Changes to the layout of the New Posts tab

[Chris_B]

Hi everyone,

We have made some adjustments to the New Posts tab this week that regular members may have noticed. Threads appearing in the BB Social Zone and Long Term Support Over The Journey sections no longer appear in this tab.

This change has been made in order to provide better visibility for threads from new members seeking support. We have found that threads in the sections above have a large amount of traffic from a smaller group of members, resulting in the New Posts tab being dominated by updates from threads in these sections. This makes it difficult for newer members to have their threads seen and to receive support.

If you are a regular contributor to BB Social Zone or Long Term Support Over The Journey, you can still easily access threads in these sections by visiting these sections directly from the category view. Any threads you have personally contributed to are still accessible also via the My Threads tab.

[Guest8901]

Yes I had noticed and in fact find it odd that you didnt bother to tell everyone until after I'd brought this to your attention on the "outage" thread where you'd asked for reports on any noticed changes.

That aside, I think this is a good idea in principal. However it practice it does create some difficulties for new members as well. When new members first come here, it is very common for them to take a while to find their way around.

I think the Social Zone threads should not be underestimated in their importance to people suffering mental health issues. Its all an important part of feeling part of the forums and not being isolated. You will often find people saying they cannot find their way to The Cafe for example. At least if they see it on the New Posts thread they can find and select it. However now, unless its one of the latest 6 posts (shows up on the Home Page), I anticipate that it will now be much more difficult to try to direct newbies to The Cafe. The same applies to a number of other social zone threads.

I also see that not having the Long Term Support threads show up on the New Posts list also causes some unfair and likely unintended cutting off of some members. Certainly not all Long Term Support threads have a huge amount of traffic to them. I am not talking about myself here, because I have adequate and very good support. However there are some LTS threads which have only recently reached the 100+ posts and been transferred there. And some others who have been around for a long time with many posts, but whom really have very little support at all. I personally contribute to at least 2 LTS threads which fit this category. One of those threads there is only the originator plus myself and a very occasional champion who posts to that thread. Another has only myself (relatively recent) plus one other. I think to make these threads essentially invisible to possibly interested new comers is unfair for those people, and they are potentially missing out on much needed support.

I wonder have you put anything in place to conteract this (hopefully) unexpected consequence?

Amanda

[Sophie_M]

Hi Amanda, thanks for your thoughts.

We have many thousands of people accessing the forums, and balancing the needs of different members is often tricky.  We also have a forum system that is very inflexible with regard to the changes we can make.  We are in the process of changing over to a new system later this year that will provide everyone with a lot more options in how they navigate the forums and see content that is relevant to them, but in the meantime we had identified an issue where new members seeking support were missing out as explained above.  

Those members who have been around long enough to have their thread become a long term support thread are already in the habit of visiting regularly, making connections, and know their way around (well enough to notice changes in the system on the morning we make them and while we're in the process of writing a post to tell everyone!).  The Social Zone is intended as just that - a social space.  Both these sections are easily accessible in the category view, which regular members would be very familiar with.  The easiest way to tell a new member where to find a thread is to tell them which category it is in, and the BB Social Zone is right at the top of the category tree, under Welcome.  

Please remember, no-one on the forums is obligated to respond to threads.  Some days on the forums are busier than others, and some topics hit home with people more than others.  One of our guiding principles here is 'give support to receive support' as we've found that members who build connections with others in a range of threads are more likely to receive regular replies.