Site feedback for our hosts

[tarsha_1985hotmil-com]

Hi every one I’m new to this page I’m woundering if any one could help out with any forms or ideas of how to stop a toll payment with a template letter thank u we wish not pay them but struggle with the common law ways on how to go about it

[morag-janet-of-the-hill-family]

I haven’t got a letter but here are some discussions around this issue

[anandrah]

There is a webinar on how to Notice the toll companies as to no longer be subject to them. For your information the toll companies are ultimately irrelevant – apart from the mass of mail they send out. It’s just the state revenue collector you need to deal with, once the toll company sends their fine to them. You can tell the revenue collector you were not driving at the time of the alleged toll. You can also say you did in fact pay and were fined incorrectly – revenue are well aware of how inconsistent the toll companies are and are surprisingly willingly to set aside an allegation in this specific instance.

[SE.Webmaster]

Hi anandrah,

Thanks for starting this. I think it may be a good idea to have one discussion thread, where everyone can discuss how SE experience can be better, vote on them amongst each other, and we can pick ideas to improve the platform over time. Apart from that, we welcome private feedback via the feedback link at the bottom of the site direct to SE team.

Note: The following comments are of myself only (not the team at SE).

In response:

1. The “Resources Docs – Community contributed” is a great option because previously all community documents were ad-hoc distributed amongst the discussion threads, potentially lost to history. Could this new option be made more visible on the main page, as even the menu option suggests its a place to ‘find’ docs not ‘give’ them.

– This was intended to be where all members can send their best documents & templates, which we will review and post in their own section of community provided docs (separate from SE docs) so that everyone can benefit and harness the power of community knowledge that is working amongst each other. Right now there is nothing there, but once everyone submits their documents, we will finish the building of the document portal which will be very nice to use. The choice is also to share docs amongst each other in the forums and more specifically the course groups (for more learning), which is totally your decision 🙂 The difference may be a little more intention and nice way to catalogue everything in the community contributed docs page, as well as being a more centralised storage proving easy to use and find things.

2. Does everyone know they need to manually join a group or forum before they can post anything?

There will be parts we explain better over time, and thanks for asking this question. The methods of accessing the community are primarily through forums or groups. Activity feed also gives a birds eye view of what’s going on, but the primary way is to choose if you want to access a discussion forum based on a certain topic, or get into a more community groups focused style either by geographical region, or based on a learning course that you can go in-depth into the group class learning and group communication aspects.

For course groups – the only way to get into these groups are to JOIN THE COURSE. Then you automatically get granted to the group. Some groups are free, some are paid, and some in the future can be totally invite-only private groups with specific requirements. Anyone can request to co-create and/or help to manage.

For example, this great question and answer already as a few replies to this thread, could be in one of the forums that relate to the topic of the question, so that when the next person comes looking for the same question, it’s a little easier to find. Some people may also gravitate to some topics rather than others so a better chance of communicating with the right people and being found. Just a few thoughts… 🙂

Keep sharing your ideas of feedback here, and together we can make it better and better over time.

[anandrah]

Thanks Webmaster for your responses. In response to your first comment, I was simply suggesting the provision to ‘donate’ a document for consideration be made clearer so more members make use of the facility. (As a tangent I realise I can’t review your comment as I reply – I can’t see it nor quote from it, nor even move the reply box around to get a look at the comment behind it. So I’ll have answer your comments from memory ) So perhaps a new group needs to be formed that is titled ‘ Site FAQ’ so it’s one single discussion thread as you posited. With a highly specific title. Unlike the present ‘general discussion’ that even has toll fines mixed in with this thread 🙂 As for the ‘does everyone know they need to join a group..’ question. My point being, not everyone is comfortable or proficient with the technical aspects of a new website. I had to manually figure out that if I wanted to post I had to subscribe myself . There is no instruction to this effect and thus many members may remain in ‘read-only’ mode instead of creating exciting discussion.

[anandrah]

I can’t say I’m enjoying use of the forum in the new site. There’s more complexity instead of less. I personally have always found complexity on web sites to be a killer. Especially for interactive things like a discussion forum. One basic primary example. the community forum which has all comments running down like a stream, in order of recent to least recent. Only the replies can be seen. They have no context or reference point because from scrolling down message to message/topic to topic, only an abstract recent comment can be read and not the penultimate post/question. It requires clicking into the individual conversation and then clicking back out of it again. I suppose its ultimately personal preference but its not seamless and intuitive, and I have to personally review every conversation just to even see if I want to read it. Honestly, as someone who has enjoyed being an active contributor to the forum for a long time, I’ve felt an aversion to logging in to the new forum for the above reasons, because it’s not easy and pleaant to read and write thus am going for long stretches in between doing so.

[morag-janet-of-the-hill-family]

Hi Anandrah, I just replied to a comment and I clicked on the forum title before I answered and I answered him in the forum. The answers I gave him were posted directly under his comment on the activity feed, so maybe that is how you can ensure your comments are seen under the question on the activity feed.

[anandrah]

Thanks Morag. I was not referring to inside the conversation, but when scrolling the main feed. Only the last remaining comment of any topic is visible. Which may just be ‘thanks’ or a smiley face or whatever. No context, obscure. Thus, this requires interacting with every single conversation one by one to see the original post, and even to check if it ‘s something I desire to read or something I’ve read before. Or whether its something that is calling for a response from me. Terribly inefficient. It’s the opposite of seamless and easy. Even a message long enough to be truncated, clicking ‘read more’ doesn’t reveal the remaining text on the screen but takes you away from the main feed and into the conversation itself. This may sound totally trivial but it’s laborious and clunky. A well functioning blog or forum is not much different from a book – everything is accessible and visible without effort. The previous forum allowed seamless scrolling of every message and every reply without any interaction required whatsoever. Just simply scrolling down indefinitely. It allowed for a great deal to be absorbed in a short time, it was quick and simple to see if a conversation needed a response, and if something had been read – as was so often the case – before, it was easy to skim over it with the eyes. None of this is the case now. It’s not my inclination to respond in this manner but not only has feedback been encouraged, the forum is the only reason I regularly log in and I’m almost entirely deterred from using it now

[morag-janet-of-the-hill-family]

Those are some really good points.