New Forum Feature Coming Soon, An Addition to Our Forum Homepage!

THS News & Feedback
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Hello everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that you’ll see a new feature on the Forum homepage over the coming weeks.

This new feature will showcase a small selection of top, trending, or important topics at the top of our forum page. The featured topics will be a selection of member topics and Forum team topics, which will be updated by the team regularly.

We wanted to introduce the featured topics section for a few reasons:

:cat2: The feature brings attention to essential topics - whether they’re announcements, popular discussions, or useful resources. This way, critical content doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of newer posts.

:dog2: Members can immediately see what’s popular or what’s being discussed. This should encourage more interaction as people can be more likely to engage with highlighted posts that catch their eye right away.

:rabbit2: New members often don’t know where to start, if they don’t have a specific reason for joining the Forum e.g. if there’s no particular issue they need to ask for help with. With featured topics highlighted, they can easily spot popular topics and dive into discussions without having to scroll or search.

:mouse2: If there’s important news, a product update, or something time-sensitive, we can feature it, ensuring it’s seen by everyone who visits the forum.

This featured topics update will come in the next couple of weeks, so watch this space.

Take care,

Jenny

EDIT: I know that there’s a lot of feedback on the Forum around changes to the THS user experience, where there’s frustrations over changes that have been made, or around changes that you feel would make the overall experience better. This means that hearing about a change to the Forum might make you wonder why THS isn’t focusing on the feedback you’ve given.

I just wanted to clarify that making a visual change to the Forum is within the scope of the Forum team (as our job is to manage the Forum, including the look and feel of it) but while the Forum team can provide product updates and pass along feedback, we don’t have the power to make any product or process changes.

The decision to update the look of the Forum homepage is a decision that was made within the Forum team, and doesn’t impact any work going on behind the scenes which relates to member experience.

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Super, but is this something that members have asked for? If not then why isn’t the THS team working on the list of things we’ve asked to be corrected rather than additional features THS thinks we need? :thinking:

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Hi @Smiley

The update is something that the Forum team have chosen to make, which doesn’t involve the wider THS team, so the update doesn’t impact any work going on behind the scenes which relates to member experience. :slight_smile:

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Do we really need these type of features?

If forum members have not asked for such features, why will they be created?

We can tell how popular a thread is just by clicking on “Latest”. For each thread, it shows how many people have replied, the number of replies, the number of likes, along with recent activity.

The Forum team created “Highlights” when viewing HOs’ listings. Providing information such as “matches your experience with dogs” and “matches your preference for a certain size dog” is not always accurate. In my case, it might be a certain breed I have not cared for or a certain size (such as great dane) that I have not cared for. So, in my opinion, I see this feature as useless information and more information that I don’t need to read.

I miss the old inbox. If I applied for a sit that maybe I had applied to before, it would show that I had had previous communications with the HO. With the new inbox, if I apply and had prior communications, it only shows “previously contacted”, but does not show the previous communications.

Some things just should be left alone and remain the same. Features should be useful and make things better.

“If it ain’t broke, why try to fix it?”

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Hi @sharondc - sorry to hear that the feature isn’t something you’re interested in. We do think it’s of value for the reasons I mentioned in my post, and it’s quite a standard feature for many forums to have, but we understand that it isn’t for everyone.

The Forum team aren’t able to help with the kind of inbox changes you’ve mentioned in your post, but as always we’re happy to pass those to the team. Our scope is limited to the look and feel of the Forum, but we always want to make sure our member’s voices are heard.

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Thank you for the update @Jenny . I understand people want to see a lot of updates on the site itself and will use this thread to voice their complaints about that, not understanding this change was implemented by the people responsible for running the forum, who are a completely separate group from those who implement changes on the site.

Or maybe they are perfectly aware of this and will just take the opportunity to complain any time they see an opening.

I appreciate the work the moderators do…this can be a tough bunch.

