Important Changes to EC's Forum Structure

Hi everybody,

As some of you may recall, there was a forum consultation in June & July 2012 asking members to give their views on a variety of proposals regarding various forum changes. Whilst these touched upon a few changes that could potentially happen to EC's General Chat section, the focus of this consultation was to move away from our current Support Area forum structure and introduce a more categorised structure that would better specify specific areas of support. This was required due to the vast growth that EC has seen since the Support Area was established, and it has become increasingly apparent that having a small Support Area that covers such a wide range of topics frequently results in threads being missed or receiving a limited number of replies due to it slipping off the first page after only a short period of time. The feedback from this consultation has been analysed and taken into consideration, and the opinions expressed have ultimately shaped the remaining consultation process amongst staff that has led to us developing an agreement on what the new forum structure will be.

The restructuring of the forums will take place on Sunday 3rd March at approximately 12pm UK time. Unfortunately the nature of these changes mean that the forum will have to go offline whilst the restructuring occurs and additional work takes place to ease the transition, so members may find themselves unable to access the site for a few hours. Whilst we will strive to get this work completed as quickly as possible, it is something we can't rush and will have to make various checks on before the forum can be activated, but the 'closed' message will be updated regularly to allow you to see what is going on.

Anyways, enough of the boring procedural details. I'm guessing you're all far more interested in what the actual changes are going to be, right?

Introductions, Welcomes and Congratulations to become the Welcome Lounge
The Introductions, Welcomes and Congratulations will no longer accommodate threads regarding EC milestones or various congratulatory events etc and will instead just be for new members to introduce themselves and be welcomed by other members. The Welcome Lounge will sit at the top of the forum in a new section titled 'Welcome Area'. The General Chat section will be underneath this, with Chit Chat remaining at the top of it.

LGBT News, Rights, Issues and Equality to become Current Events, World News and LGBT News
This forum will now accommodate both LGBT news topics and non-LGBT related news stories from across the world. The intention here is to be able to have an area of the site in which people can discuss breaking news topics, rather than simply having them lumped in Chit Chat. Thread prefixes will be introduced in this forum so that members can highlight whether a thread topic is 'LGBT News' or 'General News', which will appear like so:


Thread prefixes can also be incorporated into a search of that forum which will allow you to only display either LGBT News topics or General News topics.

Support Area Changes
The Support Area will no longer exist under its current structure, and will instead have 10 forums operating within it, of which 4 will be sub-forums. Some of these forums will be created as new, whereas others will be existing forums that have been renamed and had threads re-organised within it to accommodate the new structure.

The forums are:

Coming Out Advice
This forum will be a support area in which members who are undergoing the Coming Out process can post asking for support. It will also be the home of two sub-forums that will operate within it:

• Coming Out Stories
• Coming Out Later in Life

The existing Coming Out Stories forum will be moved inside the Advice forum and will be available for struggling members to read other members stories, as well as allowing members to map out their own coming out story and highlight the progress they have made since asking for support in the main forum. In the future this forum will likely play a significant role in expanding our Articles section when we upgrade our version of vBulletin, so this area will likely move to a more mainstream view as it develops further under our existing structure.

The Coming Out Later in Life forum is an area that specifically attempts to deal with situations that our older members have to face when coming out later in life, such as marriage, children etc. Due to EC's membership base being predominantly young, threads posted by older members can often be very difficult to track as the area of support they are looking for can often be out of the realm of what many younger members can realistically offer support with due to them being at different life stages. As a result, we're aiming to counter this by offering an area in which these types of threads can be accommodated more appropriately, and to also allow older members to interact with each other more easily so that they don't feel that EC is only catering for certain age groups. However, one of the things that should be stressed is that this forum will not have any age limits placed upon it nor have a classification on what counts as 'older', nor will it be unaccessible to anybody under a certain age. Although we're aiming for it to accommodate people who are coming out from the ages of 30+, there's no guarantees on what age somebody could approach us as being in a heterosexual marriage and wanting to come out, so for that reason we aren't going to be stringent on who can and cannot post there. It is open to everybody, but will have a target group that it aims to accommodate the needs of. This forum will also have a redirect link displayed within the Support Area section underneath the Coming Out Advice forum.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support
This area will be the home of any threads that are seeking support and advice for issues regarding sexual orientation or gender identity. Whilst the coming out forum will tackle people who are already attempting to undergo the coming out process, this forum will instead focus on those who still haven't quite managed to come out to themselves and are confused and unsure about how they feel, so you would expect to see threads such as 'Am I gay/lesbian?' or 'I'm in the wrong body' etc in there. Once they have essentially come out to themselves and feel confident with that identity, their support issues would then likely shift to areas of advice that would be best given in the coming out forum.

