Growing Concerns in the Forums
Greetings Development Community!
I am writing to let the leadership team know that I am seeing some very real concerns in the Forum regarding organization and access.
This week I wrote a post sharing my personal story in an effort to reach others like me, only to find out no such space exists here on 7 Cups. When I voiced my concerns on the following post and volunteered to host the space myself, I was met with further confusion and misinformation which only reinforced the need for change. (It further shows that people are skimming rather than reading.)
This same frustration has been voiced on the Member side as I have been repeatedly informed that they find the current layout of the Forums to be confusing and difficult to access. My understanding is that several communities has been combined into sub-communities and Forum Supporters are now expected to specialize in two or three of these areas as opposed to fulfilling a more generalized role.
https://tinyurl.com/blitheSun94 - I don't expect you to read this entire post, but please scroll to the bottom to view the disclaimer and comment section.
I have been here since 2015 with quite a lengthy break in between. The Forums have always been my home. Upon my return to 7 Cups, I came to find the Forums restructured and disorganized in a way that Members and Listeners alike are visibly confused and frustrated by. I endeavor to help fulfill my role as a Forum supporter, address the concerns I see, promote engagement, and come up with solutions. Let me know what I can do to help.
I will reach out to @CherryMango shortly. I want to draw attention to this reoccurring issue in the meantime. Thank you for your time. 💕
Note: Hope this post is the right spot. If not, feel free to relocate.
@blitheSun94
I can relate to the frustration with the forums. The access to them is not user friendly as it seemed at first. The organization is out of order and being able to find a direct location is almost impossible not to mention finding featured and pinned posts isn't easy either. The forums have great potential and it's really important that they're user-friendly.
@Jenna
Thank you, Jenna! I really appreciate your personal and professional support. <3
I think that now with covid alot of us feel a sense of wanting from whoever walks through the door.
I can feel your frustrations but I do not fault you, you are like me and we have disabilities.
A good reason why my frustrations reach this app are because I bring them into the light do not torture me for it of course I say that knowing on the other side is the dream catcher so I do this hoping I have helped out both sides in some cases.
I can't believe that you have been here this long and only come up with half a page, there has to be someone here that is on my side because of your writings they do not specify where we are in the seated chair just figuratively speaking where I come from can you do better or do you lead?
Thanks for reading my post and I read yours, thank you for all your time.
@bubbleTown7508
I had great difficulty reading and making sense of your post.
@blitheSun94
You were not alone....
@blitheSun94
Hiya Blithe, I agree wholeheartedly with you, the forum restructuring and changes have been really overwhelming, and I'm with those people also who feel that the changes instead of improving the user-experience or making it more convenient for everyone, has actually made it harder to navigate around, find forums, carry out basic forum leadership tasks like pinning/featuring/ editing threads, even the sub-topics (sub-forums) aren't hyperlinked any more and well the list goes on!
Personally I liked it better before these recent updates also, it was certainly more convenient and practical!
You are certainly not alone in finding the changes concerning here, there's a forum functionality feedback thread: https://www.7cups.com/forum/SiteUpdates_100/Feedback_37/ForumFunctionalityProvideFeedbackHere_274852/?post=3000254 where many people have voiced several concerns and shared feedback/ suggestions. You may use it also, if you like/ need anytime!
I really appreciate how you are also willing to support the leadership team in whatever way possible, and I really hope together we can work on bettering the forum-experience for everyone! ❤
(Also, I relocated this thread to more appropriate forum)
@Sunisshiningandsoareyou
Thank you, Suni! ☀️ I see you around all the time and I appreciate every time you read and reply. I appreciate your support and additional resources. I will certainly take a look! 💕
@blitheSun94
At least you've been able to POST something. I have been looking around and cannot find a way to do this. I wrote to community@7cups back last week and all I got was an automatic email saying that they would respond in 48 hours and this is not the first time at all that I write to that address and can't get no satisfaction.
I find this website actually difficult to navigate and that's why I tend to stick to just talking to members one-on-one. Somehow, it feels that the powers-that-be don't care or are too short-staffed.
Wishing you good luck anyway and... nice to meet you!
@Fradiga
Thank you, Fradiga! Are you using the mobile app or the web version of 7 Cups? Maybe I can help you with that!
@blitheSun94
Thank you so much for your answer. I am rather frustrated that my emails are not answered so your volunteering to help means a lot!
I use both my laptop for chatting and my phone to answer the odd message. I prefer my laptop because I type faster than I "tap". I am around most mornings (in France) on 7cups, but away from this laptop the rest of the day.
@blitheSun94 I disagree.
