Suggestions for improvement to the community forum

Let’s hope there will be a discourse update with that feature.

Wow, the forum looks great. Wonderful job, @metasj @aschrijver @mamie and @max :sunny:

Oh thank you @patm. Just getting started. Figuring out the right blueprint, and it will take all of us to get it to a great place! More about that soon. :slight_smile:

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Many thanks to everyone involved :heart_eyes:.

Re the readings list: it is great but so long. Does Discourse have a form feature? If so, I recommend we have a form for posting to the list. Here is a modified bibliographic style for annotated entries:

  • Author last name.
  • Author first name.
  • Title (in itatlics).
  • Subtitle (in italics).
  • Annotation (50 words max).
  • Link (one only).

An entry would look like this:

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. MIT researcher and psychologist Turkle reports the results of hundreds of interviews with subjects ranging from preschoolers to senior citizens; includes discussion of robotics. Link

I think the reading list is a candidate for transfer to the wiki once we get to that. The forum is not a good tool for collecting lists of any kind and present them in ways that are still navigatable.

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Agreed – anyone interested can make a wiki page for that list at any time :slight_smile:

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Let’s just close this board and the whole project, because it’s dead. And its fault of owners and moderators. Or it was idea from the beginning, make bad outdated design and boring forum. if yes, then we can congratulate “you”, the idea was successful.

@Georgy I respectfully disagree acknowledging your frustration.

Many of us are exploring our own relationships with technology now and that will draw people away from the forum at times.

There are timeless ideas here that can be developed over time.

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Reading again all ideas posted in this topic , I think that we begun writing about how to improve the community forum , but then conversation turn into a a) very interesting points about how to better use your smarphone (considerating the very useful suggestions offered by CHT Team in the Take Control page) and b) to propose creative new design as @patm introduced in her post wrote down as 24/35 in this topic.

So, I consider that all the posts that had included a) and b) suggestions, could be moved to more specific topics. In that case we’re be able to keep on developing new creative ideas based on what was said here.

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Thank you for bringing these things up, Alfredo. Good to refresh the discussion.

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Hey everyone!

This just popped up for me:

33%20AM

I realize that there’s a time & place for notifications, but my first thought was… frankly… wtf?! :stuck_out_tongue: That “show notifications” box haunts us all across the web, and it always freaks/bums me out. It’s an immediate, non-negotiable “block” as far as I’m concerned.

I love this: “Our community will be an exemplar of Humane Technology

I’d love to know exactly if/when/how there will be a deeper exploration about specifically what does a more “humane” forum even look like? I may have missed it but I haven’t seen or read anything about that here yet.

And along those lines, what about the incentive system that drives this forum? Do we want to reward people for posting a lot? (Is that inherently good?) From a metrics perspective, is the goal here to get more people more engaged? More people commenting? More daily active users? Or are we striving for something else entirely? Enlightenment, wisdom, community - something else? And how do we measure our way there?

To humanity!
And with love,
Bill

Hi @loundy!

(I have moved your post from Community position statement, contribution guidelines, forum improvements to this - more appropriate - location)

On the forum we’ve had similar discussion a number of times in the past (e.g. “Why does this forum have Like buttons and Likes?”).

The answer is: We are an exemplar of Humane Tech practice, but we are also a ‘place of action’, a workplace, if you will. So, for instance, the Likes are there to show you agree, rather than posting an “I like that comment” and making the thread too long, didn’t read (TL;DR).

This notification thing is a bit different in that this type of notification is not strictly necessary, but it can be handy if you are involved in many discussions and tasks (I do not use it, but am very happy with the small notification icon in the top-right corner above my avatar that shows forum activity).

This feature stems from the Discourse software and built-in browser capabilities. I don’t think it can be disabled in forum settings. But you could ask a question about it in Forum Meta or file a feature request there. If there is such setting you can notify me, and we can consider changes (we are a crowdsourced community, and everyone is a volunteer, including me).

Note however - and also for others asking similar questions - this forum is not an exemplar of Time Well Spent (i.e. will not have grayscale UI, be rid of Likes, notify of time spent, etc.). But the community at large will be an exemplar of Humane Technology :slight_smile:

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Makes sense! Thanks! Keep up the great work!

Hi Arnold , I will be shorter than in the emails.

1-The closer in time , is that I will be in San Francisco, in a Union Square Hotel , from December 21 th to January 4 th . I will share Christmas with friends of mine in El Cerrito, in the SF Bay Area.

So I would like to kwow people of the CHT Team, only to share some words , to know the place , to know the faces of people that create this great movement in which we are involved. Participating from February ir would be great for me to know them . Surely, it will motivate me a lot

2- The second point is how to interest people here in my country , where I am the only man in CHT
I have some ideas , and I am talking with people . But next year I will take this like a goal , and I will report you results.

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Hi Alfredo,

Unfortunately I’m not living in SF, but in The Netherlands. Technically also not part of CHT, but HTC. My contact is mostly digital as well :slight_smile:

Why don’t you invite your friends and other interested people to become members of our community?

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Soooo, strictly speaking having spent a lot of time stuydying on “Vanity Stats” which is the polite term for social media based on not transparent and destructive principles, is there a way to apply some of those ideas in how this forum is being developed.

Already, we seem to be bringing in several less-than-transparent ideas here.

  • What is a “heart” mean?
  • Why are we rewarding that?
  • What do the badges stand for?
  • Why does “most responded” mean more than those that are less responded.

Maybe how we develop our own community could be an example.

Take a look at this network for those with long term conditions.

https://www.mycounterpane.com/

It’s social tags are based on fungible qualitative terms like Stable, Aware and Frustrated. They can be tested, disclosed and studied by society.

Is there a way we can wrap that kind of rigor into this organization? I am super happy to do that work. And share my research.

Sorry if I am trashing somebody’s work. The overall experience is so awesome.

–jb

I see what you are saying @patm. What about an icon that says “I’m thinking about this”. The icon can be a Michelangelo deep thinker statue. Shows interest, but not necessarily agreeing with what is said at that time. What do you think @aschrijver, @patm?

I like the idea, healthyswimmer!

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I replied this elsewhere on the forum several times. There is no such facility in the Discourse software to do that. I think the only thing possible is change the heart with e.g. a thumbsup. But then I like a heart better :slight_smile:
Note that Github does have this functionality.

@aschrijver we may explain this in our statement of our forum. “A reminder, we are grassroots and don’t have control over every little detail”.

My daughter is a swimmer- and at some swim meets we get slightly annoyed over the facilities- small locker room- no pool deck view space not enough competition lanes etc. the fact of the matter always comes to this- some communities lose their breaking down pool due to funding issues- so the moral is- we are grateful to have a pool to compete in and we’ll make the best of it. We are grateful for this forum is the mantra.

We need to be strong, and remind people our goal- we are grassroots and are grateful for their engagement- and welcome them to let go of the little things we can’t control;)

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Yes, a Q&A entry in our FAQ will serve this well i.e. here: Help draft our Community FAQ (Editable Wiki Post)

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