Feedback, Thoughts and Everything Inbetween

Dr Galen

So we've been thinking that it's about time we had a feedback style thread for the forum, to hear what posters think regarding the forum, it's direction, it's content and all the rest.

With all fora, it's important that the ethos and direction is led by the users. By that I mean those who post regularly and those who quietly lurk in the corner. So that's what we'd like to hear about.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread so that if any great points get made, and provoke a proper debate/discussion I can split that discussion out into a thread of it's own so as not to derail the overall thread aim.

The whole idea here is to help provide some guidance to me and Sam, as we'll be undertaking a bit of a Charter rewrite in the next few weeks. Guidance and ideas from you, the users, for that process would be most welcome.

So, time to spit it out lads & lasses

Cheers

DrG

btw, if anyone has something that they wouldn't feel to comfortable posting in public about, feel free to drop us a PM. Just be mindful that unless it's proper sensitive, we'd much much prefer that discussion etc happens out in the open.

nesf

The forum needs more medical advice...

sam34

nesf wrote: »

The forum needs more medical advice...

agreed. I was thinking of opening an ask the doctor thread....

nesf

sam34 wrote: »

agreed. I was thinking of opening an ask the doctor thread....

Cool, so like 2 days ago I was coughing up a bit of blood.

Thoughts?

Dr Galen

Most likely worms.

bleg

I think the direction and style of the forum are both great. We just need more users!

Tree

How about a dummy health forum with locked "ask a randomer on the internet how to sort out my girlfriends crabs problem without her mam finding out" threads, and the health sciences forum nicely set as a sub forum, with SCIENCES in big letters....

sam34

Dr Galen wrote: »

Most likely worms.

feck sake.

don't you know by now that it's nearly always lupus.

chanste

Forum is great as it is. Been very useful to me since I found it about 2 years ago. Regular posters for the most part are very willing to help each other out in any way they can.

eilo1

The forum is great but as pointed out more medical advice is needed.

Also why can you ask for a recommendation for a good physio/chiro/doctor in the Health and Fitness forum but not here?
Seems silly TBH

locum-motion

eilo1 wrote: »

The forum is great but as pointed out more medical advice is needed.

Congratulations on completely missing the sarcasm there!

eilo1 wrote: »

Also why can you ask for a recommendation for a good physio/chiro/doctor in the Health and Fitness forum but not here?
Seems silly TBH

See, the problem there is that you've used the words "good" and "chiro" together! 

Seriously, though; when a specific practitioner is recommended on a forum, anyone else who may have had a poor experience of the same practitioner might come back and bad mouth them. This could open up a real legal can of worms. Much easier not to allow recommendations in the first place.

The PTB would see that particular difference as being a failing on that forum, rather than a failing on this one!

eilo1

locum-motion wrote: »

Congratulations on completely missing the sarcasm there!

See, the problem there is that you've used the words "good" and "chiro" together! 

Seriously, though; when a specific practitioner is recommended on a forum, anyone else who may have had a poor experience of the same practitioner might come back and bad mouth them. This could open up a real legal can of worms. Much easier not to allow recommendations in the first place.

The PTB would see that particular difference as being a failing on that forum, rather than a failing on this one!

Cheers for pointing out the fact I missed your humour.
I do think medical advice (from a qualified medical practitioner) even if it is a simple as see your GP would enhance the forum.

Advice on altering insulin regimes is allowed on the diabetes forum and I would love to see people with specific medical conditions sharing their experiances. The diabetes threads here have been a great help to me.

I have no idea what PTB is, sorry the dyslexia is kicking in.

sam34

see your up is the only advice we permit here.

it's simply not safe for people to take advice on diagnosis and treatment off the Internet from some randomer who has not examined them and doesn't know their history. for all the poster knows, the person may not even be a doctor.

that rule is not going to be changing.

sam34

eilo1 wrote: »

I would love to see people with specific medical conditions sharing their experiances. The diabetes threads here have been a great help to me.

thats what the LTI forum is for. it doesnt fall within the remit of this forum at all.

locum-motion

eilo1 wrote: »

Cheers for pointing out the fact I missed your humour.
I do think medical advice (from a qualified medical practitioner) even if it is a simple as see your GP would enhance the forum.

Advice on altering insulin regimes is allowed on the diabetes forum and I would love to see people with specific medical conditions sharing their experiances. The diabetes threads here have been a great help to me.

I have no idea what PTB is, sorry the dyslexia is kicking in.

