Hi Pumpkin

Many thanks for your feedback, it's very much appreciated.

I totally understand your concerns around providing details of your conviction. However, this allows us to link members to parts of the site specifically related to their type of offence - for example motoring or sexual offences. Hopefully this means that members can discuss issues which may only relate to their type of conviction, say endorsements for motoring convictions or the Sex Offenders Register for those with sexual offences. 

theForum, has specifically been set up for use by people with convictions and therefore we don't have an option for professionals to join. I think that some of our members may feel quite uncomfortable at the thought of a prison or probation officer reading posts.

I certainly have a look at merging some of the sub-forums. There are a lot of them and now that theForum's been up and running for about 7 months, it will be a good time to see which of the sub-forums are being used and which ones aren't. We'll also review the matter of encryption - I'm keen to encourage more people to join and use theForum and any way that helps this will be given serious consideration.

Thanks again for taking the time to give us your input.

Does anybody else have any thoughts theForum? What do you think is working well?  Are there way's we could improve it? 

Debs 




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I also really like the quick links at the top of the forum that take you straight to a list of 'latest' 'popular' and 'unread' posts. I find that this feature is making things much more smoother, productive and accessible for me.

I'd love to see an additional quick link at the top to view a list of threads that don't have any replies.

I always struggle giving feedback, I hope this is alright! These are just some of my thoughts, I completely respect unlock and am grateful for unlock providing this forum and all of the work, time and dedication that unlock has put into building it.

Likes

I really like the the new colours and overall design. It feels really fresh, clean and modern.

I like that it's up and running, providing a vital support platform to enhance the overall aim of empowerment through information.


Things that I had second thoughts on:

When I signed up for the forum I was asked to provide my first and last name along with questions about convictions. I understand that this is useful data for unlock but I must admit I felt uncomfortable providing this. If I didn't give this information then I felt like I was being dishonest which also made me feel uncomfortable and I was therefore stuck between two choices I was unsettled by (others a may not mind or feel the same, I respect this). I have signed up to forums before and was only asked to give/setup a username. This difficult position I found myself in meant that I actually visited and closed the website on several occasions over the course of a few months before finally joining.

When I signed up I noticed that I couldn't find an option for professionals to join the forum, which I think was available on the last forum, although I may be wrong. I'm not sure if I missed this or if this option is no longer available by design?

The lack of SSL security for registering and logging in.
Although there are still forums around without a secure/encrypted registration feature, there are also many forums that that are providing this and most websites that take sensitive information offer a secure form for personal data. I was very worried about my data being sent through an unsecured form that not only asked for an email and username, but also my first and last name, conviction type and password. My thoughts immediately went to inexperienced computer/internet users who may use the same one or two passwords for all of their internet accounts and the risk that the unsecured form my pose to them if it became compromised. I was alerted to change this password on signing in, but the sign in is unencrypted also.

I was thinking that maybe a few of the sub forums can be merged? At times I have felt a bit confused by all the different forums/sub forums, this may just be me though!


I also really like the overall feel of inclusion that I experience here, rather than that of exclusion and stigma.

Hi Debs, is it possible to get access to that forum as that was the nature of my offence?

Thanks.

Hi Btur 

When you go into the home page of the forum, do you see the forum header 'sexual offences'?

I've checked your membership details and you have been given access to this forum (it's only accessible to people who have been assigned these rights.)

If you can't access it, please let me know.

Hope this helps.

Debs 

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I'm confused. I thought there was a new forum for sexual offences but I don't see it or any reference to it.

Hi Ben

Thanks for this.  I'll have a look and get back to you. Might not be today, off on my hols for two weeks but I'll do my best.

Debs 

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Hi Deb,

I've found an aspect of the forum layout that I find confusing. In some threads, the posts seem to be in a random order (rather than top to bottom by simple order of date posted). Here is an example of such a thread: https://forum.unlock.org.uk/Topic6959.aspx where you have to keep scrolling up and down the page, relying on the post numbers, to know which post comes next, so that you can follow the conversation by the true chronological order of posts written.

Isn't there a way of simply viewing the posts in order, like on any other forum? I note the "View" option where you can select "Threaded", but then you can't see everything opened up at once.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious. Thanks again!

Hi Ben

Many thanks for your comments. Its good to see that you like the new look.

We'd planned to send an email to all existing members of theForum the day we went live alerting them to it's existence and asking them to change their password. Unfortunately we've had a technical glitch which we're currently working on. Hopefully we'll be able to get something out to everybody by the end of the week.

Just goes to show - the best laid plans and all that!!

Thanks again.

Deb

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Hi Deb,

Thank you for all the hard work that has gone into making the revised version of theForum.

From first appearances, it looks nice, I like the big writing and the clear and detailed categorisation. Also, the live preview at the bottom of the thread is a great idea, I would love to see this on all forums!

One bit of feedback would be to let people (especially the regular users from before) know that the forum is online again! I never received an email; I just discovered it yesterday by chance when going onto the main Unlock website for another reason. From the lack of activity, I'm wondering whether anyone else is aware of the fact that it is up and running again.

Thanks and best wishes,

Ben

Whether you're new to theForum or an existing member, we'd love to hear what you think of it.

Post any comments you have here or drop us an email to forum@unlock.org.uk 

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