Update - The end of posting house sits in the forum (except last minute)

THS News & Feedback
1

Dec 2021

Hello everyone and we hope your week has been a happy one.

Since we opened this community forum to all back in April, we’ve been assessing how it can best help and serve both our members and non-members who arrive here to contribute, get involved and connect in our community.

We’ve tried different ideas incorporating your suggestions, to see how practical they are, and we have so far allowed owners to post details of their house sits.

There is a dedicated category for Last Minute Sits (within 7 days of starting) which is working well when the pinned guidelines are followed. We also have a lengthy topic called “Christmas Sitting” where many Christmas sits have been posted.

However, increasingly we are seeing member owners and non-members posting house-sits as individual topics, across a range of categories with, and without links.

The sentiment from recent feedback is that these posts can detract from the purpose of the forum: A place for those sharing a love of pets and travel to come together - share advice, find support, and discuss all things house sitting, pets, and travel. They are also confusing to new members and more difficult to moderate and manage.

So we’ve made the decision to stop the posting of sits (with or without links) in the forum topics and from December they will be deleted. Anyone posting will receive a direct message with a standard explanation as a reminder.

The Last Minute Sits category will remain for sits starting within 7 days. Please use the category assigned for this and the format suggested.

The TrustedHousesitters website really is the best place to advertise your house sit listing to get the maximum exposure, keep your messaging in one place, and make sure all procedures and guidelines are followed to ensure you experience the best possible outcome throughout the process of securing a sitter.

Your website listing provides you with the optimum opportunity to attract your perfect house sitters, including information about your home, your pet’s needs, and your expectations. This is detail that may be missed here on the forum and lead to potential misunderstandings.

If you do need extra assistance with your listing our Membership Services Team are available to help and advise, you can contact them by email at support@trustedhousesitters.com

And of course we do allow (both owners and sitters) to put a link to their listing or profile in their forum profile.

We hope you all understand and see this as a positive move to keep the forum focused on connecting our members for the purpose it was intended. Our guidelines can always be referred to here.

All the best

The forum team - Angela, Vanessa, Paul and Therese

8 Likes
3

So will HO’s not be allowed to call attention to their need for a sitter on the forum? The only way for them to get help is through membership services?

4

Thanks Team - that is a good decision

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Here are the specifics from the guidelines…

Owners - Posting links to or details of house sits

For safety and privacy reasons, we kindly ask that you do not upload house sit listings in forum topics or comments - they will be removed. This includes creating a topic or comment for the sole purpose of promoting your current dates. However, you may add a link within your forum profile.

You can click the title for the full explanation and general forum guidelines.

We tried allowing the posts, but as the forum has grown, it has started to create confusion as mentioned above, especially among non-members. We are maintaining the Last Minute Sit category as also explained above.

This obviously doesn’t mean that if you are introducing yourself or having a conversation, you can’t say something like “we are new to TrustedHousesitters and will be looking for our first sitters later this month” :slight_smile: We are talking about topics and comments where the aim is to advertise for sitters here in the forum rather than on the website.

Membership services are available for anyone who “needs extra assistance” with their listing, i.e help to improve it, boost the listing where applicable, that type of thing. In this way, help is available on a one to one basis, from MS, which is more effective than when an owner shares a listing on the forum which gets lost in a thread or the conversation goes completely off topic.

Hope that helps explain. All the best.

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Thanks @Itchyfeet … we obviously want to do as much as we can to help everyone, but sometimes things move beyond being practical and manageable. Last Minute Sits seems to be working out well though, as these are clearly defined.

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Well done admin team, excellent decision

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