I love the new layout.
I am on the member side of leadership, and have not heard that.
Like Cheery Said "We cannot go back to the old ways, we must move forward."
They also said, "Some will like the changes and some will not."
@calmMango9611
Fair enough. You’re entitled to your opinion, however, that has not been my experience.
@calmMango9611
"We cannot go back to the old ways, we must move forward."
What I'm reading: We chose to not go back to the old ways. We will move forward. Don't bother about the reasons.
@kindSoul10
Right, on a platform run by volunteers it’s important to remain flexible and carefully consider which operations work best for them and their Members.
@kindSoul10
Well said, Kind. That's exactly what I got from it, too. While we can move forward and still accept change...not all changes are beneficial whether someone likes them or not.
@kindSoul10 So true, my friend.
Hey @blitheSun94 - thats lovely that you would be up for hosting a new space. One of the team will contact you to explore this further. This would be very helpful! We want to launch many more communities!
As far as I know, no communities have recently been combined or merged. But if you've been away from the platform for a few years, then I'm sure many changes have taken place over that time!
What do you find confusing about the layout for the forum?
@Chocpastry9516
Greetings, pastry! Nice to meet you. In the previous layout it was much easier to interface, find relevant threads, and edit. The Forum Supporter was a more generalized role. Now that things have been condensed, it requires more digging. Some topics are in an inappropriate space or they simply don’t have one at all. Likewise, trying to find my own Forum posts has also moved several clicks away from the previous process.
I understand the concept of why this decision was made and growing pains are to be expected, but the execution was very poor and now we have inherited a mess. The mobile app was another new feature that was great in theory but constantly needs updating and de-bugging which certainly doesn’t aid in Forum navigation.
Thanks for your feedback!
@blitheSun94 I partly agree.
The organization of the forum has not, in fact, changed. For example, you posted your recent thread, Ugly Truths: When it Isn't Endometriosis, in Pain Support, which is a topic in the Disability Support community. There are threads there about endometriosis going way back.
For example, Chronic Pain Help was posted in 2015 and is now in that topic. At the time it was posted, there were sub-forums instead of topics, and I'm not sure what sub-forum it was posted in, but although some things have been renamed, the recent changes to the forum have not affected the general way things are organized.
What has changed is the user interface, which is now very bad. For my own use (and for anyone else interested), I added a way to search for topics. I can type pain in the search box and go straight to the Pain Support topic. 7 Cups still doesn't provide this feature, as far as I can tell. And there's no easy way to go from a thread to the topic it was posted in so you can read other threads about the same thing.
If a separate topic for endometriosis is what's wanted, then I suppose that depends on the quantity of new threads being posted about it. I don't see a great many threads about endometriosis, so I'd be surprised to see a separate topic for it. Overall, the number of new threads has been declining steadily for a long time and I expect we'll be seeing fewer topics in future, not more.
The issue of whether endometriosis is a disability goes far beyond 7 Cups, of course. Here in the UK (and I think it's the same in the US), it's not on the official list of conditions that are automatically disabilities, but it is considered to be a disability on a case-by-case basis.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
Hi Charlie,
Endometriosis is not considered a disability. Moreover, the reason you’re seeing such low engagement in this topic is because there is no appropriate space. If you read those old posts from 2016, many of them state the same. That is what I’m trying to address. This topic seriously lacks awareness and comprehension in general, not just on 7 Cups. Also, Endometriosis is linked to many other abdominal disorders like PCOS/IPD/IBS and more - none of which fall under the category of a disability. My point is this is one example of many.
Things like Bipolar/Schizophrenia/Psychosis and Personality Disorders have indeed been combined into common spaces that make it difficult for users to find what they’re looking for.
Thanks for your input and engagement!
@blitheSun94 Your point about engagement does seem very reasonable to me. 7 Cups' understandable response to falling engagement has partly been to merge spaces, but the merged spaces are more difficult to use, and so they make the falling engagement worse. What's needed is a better way to welcome engagement on a huge variety of topics without having to cram them into a restricted set of spaces.
I think part of the problem is that the forum was not, in fact, reorganized. The concept that a thread is posted "in" a single topic (or sub-forum) was retained when it could have been replaced by a more flexible system. This was a lost opportunity.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
On that much we agree.
@RarelyCharlie I think the concept of having to use tags and filters isn't intuitive for a lot of people even if from a database view it doesn't make a difference if it's a subcommunity or a tag you're pulling from the database.
@kindSoul10 I agree that filtering is less familiar than searching. I think it would make a positive difference to usability if 7 Cups simply renamed the filter to search, replacing the unfamiliar filter funnel with the familiar magnifying glass.
