AMA Forum Team AT Festival

@poeticguy

the best poem :)

@beYOUtywithin

Show the Way And Triumph.

Led by the wonderful @Dillion the SWAT team focuses on the high volume threads such as the Milestone thread and the Member Welcome thread :)

@dancingStrawberry34

The forum key is an administrative rather than supportive role. Those with the forum key have the ability to edit posts and move threads, this is useful for project leaders :)

@Liz1000

Hmm... honestly the needs reply is one of my favorite things.

@poeticguy @Anomalia @Roadie @Lyra

What update has been your favorite?

@Liz1000 - If we're looking at a single update, I have to agree with MonBon on Needs Reply - it's the biggest advancement we've made towards ensuring everyone who comes here for support or with a question gets a response. But I'm also really proud of some of the reorg that we've done to make things clearer and easier to find (even though there's more to be done!), the ability to subscribe to threads, flagging, the addition of forum member leaders, and, gosh, just the whole forum team and all the work they've done in general!

@Liz1000 for me it would be the ability to subscribe or unsubscribe from another post ,there used to be a time when you would get notifications from all posts you responded to Coz of which you would end up missing important things

@Liz1000

Thank you for this question, Liz! Personally, the day that the forums changed to a rich text format, meaning that when you copy pasted something, the formatting came with it too, that was a happy day! When tags were automatically included in replies, that was also a happy day. And of course, when the listener forums were split into three (courtesy of @Anomalia and the suggestion boxes), that was also amazing.

Too many to count, on other words!

@Liz1000

Including members in leader positions. I believe their involvement did amazing stuff in growing the forums activity in terms of how fast a thread is replied to or less conflicts all around.

@Rebecca

1. What is your favourite thing about the forums as they are currently?

I'm still riding high on the fact that we just made it through the entire backlog of needs reply, so that might be it right now! But overall, I think the forums are such a beautiful place of support and one of the only places where everyone - members, listeners, adults, teens, can come together and support each other, celebrate with each other, problem solve together, and grow closer. That, to me, is the epitome of what this community is!

2. What is your biggest pet peeve about the forums?

It's a blessing and a curse - because the forums run fine as they are, we never get the developer love to make the advancements we need. And I get it - we can keep going without updated search, without a place to see all your threads, without the ability to subscribe to a whole subforum, without the myriad other upgrades we would like. But sometimes I wish things were a little more disfunctional so we could get some upgrades like everyone else!

3. What goals do you have for the forums and forum team in the future?

I would love to see the forum team continue to grow and get to a point where we have coverage in all areas (even when people take breaks) and it's a given that everyone will receive a response - not just in a new thread, but also in some of the big threads that tons of people post in and sometimes messages can get lost in.

Shorter term goals include continuing to work on the reorg in areas that are known to be confusing or redundant, continuing to build up the forum supporter, forum member leader, and forum mentor teams, finding better ways to connect the forums to other parts of the site, and making them feel comfortable to a wider range of folks

@Rebecca

1. My favorite thing about the forums is how members, listeners, admins, teens, and adults are all on even standing. Everyone can post and say something meaningful, and there are no indications of status that make it a competition.

2. My pet peeve is how deplorable the search function is. The best way to find forums is 3-fold:

a) already visited the forum and have it in your bookmarks history

b) ask someone else who has already visited visited the forum and has it in their search history

c) decide logically what category and subforum the thread would most-likely be in and find it there.

None of those include the search function, which is just insane to me.

3. My long-term goal is for the forum team to run completely independent of me -- and it's come a long way already with the advent of subcommunities. It used to rely very heavily on me and @poeticguy, with not a lot of intermingling between the category leaders and their supporters.

@Rebecca

Thank you for the question, Becca!

1. What is your favourite thing about the forums as they are currently?

My favourite thing is that the Needs Reply is now down to zero, it's so lovely to know that everyone who has ever posted in the forums has been acknowledged and heard!

2. What is your biggest pet peeve about the forums?

The search box and navigability isn't exactly ideal, and it would be amazing for people to easily be able to find posts they've made!

3. What goals do you have for the forums and forum team in the future?

The Forum Member Leader roles have massively expanded member participation, and I would love to see more of our amazing members being rewarded for their hard work and support!

@Rebecca

1. What is your favourite thing about the forums as they are currently?

Having them in a A to Z order. I believe is the one that makes more sense besides putting forums in subcommunities.

2. What is your biggest pet peeve about the forums?

Not having a search button that really helps you to find what you need. IMO that search button is useless.

3. What goals do you have for the forums and forum team in the future?

Search function (a good one), making forum team members and group support members agree in events and stuff more than before.

@KristenHR - Some great ways to 'market' them can be

- Get an alert set up to let people know it exists

- Post in the feed about it so that a group who might not explore the forums already finds it

- Host an event - an AMA, something related to a national/global day of recognition, etc.

