Hi Forum members
I am pleased to share that we will be beginning a major codesign review of the forums in the coming months.
Timing:
1. March - Submit ethics through our Research Partnership with University of Melbourne; seek input and design survey, consult syndication partner orgs
2. April - May Survey open to members
3. May - Members invited via survey to join working group to review survey outcomes and codesign improvements and design
4. June - survey evaluation, working groups
5. July onwards - action following codesign. This will depend on scope, cost, implementation etc.
In Scope:
Experience (how you feel, what increases belonging, approach to feedback etc)
Design
Guidelines
Member engagement
Governance
Features
Role of peer support
Accessibility
Cultural safety
Role of forums in informing policy, advocacy and research
Support model offered through /connected to forums
Mitosis (communities within communities)
Sub groups/threads - role of private spaces
Role of private communication / Dm - both member to member and mod to member (consideration of benefit vs risk)
Syndication model
AI rules used to support moderation
- What else should be in scope?
Please tag me below with your suggestions.
Apologies in advance if I don’t reply quickly to all - but we will be reading and consolidating.
The comprehensive survey is being drafted now; and will involve some some paid incentives for the a portion of responses (not sure if first in or a draw yet- need to check with ethics).
If you’d like to support the survey design, please @ me in this thread with topics you think should be included and let me know whether you’d like to also participate in an off-forum webchat discussion.
I am hoping that those who volunteer during the survey to join the codesign group can participate in a sort of private group built in the forums; so we can discuss changes using this actual platform - and in recent weeks we have been investigating if that’s possible and how/how long to build& cost. I’ll know more in the next couple of weeks.
My intention will be that these processes feed into a full refresh.
There are a number of forum members who have also sent in ideas and I’ve been reading through our feedback and complaints as well to get a sense of areas for improvement.
We have quietly fixed a few things along the way too - and will shortly have a new “report a technical issue” form up on the forums so your incredible collective intelligence and technical knowledge and bug spotting goes strait to IT to fix!
Hope that gives an indication of work to come; I look forward to working with Forum members on the future design of forums.
A disclaimer that there will be frameworks that govern what we can and can’t do following feedback on the survey but I am committed to codesigning and considering those issues, risk and cost vs benefit in genuine partnership with members.
There is so much potential here among you.
Thanks
Rachel
@tyme would you mind please tagging those who might have an interest below.