There is a difference in the database, though. We want people who search for endometriosis to find the Pain Support topic (at least while endometriosis doesn't have its own topic). This can't be done right now.
Pain Support used to have a description: "Share your struggles, seek & provide support and ask questions about Pain whether chronic or not". This could have been used to list the most common conditions covered by the topic, making it possible to search for endometriosis and find the right place. But 7 Cups either hid or threw away the descriptions. I think we do need the database to contain the information that endometriosis is covered under Pain Support, so that this is discoverable by users.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie "This could have been used to list the most common conditions covered by the topic, making it possible to search for endometriosis and find the right place. "
Thanks. I think getting links to the topics is still a plan, similar to how we used to have subforums. When that does happen, the above tip for descriptions (assuming that comes back too) is helpful to me. I wrote or edited most of the descriptions for disability subforums, including that one. I was trying to info people what to post in the spots, it didn't occur to me to put the common examples/keywords.
@AffyAvo I thought the descriptions stilll showed on the app ( well before the crash that is)?
Why not make a topic for Endometirosis? Charlie has already said there are a lot of posts on the topic. See if Blithe can get it active?
I am still asking what the end game is, Choc/Jon seems to say more communities with simpler to find topics. That won't happen if we all keep compacting and collapsing the topics we have now.
Listening - One Step At A Time!
@MistyMagic I have never used the app, I can't figure out how to seem them with browser (phone or computer) or how I would change an existing description.
The subforums has been a problem with disability since the beginning. It's just such a broad community covering a lot. There was a lot of making new subforums and then cleaning things up and combining them into broad ones again when we were told there were too many. When forums existed without needing to be in a community sometimes some topics ended up their own forum and then coming back into a broad subforum in disability - like headaches.
I would not be against an endometriosis topic, but right now the plan is to go to less topics not more.
@MistyMagic
There are not a lot of posts on the topic of Endometriosis. Upon searching the first one is from 2016 and the very first line states, "I wasn't able to see any posts on this and was surprised but maybe I just missed them." The ones from 2022 are brief and echo the same need for a sense of community.
Not to worry, however. An Admin told me they'll be launching a subcommunity soon, and I will certainly stand by my offer to manage that section of the Forum. There are so many men, women, and families impacted by illnesses like mine. People just don't even realize, and that's the point.
Thank you all for being here. 💛
Good morning,
I just want to say that I appreciate you giving me space to express my concerns. I am generally very passive and agreeable, so I wouldn’t bring something up unless I saw multiple incidents over a lengthy period of time.
On the whole I deeply love 7 Cups, our leadership, the work we do here, and our Forums. That will always be my driving force to bring about change or improvement. Thank you for all of your meaningful feedback! 🖤
@blitheSun94
I can relate to what your saying too. Sometimes I find it a challenge to refer back to previous posts. The phone app is especially confusing to navigate around in. I know that programmers and those who build web sites like this have different ideas on how to give it structure, but making it as user friendly as possible is helpful. However, I'm sure that's their goal though. I can't imagine the amount of knowledge and effort it takes to create a site like this. Has to be quite complex...😊
@Spearman60 Less knowledge and effort than you might imagine 😉
I think you hit on a key idea when you wrote, "programmers and those who build web sites like this have different ideas on how to give it structure". That's what we're discussing here—a website whose structure is determined by the ideas of programmers and others behind the scenes, in contrast to a website whose structure is determined by users' need to navigate it easily.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
Yes... you are correct... 😊
@Spearman60
The mobile app is so, so bad. It's nearly unusable. When I attempt to use the web version on my phone, it "jumps" around anytime I try to type a message as Affy described. The only time I have complete normal access is when I use a desktop/laptop. I truly hope there are people behind the scenes working on this because the 7 Cups application is another thing that needs a lot of love if we're going to continue to grow our community and reach those in need.
Thank you for your reply!
@blitheSun94
You're certainly welcome! ... 😊
I am finding personally the lack of links to topics to be one of the problems. I know I can filter, but even seeing the list of filters isn't easy. The go from the righthand screen to the center, The scrolling often jumps. Some of this I guess is why topics are being restructured. Having fewer topics though means it may be harder to filter to get to a thread I am interested in.
@AffyAvo Yes, links to the topics are useful and easy to implement (four lines of code when I did it). I have a URL like …/home/disabilities/?topic=1057 linking directly to the Disability Support community page filtered for Pain Support (but currently this only works for people who have Tea & Cake).
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie Thanks! That's good to know. Right now I'm not using a computer with it, I do have it installed on one.