It wasn't my humour, it was someone else's. Also, I didn't say humour; I said sarcasm.

PTB = "Powers That Be". Sorry.

bythewoods

This is more of an observation than anything else, but...The education sub forum is incredibly GAMSAT-y, which is a bit upsetting. There's not an awful lot else going on in there, apart from rakes of threads on GEM and GAMSAT, and a lot of them same to be the same sort of thing. I'm sure that's all well and good for GAMSATy-GEMers, but it doesn't make interesting reading for, well, me...and other med students who are already in the system as undergraduates.

Bit of a shame really, as there are quite a few regular posters on boards who study Medicine (judging by the Medicine course thread on the TCD forum alone) and it has potential to be better. Somehow. Probably.

mardybumbum

^^^^^

I agree entirely.

The health sciences education forum is pretty swamped with all things GEM at the moment. I don't blame them though. I remember how enthusiastic I was about starting college and it's a great way to meet people in your class before the year commences. Hopefully they will continue to contribute here once they have all settled in to their studies.

I do think that the "Moving to UCD/UL/RCSI?" threads may have been better suited in their respectable university fora, the only problem being there is no such forum for RCSI.

I think the biggest problem is students themselves. We are a notoriously lazy bunch. I know of at least 3 from my class who regularly peruse boards but are too lazy to register (yes Rob, I'mma talkin to you). There was also a good few of my class who joined before we started first year, asked a few questions and then were never to be seen again.

The summer break is probably a factor in the slowness of the forum at the moment. I'm pretty busy doing nothing for the next 3 weeks as are many other students I imagine. Maybe things will pick up again once we are all back.

All in all, it's a great forum, probably the first one I visit as soon as I login. Admittedly, that doesn't translate into posts, but If I come across anything interesting i'll be sure to post it up.

Slan

opinion guy

bythewoods wrote: »

This is more of an observation than anything else, but...The education sub forum is incredibly GAMSAT-y, which is a bit upsetting. There's not an awful lot else going on in there, apart from rakes of threads on GEM and GAMSAT, and a lot of them same to be the same sort of thing. I'm sure that's all well and good for GAMSATy-GEMers, but it doesn't make interesting reading for, well, me...and other med students who are already in the system as undergraduates.

Bit of a shame really, as there are quite a few regular posters on boards who study Medicine (judging by the Medicine course thread on the TCD forum alone) and it has potential to be better. Somehow. Probably.

Easy fix to this might be to split this education into subforums - one for GEM/GAMSAT and other for those who are students/postgrads

imported_guy

opinion guy wrote: »

Easy fix to this might be to split this education into subforums - one for GEM/GAMSAT and other for those who are students/postgrads

surely an easier fix would be to make a topic if you want to talk about something med study related rather than wait for other people to make one to see if you're interested.... social networking/forum posting is alot different than news papers/tv where the companies know what you're interested in hearing about so they spin the news that way.

Dr Galen

opinion guy wrote: »

Easy fix to this might be to split this education into subforums - one for GEM/GAMSAT and other for those who are students/postgrads

imported_guy wrote: »

surely an easier fix would be to make a topic if you want to talk about something med study related rather than wait for other people to make one to see if you're interested.... social networking/forum posting is alot different than news papers/tv where the companies know what you're interested in hearing about so they spin the news that way.

These are both interesting points.

There does seem to be a growing number of GEM/GAMSAT related threads. Thats great to see, and shows that maybe, just maybe we are becoming a go to place for people considering this. Thats why the Edu forum got set up in the first place.

Would there be enough traffic though for a GEM/GAMSAT subforum?

In a way IG is right. Sometimes we lack the "new" threads that other forums have. Its almost as if we are all too busy or something to start new threads. I know I can be guilty of that. There are loads and loads of things happening in the world of healthcare right now, and we're really not talking about them.

Is there anything we can do as Mods to help provoke people into starting threads?

imported_guy

Dr Galen wrote: »

Is there anything we can do as Mods to help provoke people into starting threads?

well one thing would be move all the "admissions" posts out of "health science education" and move them to post grad/leaving cert (this will take alot of work), and then ONLY allow discussions of journals/classes etc inside the health science education forums and not allow anymore posts on those topics, that maybe harsh and the forum might die out completely though as lets face it, if there were enough people interested in discussing class topics, we would have threads about them (i.e. anatomy/physiology etc, or placements) but that isn't really happening, we only see maybe one or two threads a month on these topics.

lonestargirl

Dr Galen wrote: »

In a way IG is right. Sometimes we lack the "new" threads that other forums have. Its almost as if we are all too busy or something to start new threads. I know I can be guilty of that. There are loads and loads of things happening in the world of healthcare right now, and we're really not talking about them.

