UPDATED COMMUNITIES Q&A CLINIC

seymouraves said:

Field men are different-  the RSPB used to be run by them

 

Good look at the G Fair S.pity we cannot travel that distance at the moment would love to have met.Don't forget to give the Society hell if the upper echelon can be found.

Hi folks, whilst I can fully appreciate your frustrations, please can I ask that we use this thread for posting constructive feedback for us to act on, rather than voicing organisational grievances.

Claire

Bob, Seaman - I appreciate what you are saying but I was just trying to reiterate the point that last time there was a change like this people weren't happy, didn't like it, understand it etc but once using it came round to the idea and started to enjoy it.

This time round we KNOW there are problems that need sorting to make this better and we have said it over and over again that we will do our best to sort them. When they are sorted then I hope that everyone will get used to the new look, enjoy it and use it regularly.

I am a member of 3 other forums/communities in my spare time (2 photography ones and a wildlife one), I am also a member of Facebook, Flickr (paying for that service), Twitter etc etc. I also use iTunes, Google and other well known websites. All of these media at times will change their sites look, feel, functionality....it has to happen.

Flickr is the most recent example, I pay for that service and when I woke up one morning a few months ago everything had changed, I found it confusing and hard to navigate, I didn't like it but felt the onus was now on me to work it out and get used to it. Now I love the new look, but it took me a while.

I found things wrong with it, bugs, gripes, problems, but knew that over time these would be ironed out, and they have been.

The RSPB communities needed to change for various reasons but it wasn't done to drive people away, it wasn't done to make people annoyed, it wasn't done to make people's lives harder, it was actually done because we wanted to make it more fun, interesting, workable and friendly!

Us moderators have done our very best to try and keep you informed, to keep spirits up and remain positive, we all have a job to do outside of moderating the forum, my phone rings over 60 times a day at the moment answering wildlife questions and in between the phone ringing I am answering e-mails to members of the public.

I really want the site problems to go away as much as you all do so everything can get back to normal and people can start enjoying communities again, I don't like coming in to pages of nags and moans and I do understand them.

Bob - I will do my absolute best to try and get you a list of issues as soon as I can and I fully understand why you and the other members require this list.

We all want you to enjoy this community, we all want you to belong, we will keep going with what we are doing and really just ask that you help us, be constructive, try to be as jovial as possible and in turn I promise we are listening, respecting what you are saying, feeling your pain and gripes and trying to do all we can to make things better.

This has come personally from me, I am not using management speak or trying to fob anyone off and I hope you can empathize with that.

Ben thanks for replying and thanks for using non techy talk (way over my head even before I started taking chemo treatment but that is me I'm afraid),one small point maybe "enjoying" the old forum was a bit strong I think in many cases we worked with what was there because we did believe in the work it was doing in helping people in their search for wildlife enjoyment and some good laughs along the way at times.Once again thanks for replying.

Bob - thanks for your reply, I appreciate it and it's good to have a more relaxed discussion, I did not want us to start arguing publically and do feel your frustrations so happy that we can try and work this out.

Just quickly with the 3rd point. The forums have always been moderated by staff with other responsibilities, I have been added as the 4th moderator in the team to help with the extra workload both with our new brand and any added pressure from that and with the changes to the community so in reality we did anticipate a bit more work being required and did tackle it by adding an extra moderator.

Clearly it wasn't our intention to let paying membership to suffer so all I can do is apologise for that and we will try and ease that suffering.

The other 2 points are valid and I take those fully on board.

Seaman - appreciate your reply, thanks for sticking with it and I do understand all of your gripes and issues.

Thanks!

I have not contributed to this thread until now mainly because I have been away.  However I must say that I was astonished that what was flagged up as maintenance outage turned into an upgrade which clearly did not go well.

As I see it there is very much more than a software problem here. There has been a real lack of direction in the way the forum is organised and what it is designed to achieve. What it seems to have achieved is a whole lot of largely unconnected groups who use the space in  the way that pleases them.

Overall there is a general lack of cohesion, direction and communication.

So if this is something that is actually going to improve there needs to be a major listening exercise and some strategic plans for what the RSPB wants from a forum.

Mind you getting the software to work properly seems to be the first prerequisite for that.