- Tag people into it who might find it relevant (especially when it's an area with high overlap with another one)

- Coordinate with another team (e.g., a group support team, a feed team, etc.) to hold an event or promote awareness of an issue

@KristenHR

@Anomalia basically mentioned it all, but finding coverage and creating activity for slower categories has been an ongoing struggle, especially since there usually isn't a corresponding group support team for the smaller topics. The special events team has been helpful for sporadic bursts of traffic in certain categories though

@KristenHR

This is a really interesting question, Kristen, thank you! I'm a notorious *bumper*, so I love posting in threads that have been a bit dormant for a while. Creating alerts is also fantastic, like @Anomalia said, as well as thanking those who do actively post in certain forums for their support, and motivating them to get more engaged!

@Celaeno - d'awwwww <3

As for feature I most want, there are a lot, but the one I'm thinking right now is a 'Preview your post' button since a lot of people create a post and then don't love the formatting, so if they could fix it up front, it would help a lot! Or subcommunity specific things: search within subcommunity or subscribe to an entire subforum. But I'll take any update we can get! :)

Wait, just realized - I think what I actually might want most for my personal benefit (since I'm pretty sure the community as a whole would vote for better search) is the ability to scroll the page below the post you're writing in so you can review the text of what you're responding to as you respond! Because I have a bad memory, especially with long posts, and am always worried I'm missing something key!

@Celaeno

Ahhh, I have a forum wishlist for days:

☂Functioning search bar and filters

☔Ability to change categories no matter where you are in the forum

☀Ability to subscribe to a subforum or a category

☼Ability to view subscribed threads and then add/remove

☁Preview Post

❄See the post you are replying to

❅Not on my wishlist per se, but something to think about, "live" forum, auto updates every minute maybe? I hate when I miss a new response on a forum because I posted after something new was posted, and my page registers that I read it even though I never saw it

❆The ability to lock threads or remove them from needs reply

☃The ability to add certain thread to permanent needs reply (Milestone, Member Welcome, etc)

@Celaeno

You are too kind, lovely Celaeno <3 I don't know how I could possibly follow MonBon's amazing list, so many fab ideas there of annoyances that I've kind of taken for granted, without ever thinking that they could be changed! If I had a top list of changes...

❶ When you open up a subforum, all of the threads are listed on the first page, without having to load multiple following pages to look for a post that you want to contribute to or read. (The entire list of subforums is one one page here, and I'd love to see the same for threads within a subforum.)

❷ Like Mon and Ano said, being able to preview your post before posting and to be able to scan through the post you're replying to without having to duplicate the tab to check that you're responding to everything would be a-maz-ing.

❸ People being able to edit and delete their own posts would make a lot more people more comfortable in engaging in the forums!

❹ Flagged posts being auto removed after a certain number of flags would make spam busting a lot easier.

❺ The number of times I've written a whole post and then pressed the wrong button and lost it all... an auto save or a ''Are you sure you want to discard this post?'' message would make me a very happy Lyra.

❻ When you're tagged within a thread, it would be fantastic for it to automatically link to the right post (as it does when you click on the 'In reply to' link below a post), especially when you've been tagged in a thread that has multiple pages and you're unable to Cntl+F to find your name.

❼ I'd love to see more badges for forum participation - for example, listener badges for certain numbers of upvotes total (like those for members), and badges similar to Sage for posts with a certain number of upvotes - you need 25 upvotes on one post to get the Sage badge, it would be amazing to have 10 and 50 upvotes badges for listeners - perhaps we could stick with the herb theme, and have them be called Lavender and Coriander.

❽ This is just a madcap dream, but when you're tagged in a post and then you click on it and it goes to the general forum page, it would be really nice to have a reason to say why - for example this happens when members are tagged on the listener side, so it would be great to have a message pop up to say ''@XX tagged you in a post in the listener only forums'' or ''This thread was deleted''.

❾ When the Feed came in, lots of people commented on the annoyance of it looping to the top whenever you reposted something. With the forums, I find it quite irritating when you reply to a post towards the end of a thread, and the page completely reloads when you press post or update a post, meaning that you have to scroll back down to find where you were. It would be nice if it could keep your place for you!

❿ This is an exceedingly niche and nerdy forum mentor one, but when you move a thread to another forum, you're given a drop down list of all the subforums. At the moment, there's no scrolling bar on it, which means that you have to manually click through, but it would be really nice if there could be a scrolling bar added like there is on the side of the 'New post' field.

Ahh, that wasn't intended to be such a long list! I think I care slightly more about the forums than is necessary or normal.

@faithlove1111

What a beautifully kind and sincere message! We are so lucky to have you here ❤