It can be hard to have scientific discussions about more 'controversial' discussions. There do seem to be a cohort of people who only post in these topics and contribute to them being led astray and ultimately closed. Now, I know we all have our own areas of interest but it must be difficult for the mods to distinguish between that and an agenda.

Dr Galen wrote: »

Is there anything we can do as Mods to help provoke people into starting threads?

Maybe to inject a bit of life ask a few regular posters to write an evidence based article about a topic in their field? I'd be willing to do a Rad Onc one - it's a field not many people know alot about

Sid_Justice

Make "Gamsat" subforum

Dr Galen

lonestargirl wrote: »

It can be hard to have scientific discussions about more 'controversial' discussions. There do seem to be a cohort of people who only post in these topics and contribute to them being led astray and ultimately closed. Now, I know we all have our own areas of interest but it must be difficult for the mods to distinguish between that and an agenda.



Maybe to inject a bit of life ask a few regular posters to write an evidence based article about a topic in their field? I'd be willing to do a Rad Onc one - it's a field not many people know alot about

It can be alright, but it usually becomes apparent once the thread moves on a bit. We tend to get the big pharma lackeys thing thrown at us a good bit when dealing with the Alt Health type threads. Its very funny really, because if anyone of those posters actualy knew us, they'd know that we are so far from that.

I'd personally love to see some really good, robust and thoughtful discussion on Alt Health issues, with quality posts on all sides.

I think what you are talking about with regards to some discipline specific stuff would be great. Again. something I'd love is if the forum could have an aspect of an online journal club feeling. We tried that ageeeeees ago, and it kinda half worked. Maybe time for another shot at it?

Dr Galen

Sid_Justice wrote: »

Make "Gamsat" subforum

A few people have asked about this, so myself and Sam will have a chat on it and see what we think. We'll keep everyone posted on our thoughts and let people have their input into that discussion.

That cool? :cool:

mcmoustache

I'd like to see a quackery mega-thread. This would be for people who post questions or information about pseudo-scientific stuff. For example, someone might start a thread asking about reiki or acupuncture. Instead of locking/deleting it, the thread could be moved to the "Quackery" mega-thread with a message from a mod indicating that it would be more suited to there. This would prevent the front page from getting clogged up with nonsense and quackery would have its rightful place.

The reason that I would like to see this is that I do enjoy discussions between scientific people and people who believe in various types of rubbish. Especially on fridays when they can be quite funny. I see these kinds of discussions in the CT forum often enough but it would be good to get the opinions of the regulars here.

I haven't thought this through as much as I would like as I have to go now and part of me thinks that this would be unworkable in a scientific forum but I do think that it might be possible to accommodate discussions on nonsense. Keeping them to a mega-thread might just work.

opinion guy

mcmoustache wrote: »

I'd like to see a quackery mega-thread. This would be for people who post questions or information about pseudo-scientific stuff. For example, someone might start a thread asking about reiki or acupuncture. Instead of locking/deleting it, the thread could be moved to the "Quackery" mega-thread with a message from a mod indicating that it would be more suited to there. This would prevent the front page from getting clogged up with nonsense and quackery would have its rightful place.

The reason that I would like to see this is that I do enjoy discussions between scientific people and people who believe in various types of rubbish. Especially on fridays when they can be quite funny. I see these kinds of discussions in the CT forum often enough but it would be good to get the opinions of the regulars here.

I haven't thought this through as much as I would like as I have to go now and part of me thinks that this would be unworkable in a scientific forum but I do think that it might be possible to accommodate discussions on nonsense. Keeping them to a mega-thread might just work.

I would be a headwreck when different topics are being actively discussed simultaneously. You would doubtless have long running rows on homeopathy and chiropractic which would just become entangled hopelessly.

I also think what you call quackery not everyone would agree with. It would be very inflammatory to people who genuinely ask about something they want to learn more about only to be told 'ah yes thats for the quackery thread'

Jessibelle

I'd like to second(third??) the idea of all things GAMSAT and HPAT being put into a further sub forum. Ok I've never been a super regular poster here, but I did enjoy reading threads particularly in the HSEd forum, but recently, I open that, scan the myriad of GAMSAT titles and go elsewhere to read . I appreciate the need for discussion and information for these exams, I've taken HUGE amounts of information from them previously myself, but there's so many now, I feel other topics are drown in them.

