can't think of anything" etc
fullHD video
We always post at the highest resolution that we have been given. You can click on the HD icon on our video player to play the video in HD where available.
Hiding comments for certain users
You can use the BLOCK feature for that.
Bring back the downvote count
You would need to contact disqus
A weekly Spoiler blog with scoop!
We've tried this before but with so many sites it's hard to get real scoop.
Allow users to create profiles
Not sure exactly what you mean? Everyone on the site who comments will have their Disqus profile?
Online Chat Room
Please email us at support@spoilertv.com so you can give us some thoughts about how you think this could work?
More TV shows related polling competitions.
Could you email us to provide some examples?
Production Dates under the Features tab, I dont understand why that is not listed.
This should be added by the time this survey is published.
Maybe a gallery where all the preview images from a show were in one easy-to-access spot
We already have this. Image Gallery
changing the format of comments
Please email us to provide more info
Special commenting threads for premieres and finales
Not sure what you mean as we already have these. Please email us to explain.
search shows in the mobile site
We'll be looking to see how we can improve this.
A page for each show with episode synopsis
We already have this. Please email us to maybe explain what you mean.
What ONE show that we don't currently cover would you like to see added?
This section surprised me the most. I thought there would be one show that we missed, or overlooked but there were very few entries in the this box. Some were
Keeping Up With The Kardashians (No, Just No !!!)
Heartland (CBC)
Absentia
Rick and Morty
Hap and Leonard
Schitt's Creek
Mary Kills People
There were however some generic entries.
More BBC/UK Shows
Animation
Canadian Shows
etc
We do try to add new shows all the time but it's a juggling act of if we can find people to cover it, have access to information/spoilers etc and if there is enough interest in it.
Every few months we try to do a poll asking people which show(s) we should add next.
Right then, onto the stats for those that like this sort of thing.
Stats Breakdown
Top 5 Most Popular New Shows last season
Riverdale
Westworld
The Good Place
Timeless
Legion
Top 5 Most Anticipated Shows for Next Season
The Gifted
The Good Doctor
Ghosted
Star Trek Discovery
Inhumans
Click the images below to enlarge them if necessary.
What we've learned
Some of the things that we've taken away from these results.
1) Overall we're doing a pretty good job, but like anything we have to a) keep our standards high and b) keep on improving
2) There are a number of areas that I personally would like to see improve over the upcoming weeks/months
- Mobile Site
- Searching
- Making sure we keep on top of any potential trolls in the comments
3) More people are using more different devices and we need to cater for as many of those as possible. ie Mobile, Tablets, Desktop, Laptops
4) The sheer variety of shows that people like.
5) And most important of all, people care and are passionate enough about SpoilerTV to take the time to provide all this quality feedback.
Thanks once again to everyone who filled out the survey, it is REALLY appreciated and it's the best way that you can help us make the site even better for you.
We hope you enjoyed reading the results and if you have any questions please don't hesitate in asking in the comments below.
And remember you don't need to wait until next years Survey to submit any ideas/suggestions/bugs to us. There is a feedback link at the footer of the site as well as in the menu at the top where you can submit feedback at any time.