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@Jenny It may be worth it to clarify in the OP that this is the forum team doing this to make the forum as helpful as possible but you’re different from the dev team that makes changes to the website. It might head off some of the ‘why are you changing stuff we don’t ask for when there are tons of other fixes we need’ comments that will likely appear. Most people won’t realize they’re separate.

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That’s a good idea @CreatureCuddler :heart: I’ve edited my post with an explanation, so that people can see it when reading the original post, not just in the replies. Thank you!

Thank you to @KC1102 for your feedback as well - hopefully my edit will clarify things to anyone that wasn’t aware of how things work behind the scenes. It’s not something that comes up that often, so I expect members might not all be aware! :blush:

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Ugh, more unnecessary tinkering that won’t actually add value.

“Popular” posts are not necessarily essential. Often, newer posts in those threads are repeating information because members tend to not read all the way through long threads.

I do think a way to highlight Updates and important news from THS is a good idea.

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Hi @belluca

Just to clarify, it won’t be posts as in replies from threads, it’ll be discussions, and when a member clicks on them it will take them to the start of the discussion. I updated the wording of my original post to make that clearer.

Any featured topics will be chosen by me, based on their perceived value to the community e.g. a product update, staff news, or a particularly great/popular topic that a member has started.

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My thoughts exactly @sharondc. Sooooo annoying!

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you do realize that the forum team and the dev team are separate and have absolutely no overlap in tasks, right? the people making these changes to the forum have literally no access to change the website as they’re not developers. you and @sharondc are blaming the wrong people.

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Meaning, anything that is critical of THS will be bumped down and not easily accessible.

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I was just about to comment indeed… what about first improving the many things members have asked for, pointed out, or expressed their frustrations with?

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Hi @ElsieDownie - the Forum homepage will look exactly the same, except with a new section that shows featured topics. It won’t conceal or hide anything critical of THS - that’s something that’s never been done in the time that I’ve been part of the Forum team - and it’s not something we want to do either. We only ever moderate where the Community Guidelines or ToS have been broken. :slight_smile:

@Bluehorse - I’ve mentioned a few times in the replies, and in my original post, that the Forum team were able to decide on this change without it impacting any work being done elsewhere in the business.

Here’s what I said in my original post:

I know that there’s a lot of feedback on the Forum around changes to the THS user experience, where there’s frustrations over changes that have been made, or around changes that you feel would make the overall experience better. This means that hearing about a change to the Forum might make you wonder why THS isn’t focusing on the feedback you’ve given.

I just wanted to clarify that making a visual change to the Forum is within the scope of the Forum team (as our job is to manage the Forum, including the look and feel of it) but while the Forum team can provide product updates and pass along feedback, we don’t have the power to make any product or process changes.

The decision to update the look of the Forum homepage is a decision that was made within the Forum team, and doesn’t impact any work going on behind the scenes which relates to member experience.

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@Jenny it sounds like you might be following a model like TripAdvisor. It would be great if new users can see a " NEW USERS START HERE" thread that includes highlighting how to search for topics before asking a question, so we don’t see the same topic being asked over and over and over and over…

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not sure how you folks think a forum moderator is going to write code. they’re not even remotely the same things. I get the frustration but it’s explained in the post that the forum team only manages the forum and has nothing to do with the website functionality. I feel bad for @Jenny that people are jumping down her throat without reading the post or thinking through that these are two completely different areas. Might as well ask a sitter why they’ve not fixed the website issues. They have the same overlap with writing code for the website as the forum mods do.

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Good point.

However, whether it is website changes or forum changes, my point is that, sometimes things are better if left alone.

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As you can see, I responded to Smiley’s comment, who was the first to comment before others clarified that the 2 are separate things. Hence I was just flagging that my first thought was exactly the same…

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@jenny

It was suggested over a year ago that it would be helpful to have the THS member support e-mail more prominently displayed on the forum as so many people come to the forum looking for it because they are unable to find it on the main website - can this also be put at the top of the forum page ?

I hope I am right in thinking that this is the forum team’s remit to do , since it’s not about the THS website but about displaying important forum messages .

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