You may have noticed a couple of small but significant changes to this site. Most importantly, Pinned Posts are much easier to find at long last. Pinned Posts cover the most commonly asked questions by those newly diagnosed with CLL (as well as topics that can become important later in our journey with CLL) and they became very hard to find when the site went through a big revamp a year ago. You'll now find them on the right of the Posts page, accompanied by the avatar of the author.
Secondly, you may have noticed that the 'Recommend' button has been changed to a 'Like' button. Joel from HU has stated that "Users have repeatedly asked for it (Like) and the support team continue to feed back that the users use the 'recommend' button like a 'Like' button. So, we figured, why fight it? They use it that way and they ask for it...
We originally used 'recommend' thinking that it would aid in finding quality content over and above a 'like' button. However, as we looked into it we saw that it wasn't being used in that way and, thus, was never implemented as a measure of quality.
There's also a psychological difference between the two. When I recommend your post / comment I'm telling others (not you), as it were, that they should read it. When I like your comment, I'm telling you that I appreciate it / you.
The more we looked at it the more it became clear that users weren't, for the most part, 'recommending' content, but trying to offer support. This seems to help with that."
What do you think of the changes?
Neil
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AussieNeil
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Thanks for this, Neil. Will people still get a notification when someone "likes" their post? And will it still just be the first person that we're notified about, and no further "likers"?
I agree about the psychological difference between "like" and "recommend". I sometimes hesitated to click that button, because I didn't always want to "recommend" something - I just wanted to "like" it.
On the other hand, there are times when a post is very sad and I wouldn't want to say I "liked" it, but I would like to recommend it. Ah well, we can't have it both ways.
Thanks for all you admins do, on our behalf. I've said for a long time that "Pinned posts" should be more accessible, so it's great that now they are.
Do you know how "Related Posts" is generated? Looking at the "Related posts" that have appeared alongside this post of yours, I can't see much connection...
Best wishes,
Paula
P.S. I've just noticed that someone "liked" a response of mine today, but I never got any notifications of it. Not that I think it's important to be notified, but I thought I'd mention it.
I understand that this is purely renaming 'Recommended' to 'Like', with no changes to the way notifications work.
With respect to your comment about missing notifications, a while back I noticed that the notification counter wasn't all that reliable and always seemed to undercount. After long being unreliable, that does seem to have improved, but from what you say, it may have worsened again. I can take it up with HU if others complain, but I'd much rather HU get some bugs out of search - in particular the date and relevance order sorting....
I don't know the technical details of how 'related' posts are determined, but imagine it is probably done through what are considered matching key words in the supposedly related posts. And we know how well the key word tagging 'works' . Sometimes the highlighted posts are a good match though and I hope that the feature is found useful, particularly for new members.
Does anyone have any feedback on that related post feature?
Finally, thanks for appreciating Nick and my efforts in advocating with HU for improvements (or reverting to what we used to have for that matter, like the pinned posts). I sometimes think that they must get rather tired of the two of us .
Neil i noticed for the first time yesterday that related posts were being listed from off topic content. It was always much more relevant. This may be a recent development?
Paula has said it all for me and I concur totally with her observations (which is why I've 'liked' her post).
The 'like' is a bit Facebook 'ish' and I do agree that there is a definite distinction between, 'hey you really must read this incredibly informative post' to 'I like that because it supports somebody's point/is funny/says what I would have said'.
But I accept that we can only have the one affirmation as it were.
And truth is I 'like' all posts because it means a member has felt able to post and others have wanted to respond.
But I'll feel very uncomfortable ticking that I liked an emotional post where a member may be talking about desperate measures to save their life. It's a bit flippant and inappropriate and whilst I respect the message, I certainly won't be liking the fact that they had to write it.
We saw the writing on the wall when 'recommend' was first introduced,
'Like' does not help us at all IMHO and can be extremely inappropriate I certainly did not support this and was quite vocal against this, it seems user's general habits and not user's healthcare needs can be more important to HU. I guess it has become common on-line language? , Which is dumbing things down I think..
For me this just trivializes healthcare discussions.
It would be interesting to see the numbers and populations that have driven HU to make this change.
I've also noticed that 'recommended' has been used as a 'like' box recently, and I don't think it appropriate for many of our posts. Could the box have a drop down with a list of 'recommended content is read by all' and 'like' (yuk) and also something to indicate empathy? You would choose the appropriate one.
I'm sure the answer is no!
Thank you for your attempts to mould HU to our needs.
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