"This forum"

[silentsquirrel]

Thank you @Anna DUK for editing your earlier post to make it clear you did not mean the whole forum would be closing, and replaced with something new, just a very small part of it.
To me, "this forum" means the whole thing! New is not always better...... Would all the posts disappear forever? It did not bear thinking about.
I am reassured by your edit.

 

[Robin]

Oh Phew! I took it to mean the whole thing, like, they were moving to a new platform or something, as happened once before when we had a whole new look. I was thinking, Oh no, just when I'd got used to this one!

 

[rebrascora]

Phew! Thanks so much @silentsquirrel for clarifying.

It really alarmed me that we were losing the forum and I was further frustrated by the fact that the thread saying that it was closing, was itself closed to further comment, so there was no option to ask further questions or plead for clemency or ask about how we would access the new forum and would we all need new usernames etc.

So relieved!!

 

[Anna DUK]

Sorry everyone, didn't mean to cause a panic. The whole community forum is not going anywhere, if anything it is growing and growing into something bigger and better every month, all thanks to every single member.

 

[nonethewiser]

Could never imagine that this forum would ever close as its widely used & recommended by health professionals going by some members posts.

Admittedly it's not same forum as it once was, not to keen on this PC culture we have today where posts are edited for the smallest of reasons but it's still a great resource for old & new members alike.

 

[Alan44]

This forum isn't going anywhere anytime soon

Any changes, edits, deletions we do are for the benefit of the forum and our members, we may not get it right every time, but hope we get it right most of the time.

Alan

 

[Proud to be erratic]

I think part of that immediate concern was with the vocabulary. The Forum is the entirety of this community resource. Then, confusingly as far as I'm concerned, we have Message Boards which are also referred to as forums even in the Welcome Message Board explaining how to use the main Forum. There are main headings, the 2nd of which is called Diabetes Support Forum, with a radt of Message Boards below, each containg threads. But other main headings eg Information is not called the Info Forum or Info Support Forum. Further within a Message Board we are told that a forum is to be closed. It caused some confusion to me when I first looked at the Welcome section and has again with this recent closure of a a thread within a Message Board - being described as the forum. There is significant inconsistency in the use of the word Forum, hence unnecessary confusion.

On the bright side, while I'm providing constructive observation of one bit of detail:
Am I alone in being unable to read the thread within the Welcome Board giving the many acronyms and their interpretation? For me, on my android phone it's in a mixture of dark and lighter blue and can only be read by disabling the auto brightness (battery saving) function and cranking up the brightness to maximum. Then it is just readable, with difficulty.

Rather less constructive, bordering on criticism, I am disheartened to find "In the News" has been summarily closed and now evaporated. Blink twice and it's gone, replaced with only things very much related to diabetes. Even though there was a lot in there that was not diabetes specific it was still very informative. I can understand things like Madness in USA or Climate Change Inevitable became extensive and polarised. But I feel this moderation has thrown the baby out with the bath water. Please could the former "In the News" segment be put back in the (forum?) segment "Off the Subject". Preferably as an open segment , but perhaps closing the more contentious specific threads. I do feel that moderation has gone too far. A lighter touch could have been used, in my opinion. I'm old enough to choose to not read something that doesn't interest me. Or ignore rubbish, even stop looking at certain rubbish.

Ironically, on Wed eve I was fortunate enough to be invited to a professional talk about Climate Change. Given by 3 different speakers over 3 months explaining aspects of this complicated topic to audiences of Scientists and Engineers none of whom were directly working within the topic. One tiny bit of detail that struck home with me was that almost nothing within the idea of what might/could we do was akin to pulling a single lever and getting a measurable consequential result. Each potential lever had significant multiple consequences, with degrees of improvement and degradation. I wasn't so surprised, but the common sense of that remark did remind me that it is a complicated topic and things are invariably not what they might seem at face value. Why does Complicated, Confusing and Contradictory come to mind? Perhaps Climate Change is D related ..... ?

 

[CliffH]

Could never imagine that this forum would ever close as its widely used & recommended by health professionals going by some members posts.

Admittedly it's not same forum as it once was, not to keen on this PC culture we have today where posts are edited for the smallest of reasons but it's still a great resource for old & new members alike.

The reasons why posts are edited may seem "the smallest of reasons" to you - and yet other people may think that those reasons are quite significant. If the forum is to appeal to a wide range of people (which it needs to, given that Diabetes UK is a charity), it's important that posts don't seem offputting to new members.