Originally Posted by
Epic
First Aid Forum - I retain controversial views on this. I think it should be viewable by FAF staff and moderators. The rest of us should be able to see our own threads and threads which come up if we make specific searches in that board, or if a friend gives us a link about something they have posted about? Complicated though and confusing!
Originally Posted by
Auror.
I like the FA board existing, but I do think in a lot of cases it makes more sense if a member wants privacy to PM a FA advisor instead of posting. But I don't think it should be gotten rid of. Kim and the other advisors have given me advice that has probably saved my life and I am so grateful for that.
I have views on several things with RYL but I'm just going to keep this to the FAF. We could have a private board for FA, potentially, though I don't know how the technical side would work, but I don't think it would really be used that much and if it were I don't think as many members would get as much out as it as they have in the past or even do now. This isn't about workload or anything like that or the amount of time spent with FA in the past, personally I wouldn't mind it being changed and am open to suggestions. However, 1 thing I have had a LOT of in the past, along with past FA Team staff members is people saying how much we helped them not through our articles or through answering any of their threads but by them being able to see past threads and current ones. They've looked through there and gained info which they've needed there and then (often via searching) or have read stuff that's needed in a later date. It has been suggested before that we make it a private forum like R&V is as well as the picture thread etc but then we miss out on the people who are scared to join up and have read the advice given. We will not give advice to non members personally but we feel our advice should be made available to them. This is more the case with SH/ED related stuff and doesn't really correspond as well with the "General Medical" categories but then should they really be on the FAF? They didn't used to be not long before I joined the team and when V3 started but then that's a whole different arguement for different reasons.
We do give personal advice already in private and it remains confidential. This is via PM'ing any member of the team and whoever you PM will get back to you ASAP. You can also PM multiple members of the team which may give you a faster response. We do also still have our email address though we don't like using it and though I have been checking it more frequently recently it's still not daily and I don't get alerts through like I do with PMs. It's never going to take over that and personally I don't like using it and as a team our stance is always away from using it but it does exst and we can't ignore that.
One thing that's been bounded around for years is whether we open a unified First Aid 'user' and do most of our PMs through this so people PM 'FA' (or whatever the name would be) and then one of us will answer it asap. This has yet to happen but if there is demand for it we can look into it logistically but then we'd still have the problem that it's unlikely that we could all get email alerts from it. The other possibility which has been looked into in the past is us having access to Live Help but due to the personal commitments of the Team I don't think this would work at present, I don't think it ever really will, and also there would habe to be work to separate it between the supporters on there. The only reason I mention this is to show that there are other things that have been brought up in the past and are still currently thought about and so it's not static. Another possibility is the board looking/ acting differently from the rest but I'm unsure how that would work and actually may not in the way threads currently are in the FAF.
The board being available for all to see is really in the best interests of the majority of the users however, I would back anyone who felt that if a way was possible people could ask for advice anonymously however for it to work this probably would need the FA Team to be able to see the username of the poster for each and also this would potentially also have to be the case that forum mods saw the names too.