This forum will also contain Thread Prefixes that will allow a member to highlight whether a thread is related to 'Sexual Orientation' or 'Gender Identity'. These prefixes can be searched for in that forum so that a member can display only the threads marked with one of the particular prefixes. This should be particularly useful for those who like to keep updated with gender identity threads, as searching for them will now be a gazillion times easier.

Mental, Physical and Sexual Health
This forum will pretty much operate in a similar capacity to the current Health and Well-being forum. However, like the current forum, it is not to be used as an area for attempting to gain any sort of expert advice on medication or therapy, nor will it give any sort of diagnoses or attempt to advise beyond what is appropriate within a peer support capacity. Any threads or posts that blur this boundary will be instantly removed.

Family, Friends, and Relationships
Any support issues that are related to any relationships with friends, family members or dating partners can be accommodated here. These do not necessarily have to be related to your sexual orientation or gender identity, and can instead be regarding anything that you feel you need support on. For example, if a member was concerned about their parents divorce or suspects their partner may be cheating then they could seek support for it in this forum. Additionally, this forum will also be able to accommodate friends and family members of LGBT people who are seeking support on somebody they know who may be struggling with their identity. In the past we've had numerous threads from parents who suspect their child may be LGBT, and this forum aims to accommodate those people too.

General Support and Advice
Any issues that a member may have that they need support and advice on, but which does not fit into any of the above categories, can be posted here. As it says, this is just a general forum that allows for support to be given outside of the usual topics of support that we have dedicated forums for.

Anonymous Discussions
Firstly, it is important that you all know that the Anonymous Discussions forum will still be open for members to post support threads in. However, it will also be undergoing a few changes to allow us to better categorise popular topics of interest in there.

The Anonymous Discussions forum will contain two sub-forums:

• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support
• Mental, Physical and Sexual Health

As you will have noticed, these two forums already exist within the Support Area as their own respective main forums. Although, these two sub-forums will operate in a very special way, as any threads posted in them will automatically be mirrored and displayed as a thread within its respective main forum equivalent. To clarify, this does not mean the thread has been posted twice, but the thread will instead display the same in the main forum but will instead act more like a redirect link, but will still update in real-time when replies are submitted etc in the same way that threads do in their 'real' forum location. For example, if I posted an 'Am I gay?' thread in the Anon sub-forum Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support, that thread would automatically be mirrored over into the main forum equivalent. By clicking on it in the main forum you'll be redirected to the actual thread inside the anon forum, which will give you the ability to post any replies anonymously etc. Any replies you do make will then bump that thread to the top of the anon forum (as all replies do in their respective forums now) but will also bump the thread in the main forum too.

For those of you wondering why this is necessary, the consultation at both member and staff level highlighted a clear split on how to proceed with reforming the Anonymous section. As a result, we were required to develop a compromise to attempt to appease both sides, and this was to identify the forums that cover particularly sensitive topics (which members chose themselves in the consultation), and to develop an Anon equivalent so that threads within there could be mirrored into the main forum equivalent. The reason we simply couldn't enable Anon in those two forums is because those who opposed allowing Anonymous posting outside of the Anon section felt that the option just being there would encourage people to tick it simply for convenience, so by separating the two same sections a member has to jump through a few extra hoops in order to obtain anonymity. The idea is that this added process will filter out those who genuinely need anon and will go through the extra stages to get it, and those who would select it simply because they can do.

It is admittedly not an ideal solution but it will hopefully work towards slowing down the speed that Anon threads disappear off the first page because of it currently being a 'catch all' area for anon topics, as well as offering anonymity for particularly sensitive issues and allow the thread to be seen by a wider audience of members because of it being mirrored across forums.

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Those are the changes in a nutshell. Once these changes are in effect then the forum structure will look like this:

Welcome Area
- Welcome Lounge

General Chat
- Chit Chat
- Fun & Games
-- Empty Closets Arcade
- Entertainment and Media
- Technology, Gaming, Soft-& Hardware
- Current Events, World News and LGBT News

Support Area
- Coming Out Advice
-- Coming Out Stories
-- Coming Out Later in Life
- Coming Out Later in Life (redirect link)
- Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support
- Family, Friends, and Relationships
- Mental, Physical and Sexual Health
- General Support and Advice
- Anonymous Discussions
-- Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support
-- Mental, Physical and Sexual Health

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If you have any questions regarding these changes, please do not hesitate to ask.

As mentioned above, the forum will close on Sunday 3rd March at 12pm UK time in order for the restructuring to take place.

Thank you.

From EC Staff.

 

Added the following paragraph to the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support bit:

 

Yes, no posts or threads will be affected. You may find that some of them, if searched for, will no longer appear in the forum originally posted in. For example, a thread originally posted in Support and Advice may instead appear in Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity support.

As we don't really have the resources to go searching through every support thread ever posted, we may find that older threads may be miscategorised because they've not been moved into a more appropriate section. We'll do everything we can to move newer threads to appropriate sections, but I'm not sure at what date we'll draw the line on leaving threads where they are.