i spent 20 years telling companies how to streamline their processes to improve user experience and save time. i don’t do any process that is 3x more cumbersome than it needs to be.
When they finally update to a traditional calendar system I’ll use it. Until then, me (and others) not using it due to the bad design only increases the pressure to fix the problem, which is what needs to happen.
Me too! Project manager with large retailer responsible for improving productivity, but utilising the existing systems.
nope. if it was my job or a requirement in my life, i’d suck it up. with my personal life, it’s a hard pass for me. i’d literally rather spend my time staring aimlessly into space than using a non essential cumbersome process.
The thing is, it is what it is, and constantly complaining about it on numerous threads isn’t going to change it. (not you personally, just everyone)
THS are a small business, with a 10-year-old or more, antiquated system.
Unless and until they update and renew the whole site, we are stuck with it.
And we all know that takes time and money. They are not Amazon or Facebook. Probably only a small IT team with a lot of ongoing projects, as well as maintaining what they have.
Hmmmm, just wondering … what is the real purpose of this calendar? As I see it, it is merely a tool for HOs to check potential sitters’ availability should they like to send an invite.
Is the calendar part of Discourse or is it an add-on. Does anybody know?
Discourse is a stand-alone, only for the Forum, which is why you cannot link stuff to the main THS site - an “off the shelf” product. THS cannot change anything on Discourse.
Actually, I think they can request additions - we used to have 
only, but got 3 more emotions added…
This wasn´t my question 
THS can do whatever they like with Discourse. It is àn open source app
That, I agree with. I’m also sick of the redundant threads complaining about the same issues. And I know that admin is working on things and IMO people should just chill out and let them do their thing.
Unfortunately when new people ask the question, it re-lights the fire. There are suggested threads when people start new questions. It may help get rid of some of the redundancy if admin created a locked thread for each of the repetitive problems that people are directed to when the question is asked, yet again.
This problem would be solved if people would read the suggested threads or search first, but human nature is human nature. I also think that combining a bunch of small threads into just a massive 100+ comment thread that’s all generally related is not a good practice as people are much less likely to read something that massive so they’ll just go ahead and ask their question instead. I know that’s what I would do.
For me, I will continue to just not use the tool. Using it would imply that the current functionality is acceptable. It’s not, therefore I will passively protest by not using it. Eventually it’ll become enough of a pain point/enough bigger things will be fixed that it will move to the top of the list. And then I’ll start using it.
Then why would the calendar have anything to do with discourse? The calendar is part of the THS website, not the Forum - different platforms.
Agree, but with the Forum growing all the time (congrats BTW @Angela_L on over 4000 members now) new members are just going to keep asking. Maybe some kind of refresh and restart with a summary of threads over the last year on a help/introduction page.
There’s a job for you @CreatureCuddler 
right, got so involved in Discourse that forgot for a while there is also a THS site
Adding a general calendar comment.
We don’t take it too literally. If we dont want to sit in June, we block off the calendar. And when the calendar shows we’re available, that doesn’t mean we can take any sit location and dates in any part of the country.
When we get an invite that doesn’t work for our plans, we thank the home owner very much and respectfully decline.
pft. hard pass. lol. but it would be interesting if they could do something like this Collect ideas, feedback and create brainstorming sessions
where they could gather the user ideas in a single easy to use space and use this to allow users to help prioritize. they could create a listing for each deliverable in the dev path, give it a ranking from easy to difficult, provide the status (in progress, complete, on hold, etc.), and give an ETA (which they would heavily pad to give people a realistic timeline to focus on that isn’t NOW), and let users have x amount of votes to use on the items they think are most important.
Then when threads pop up on the topic, people can be directed to there to vote and provide ideas and they can see where those ideas fall in the priority list since everyone seems to think their idea is the most important thing to do.
I think what’s bothering people is lack of transparency. Admins are saying work is being done but people don’t have a realistic view of how long these things take. They think it’s a matter of a few days to implement a tool that could take weeks/months to correctly add. So when you think it should take a few days and it’s been weeks you start to feel lied to. Whereas if people had something they could view to see what’s in the pipeline, what’s currently being worked on, what estimated delivery times are, etc. they might chill out a bit.
ETA: I do think work is being done, btw. But this is what I do, so I know what reasonable time frames are. So if I see them saying that for weeks/months, it totally makes sense.
Hi @Breezylake welcome to the Forum, I hope you are enjoying our little chat today.
@CreatureCuddler they do actually have these: I had a phone call almost 2 years ago which asked me to review possible improvements, and asked me for ideas. I think a couple of other Forum members have been involved, and there was a request recently for volunteers to get involved. One of those “why have I never been asked” type things, and I was!
@anon47943759 @anon36831737 Just to provide some clarification from the forum team’s perspective re Discourse.
While Discourse is open source it’s beyond the scope of Angela or myself to make developmental changes 
We also want to make sure as a young forum we fully evaluate how members are using the forum before making other recommendations or changes. We have only 5% of members using the forum currently and as that grows we may find this becomes more of a priority and any review may possibly be based on a variety of different factors concerning usability.
For the moment we will continue to use the standard settings and where options and updated features are introduced, we will assess whether they are useful to the community (like the additional emojis) and amend as necessary.
Just popping this in here so that we don’t get lots of requests to change the forum software There are no current plans to do this and the wider team’s priority will remain focused on the main website for now.
Many thanks
Yes, but no one can see that anywhere. There’s nowhere to see what’s in progress and how long things might take. Yes, conversations are happening. Great. Now what? < is probably what most people are thinking.
When you open up a forum, you open up your company to be significantly more accountable and they don’t seem to have tackled how to communicate that to the users in a way that would tame the wild beasts.
Heck. Even an “In development” forum area that only admins can post to that track the user ideas and where admins can post updates would be helpful.
As a user, when you see the same thing being shouted into the void over and over and the only definitive response you ever get is ‘we’re working on it’, you feel unheard and you get frustrated. Having somewhere admins could do updates that wouldn’t be overrun by members, but which can be referred to, would be a little more work on their end, but likely much less work than the ongoing moderation of these regularly occurring debates. Having a source of truth you can send people to is important.
Totally agree, and I have to say that personally, I have found this thread today one of the most positive things on the forum recently.
We have actually discussed, not just moaned and complained, and I think that the Admins may take away a couple of good points from our discussions.
I have not been that active on the Forum over the last couple of months, just checking in occasionally, but have been around a bit more this week and I am actually enjoying the experience again.
Now, Beach time for a Bali sunset…
it helps that neither of us are actually upset and want to solve the general problem, not our specific problem. Enjoy the sunset! I’ll be moving inland soon and I’ll definitely miss the sunsets over the med.
I fully understand you are not interested in any developmental changes. I wouldn´t be either
My statement “Discourse is open source and THS can do whatever they want” was merely rhetorical. Nothing more. Definitely not a request or insinuation of any sort.
There is (IMHO) one teeny tiny little cloud on the horizon though … when 50% of users join the forum in search of information how will they manage all these unmanageable threads