UPDATED COMMUNITIES Q&A CLINIC

Have to disagree with you on just one point Bob - I HATE the fact that the site has gone all Facebooky (as you call it - Americanised as I call it) and would not welcome anything at all that takes us further down that road.

I shall be the last person on the planet to use Facebook, Twitter or any other form of antisocial media beyond email and forums - for which I can at least see some point.

Regards

Ian

hi Gardenbirder Im one of them!! LOL

Sparrow, I completely agree with you on this point. That needs to change!

Ben Many thanks for explaining the 4mb issue, I can understand that now. Most of my pics are Jpeg and are almost all over the 4mb limit. So ill have to learn to resize. Thank you for explaing that.

For any one srtuggling to post photos i deleted all my cookies from browser and it worked! So thanks to those who suggested this. I was able to get as far as browsing computer for the photos and selecting the one i wanted to post! BUT, was told that files too large. I have internet explorer10 as my browser so thats some progress.

Hi Bob, hopefully these can answer some of your questions.

• can the list of recent postings at the bottom of the pages be turned off - either permanently or on an individual basis. I consider that they may well impact on the performance of my computer, if not the central site, but most importantly I consider them to be absolutely irrelevant. Reading one post in isolation with no context is something that I, and I suspect many others, will not be doing.

Unfortunately, these cannot be turned off at this time. We will investigate this as a possible impact on performance but need to prioritise the recommendations of the software suppliers.

• Notifications - if I get the flag saying there are 4 notifications, when i click the notifications tab, i see 4 highlighted threads. When I click one of these all 4 become unhighlighted. I suspect that this is an error and that only the one I have clicked should be unhighlighted. I may have to pop off and do something before I can look at the other three.

Thank you for advising us of this, we have noted your point and we will address this in due course

• Notifications - when I click on a notification, i am taken to the first page of a thread. Could it be fixed to take me to the last page of the thread, where the relevant posting will be.

This is fix that should be possible, we will review it and get back to you..

• Can we have a bit of white space between each posting on a thread as it would help emphasize where each response - this wasn't originally raised by me

Agreed, this is being addressed in the latest batch of styling changes we will be implementing shortly

• Can we do something about the awful font that the site is displayed in - why can't my browser settings be used as in the majority of sites? If I cant use my browser settings then at least give me something that gives me an option of a couple of regular fonts - say times new roman, courier or arial, rather than the one that someone has chosen for us.

Agreed, this is being addressed in the latest batch of styling changes we will be implementing shortly

• fix the display of posters names box so that a full users name is displayed eg TeeeJay instead of TeeJav, bob's_retired_now instead of bob's retired now etc. While we are at it could we have a standard font size on that line please, it looks even more silly with the date being in a smaller font.

Agreed, this is being addressed in the latest batch of styling changes we will be implementing shortly

• One last request - as yoiu are happy the site goes all facebooky with notifications and likes, is it possible that we could have facebooky picture uploading - where we open a directory and select several files for uploading, rather than having to upload a single picture at a time.

Currently we are limited to loading one picture at a time; however, we are going to try to address this in the next planned set of styling changes. This will be in the not too distant future. This upgrade is part of our goal to widen the use of the Community and feedback from the Community users will be reviewed and acted upon more regularly.

Lets hope the weekend passes without any hitches and the speed issues are improved on, obviously this is just the beginning of a series of upgrades that will eventually result in a better performing communities site, these things take time but we are working incredibly hard to make them happen as quickly as possible for you all.

Kind Regards,

Ben

Do I smell a focus group?  Maybe a Beta site for us to play in and give feedback rather than using the main site?  Actually, a focus group at selected reserves would be a great idea - a few hours of "work" then a chance to explore a reserve we may not normally visit.  Although, thinking about Minsmere local to me, whilst it has the facilities to host such an event, the Internet connection's probably wet string so might be limiting :-)

Unknown said:

Hi Bob, hopefully these can answer some of your questions.

• can the list of recent postings at the bottom of the pages be turned off - either permanently or on an individual basis. I consider that they may well impact on the performance of my computer, if not the central site, but most importantly I consider them to be absolutely irrelevant. Reading one post in isolation with no context is something that I, and I suspect many others, will not be doing.

Unfortunately, these cannot be turned off at this time. We will investigate this as a possible impact on performance but need to prioritise the recommendations of the software suppliers.

On the previous version the irrelevant lists of "Recent Activity" showed initially, just as these do. We asked for them to be removed and that was done for us. It vastly improved the main page and also gave us more room for the latest posts. (Which have now reduced in number I note.) So what is different with these?

Unknown said:

don't look at the Loch Garten groups...until iput aside some time for them

Boohoo! :'(  (That's a Facebook smiley, by the way - I'm not a total Luddite.  Oh, and it's me who's to blame for "Facebooky", it was rustled up to represent the lost gravitas of the RSPB's community forums.

Sorry Bob, I didn't express myself very well there. I didn't mean to imply that you were saying you actually liked the 'Facebookiness' (another new word!), I just got myself in a tangle in my haste to express my anger that this mess has been thrust upon us on a 'take it or leave it' basis.

The way things are looking I really don't think I'm long for this community, and that saddens me because I WAS really enjoying it and I've learned such a lot from good people like yourself, Alan, Aiki and many more.

Regards

Ian