Improving networking on UKBF

[Henry Osadzinski]

Hi everyone,

We've been hard at work to add features and improve the quality of the experience on UKBF and are happy to be able to show you some of the progress we've made

First off, in response to queries and feedback, we've pulled all of the information regarding moderation together, updated it to make it as clear and straightforward as possible and collected it all in one place. This is all accessible via the main rules link as well, so it's on hand if you ever need it.

Next, following suggestions and discussion from users and mods, we've enabled Visitor Messaging. This is a new feature to UKBF that allows members to post comments, feedback, reviews and testimony on contacts' profile pages. Through this, it's easier to share recommendations of people you have worked with via the forum and show real connections in a more detailed way than the "Friends" feature. There are a few things you need to know about using Visitor Messages, so we've added a section to the Resources & FAQs sticky to help you get started. If you don't want to use the feature or want to limit it to trusted contacts, you can also opt out via the options under your My UKBF tab.

Finally, we want to open up discussion around the subject of promotional and networking posts on UKBF. We feel that there's room for improvement here and we want to make positive changes to help people talk about their business and build working connections with others without worrying about being considered spamming unnecessarily.

With this in mind, we're suggesting that we relax the rules regarding self-promotion and linking to your own business / products. We know that being able to network is important to nearly everyone on UKBF and the more we can do to make that easier whilst also encouraging the best possible advice and content, the better. With any more open system comes the risk that it'll be abused, especially by posters who sign up to drop links and generally spam, which we still won't tolerate.

To make it easier to spot and remove spammers and discourage simply signing up to drop links, the balance we want to propose is increasing the post limit from 15 to 30 before a member can include live links in their posts. This makes quick post runs easier to spot and gives more time for new members to focus on joining in on conversations and getting involved with the community before taking advantage of the ability to directly promote their business. With this in mind it would allow us to remove restrictions on linking to your business in relevant situations, making it easier to build working relationships with others. Starting threads purely to promote outside of the Marketplace still wouldn't be allowed, nor would posting "junk" or off-topic promotion, but these are much clearer and easier to both avoid and moderate. This is something we want to continue to work on with members so please do remember to always report content you feel is inappropriate so that the team can take care of it as quickly as possible.

We're keen to get as much feedback from the community as possible. If you have any comments or questions, do let us know. If this sounds good to you, a quick click of the Thanks button will help to give us an idea.

Thanks!

 

[123Simples]

Next, following suggestions and discussion from users and mods, we've enabled Visitor Messaging. There are a few things you need to know about using Visitor Messages, so we've added a section to the Resources & FAQs sticky to help you get started. If you don’t want to use the feature or want to limit it to trusted contacts, you can also opt out via the options under your My UKBF tab.

Henry - not being funny but shouldn't users have been given the option to "opt in" rather than opt out. I thought that UK law prohibited such things...
maybe you can clarify this for me and others

 

[Posilan]

Henry - not being funny but shouldn't users have been given the option to "opt in" rather than opt out. I thought that UK law prohibited such things...
maybe you can clarify this for me and others

Tbh, I don't this its a problem given all posts have to be approved before visible to the public. If it was the other way around I'd agree.

Fwiw, I'm just pleased that some form of changes for the better finally seem to be happening. That in itself can't be a bad thing

Steve

 

[Henry Osadzinski]

Thanks - we're hoping what we're doing and what we've proposed will help people get more out of the site.

Re: opting in / out, as Steve says, we've made sure that all new Visitor Messages are displayed at the profile owner's discretion so, even if ignored, nothing unwanted will be seen publicly - if people choose not to use it then their experience of the site won't be affected in any way compared to how it has always been.

One note I did want to make - it looks like Visitor Messages were used back when the forums were much younger so a few long-running members may have old messages on there. If you've been on the site since around or before 2009 then it's worth checking. If you need any help updating or cleaning up messages, just let me know

 

[123Simples]

Thanks Steve and Henry
I was not meaning to sound negative - in actual fact I think what your site offers people - be it business or casual users - is excellent and your views and changes are really welcomed

 

[SEO Lady]

I think new users should not be able to PM within 24 or 48 hours after new registration.

