The community forum is now over one year old! Since its introduction to the wild in the summer of 2009, this beast has now grown into a popular and informative place to exchange ideas, pictures, stories among a variety of other things! It has not been a smooth journey all the way with a few technical issues and disruptions setting it back, but we are very happy with the way most of it has been going.
We, the moderators from the Wildlife and Web teams, must say a big thank you to all the contributors and viewers of this forum. It is your friendly welcomes, interesting and informative posts that make this successful. It has been a steep learning curve for us all, we've enjoyed it and hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we have.
Other than to say a big thanks to everyone, we wanted to inform you all about what we have been up to with regards to the future of the forum. No doubt you will all be happy to hear that there will be upgrades happening to the software and hardware which the whole website uses. These upgrades should see an improvement to some of the issues which some of you have experienced. Unfortunately we cannot give you an exact time scale for this but it is in the pipeline.
We do realise there have been a few problems on the forum and we have been working hard to deal with them. Please keep reporting any posts you're not happy with and we will endevour to keep the atmosphere of the forum friendly and constructive. There may well be a few other tweaks, additions and changes as well, which we will keep you up to date with as they happen.
Once again thank you for all the great input to this forum, keep up the good work! If you have any feedback or ideas for change then please let us know, we are still learning and are willing to listen to any constructive criticism.
Thanks
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
Hi Ian
I so agree with you and well done to the web and mod teams who have made the Forum work as it has done...so a big congratulations to everyone at the RSPB too.
Ian: I thank you for your uplifting post and it is hard to believe that a year has gone by now - a RSPB Forum birthday date with a cake!
Will look forward to seeing the new delux forum with all the new additions coming our way in the near future.
Regards
Kathy and Dave
Hi,
the forum has performed well with only one well publicised problem which seems to have been un-solvable so I have a suggestion.
If the servers do not put all edits into memory, why not either
1-- enable that as a function or..........
2-- :)) disable the edit function so any updates have to be new posts, until #1 (above) can be done :)
S
For advice about Birding, Identification,field guides, binoculars, scopes, tripods, etc - put 'Birding Tips' into the search box
Happy Birthday to the RSPB Forums, and Thank You to the hardworking Forum staff for giving us this fab site to play with.
Hip Hip...... :-)
Well done on your first year.
Main problem as I see it is forum speed. I'm on 50Meg broadband, and coming in here as a newbie the other day, was like going back to 56k dialup. IMHO you would be better switching to a "stand alone" forum software, rather than in integrated one that you seem to be running now. I use PHPBB 3, and with very little work, you can have a great forum up and running in no time. It's less server resource hungry, and would be 100X faster than the current system. I'm sure your software guys will be able to embed it in to the current site in about 10 mins ;-)
If you need any help with site issues etc, I'm more than happy to lend a hand if I can, as I do all my own sites, so may be of use.
My photography forum
Congaratulations on a brilliant web site bringing together so many wildlife lovers.I am looking forward to the improved speed especially on the gallery section.My only suggestion would be to stop the direct editing of posts enabling corrections by adendum only.
WELL DONE ON A BRILLIANT SITE
Of all creatures, man is the most detestable, he is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. ~ Mark Twain
Actually I think the ability to edit one's own posts is one of the best features of the Forum, and I wouldn't want to see it removed. It's very useful if you're posting something more complex, or see after posting that you've made a typo.
To address the issue which I think is being referred to, would it be possible to just change the "Report abuse" function, so that the moderators receive a copy of the offending post as it stands at the time the report is sent. If the author later edits it, it will be obvious to the mods that this has been done. We had a problem in the Loch Garten Forum a while back, of someone who was posting strange political diatribes and later erasing them.
Hi Sue
Well said about the editing facility. It is just common sense to have an open edit facility - all Forums have that going for them It is there for people to make choices about what they type on the allocated subject, and how they want to present their point of view. The moderators would never get any peace from anyone if they had to re-edit the post each and every time from a member made a common mistake.
In the old RSPB Forum there was a facility that the moderators had to check what had been posted, then the post was added to the Forum. That must be time consuming too as they have to work in their work environment. IMHO, I would not like to have extra work to do that was unneccessary in my working day.
I have cataracts in my right eye (left eye is normal so my vision is lop sided at the moment) and I have a problem with seeing the PC screen at times (even though the screen text is enlarged for my sight) the way I want to see it. I need to edit my posts all of the time for typo errors
It is a condition that is a hiderance unless you have it yourself - then you will understand how the ability to see correctly is a struggle at times. Hope to have it resolved soon, so I can have my normal life back
Report button facility: I like the idea of the immediate offending post types automatically to the mods as it happens so there is no cover up of anything untoward. Then no misunderstanding would occur and everyone would know where they stand with each other - simple as that.
An Ignore button would be a handy thing too............................... Just a thought!
Cheers
AL
If its no fun Yer no doin it right!
I assume the "edit button" issue is with people editing offensive posts, after they have been read? It is possible to lock a post, or hide it from public view, once the reported button has been hit. This method is common on many sites, to prevent people being nasty. Another method is to have an editing time limit, so after say 15 mins, the edit function doesn't work. This gives people time to see any typo, and correct it ;-)
Ignore user is also a good idea in theory, but in practice people very rarely use it, or have the self control to use it. You usually also end up with people saying "you're on my ignore list", or making it obvious someone is. That then brews a whole load more issues for the mods to deal with.
My advice to anyone with issues/bad feeling is this. If you feel a post may be having a dig at you, is offensive or what ever. Read the post again, but read it as though a friend or family member had typed it. Too many people read posts the wrong way, because the written word does not show the meaning or emotion behind it. If there is the slightest bad feeling, people will nearly always read things the wrong way, and take offence etc.
In the words of "Bill and Ted", just be excellent to each other.
I think it would be a good idea if the edit button is timed to a maximum of 15 minutes thus giving the poster plenty of time to correct any mistakes.I don't think they should be able to edit hours later and can see no good reason for that at all.I also don't think a member should be able to edit after several other posts have been made regarding a subject because they want to change their answer or opinion to suit.It should be done on a separate post.I think this would greatly improve what i have witnessed on this site but never on any other.
It would be lovely if we could all be really nice to each other Chris and most of us are :0)))
Anyway happy birthday from me too. .
An optimist sees the beauty of the complete rose.A pessimist sees only the thorn .