I don't get much spam but when I do it winds me right up when it appears as a private message.

 

[Henry Osadzinski]

PM limiting is something we want to do alongside link limits in the future. We tested it on an offline version of the current forums and, unfortunately, it requires shifting all existing members over to a new usergroup which didn't work too well (for some reason, not every account updated correctly).

For now, the best defense against PM spam is reporting. Mods and admins see a separate list of reported private messages that we can deal with as quickly as possible. We willl keep working to make it hard for spammers but fair and reasonable for genuine new members to use the site as well

 

[123Simples]

Private Messages: I've sent a PM to you about this - I'm not sure if it is something you have already explored

 

[zigojacko]

When can we expect some of the other ideas that we've discussed in the focus forum? These changes are minuscule and can be applied within seconds in the vb control panel so I find it hard to believe that this was the changes brought about from hard work or months worth of development.

We need to see real change, custom development to extend the vb platform further inline with all the feedback that Sift agreed with and members' contributed. Not just a setting flicked from disabled to enabled or a 15 post count increase for certain actions.

I won't rant on about the changes that have been made, I suppose they must be useful for some members - I hope we can see some more significant changes soon.

 

[Henry Osadzinski]

You're right that these are relatively simple tweaks but there is thought put into what we're doing to make sure that changes we make are based on things people have asked for or areas where there's room for improvement.

Technical development of the site platform has, unfortunately, stalled - something that's frustrating on our side as well as a lot of work has gone into planning the features that we want to roll out and that members have requested. Sadly, it's a matter of limited resources at the moment and the upgrade project has been affected by this.

This is a setback for the platform refresh but it also means that we're using the time now to focus on improving areas wherever we can. It's smaller changes to policy and features that are easier to tweak and manage (a lot of which is based on what can be accomplished through the current admin tools). This means we're also experimenting more with ideas, rolling them out and then asking for feedback. As well as this, there's more to do with content - retiring areas that aren't so popular and creating more that serve a useful purpose and get people talking.

There's no denying that the site is in need of a facelift & upgrade and it's still on the cards. A lot of what we're doing now comes from elements that we were holding on to so that they could be introduced alongside the more major upgrades when we thought they'd be coming sooner. While that's up in the air, we don't want to delay what we can do now and are doing what we can to improve the usefulness and flexibility of the site.

Hope that helps to clear things up - UKBF is a site and a project that I care a lot about and I want to assure everyone that work is ongoing, even with the delays we've had.

 

[Posilan]

Technical development of the site platform has, unfortunately, stalled - something that's frustrating on our side as well as a lot of work has gone into planning the features that we want to roll out and that members have requested. Sadly, it's a matter of limited resources at the moment and the upgrade project has been affected by this.

So after 18 months of "soon" it's not actually happening as far as you are aware now?

Can you give the reasons why it has stalled (if development actually ever began)? Is the income from UKBF being diverted elsewhere and not being reinvested by funding the promised development? Is this not just awful business planning?

Steve

 

[Henry Osadzinski]

There was work in progress - our developers have been looking into the best platform (whether that's a newer iteration of vBulletin or something else) and how to fit it in with what we want to do in terms of new features / improvements on what we currently have. Test versions have been built but the big challenge has been finding an effective way to bring in more content and balancing that with the existing forums without disrupting members' accounts, threads etc. or end up with a site that doesn't feel good to use.

Having a very small development team hasn't helped as time and resources are limited.

Our plans are quite ambitious as we want to do the site and community justice, so we're now in a situation where we need to take a look at what the final outcome needs to be and how we can get to it as soon as we can.

I'm not around over the weekend but will pick this up again next week. Sorry for the inconvenience.