Also, love Lonestargirls idea of the EBC discussions, something like that would be great!

ETA: Sorry Dr Galen, didn't see your post previously, that'll teach me for not reading the whole thread...

Sid_Justice

Possibly de-sticky the GAMSAT 2010 thread, there is a GAMSAT 2011 thread already (with the advent of 2012 presumably).

Larianne

Sid_Justice wrote: »

Make "Gamsat" subforum

Definitely! Sometimes you have to hit page 2 before you see any non-gamsat related threads. There are other health science professions/courses y'know. :rolleyes:

:pac:

sam34

Larianne wrote: »

Definitely! Sometimes you have to hit page 2 before you see any non-gamsat related threads. There are other health science professions/courses y'know. :rolleyes:

:pac:

with all due respect, the other health science professionals/students arent very prolific at starting threads. I'd have some concern that if a gamsat forum is made then the parent HSEd forum would be pretty empty.

sam34

OK folks, I'm going to close this thread in the next few days, so speak now or forever hold your peace!

Jessibelle

sam34 wrote: »

with all due respect, the other health science professionals/students arent very prolific at starting threads. I'd have some concern that if a gamsat forum is made then the parent HSEd forum would be pretty empty.

I don't think that's necessarily the case, I know from my own perspective, I put off posting in there because my thread just disappears under a sea of Gamsat stuff. Now fair enough it may disappear in the main forum also without answers, but at least people see/read it

jimdeans

Larianne wrote: »

Definitely! Sometimes you have to hit page 2 before you see any non-gamsat related threads. There are other health science professions/courses y'know. :rolleyes:

:pac:

In page 1 in the education forum there are threads still on there that haven't been posted in since aug 24th,so your threads are unlikely to disappear off the front page.

Tree

IN BEFORE THREAD CLOSED (and other such childishness)

I'd like to see more Sci and less "how much is the doctor, does my pharmacist trust me, I have crushing chest pains should i go to the hospital", but I have no idea how you can drive that.

sam34

Tree wrote: »

IN BEFORE THREAD CLOSED (and other such childishness)

I'd like to see more Sci and less "how much is the doctor, does my pharmacist trust me, I have crushing chest pains should i go to the hospital", but I have no idea how you can drive that.

+1.

we have started infracting people who look for medical advice. theres a big huge sticky about it and its in the charter, so theres no excuse really.

still, it baffles me that people consider it safe to ask for medical advice from randomers off the net. not wanting to sound like a facebook-loving teen, but OMG, like, seriously??

sam34

i think too that we'll have to put something in the charter about how this is not a forum for taking pot-shots at health professionals along the lines of "pharmacists are thieving bastards/doctors are thieving bastards/physios are thieving bastards" etc.

every so often we get a drive by poster with a chip on their shoulder who posts like that. reasonable discussion is fine, obviously, but not sensationalist unfounded crap.

Tree

Sometimes it /is/ tempting to go asking. (and then i hit pubmed to investigate whatever shiny new drug the consultant suggests, so im a terrible example really :-P )

Perhaps there needs to be some sort of site wide mechanism whereby when you try to post in a new forum (or a fourm wehre the charter has been updated) the charter popups up and you have to click each point to prove you read/understood, so when time comes to infract/ban their ass, you can do it big stylee.... (/me lives in a nice fairyland)

Sid_Justice

maybe a new mod who is a bit nicer?

maninasia

sam34 wrote: »

i think too that we'll have to put something in the charter about how this is not a forum for taking pot-shots at health professionals along the lines of "pharmacists are thieving bastards/doctors are thieving bastards/physios are thieving bastards" etc.

every so often we get a drive by poster with a chip on their shoulder who posts like that. reasonable discussion is fine, obviously, but not sensationalist unfounded crap.

Yes over the top criticism is unfounded. But there are legitimate issues of cost that make getting medical attention a problem for many. These are of major concern for patients. Perhaps some professionals here could do with being less defensive.

Tree

I dunno, the title of the forum is "health sciences" not healthcare provision. MOAR SCIENCE!

PhysiologyRocks

Sid_Justice wrote: »

maybe a new mod who is a bit nicer?

I think our mod is perfectly nice.

On topic, maybe another name change to something without the word 'health' in it could help stop people coming on with their medical concerns.

However, I am aware that 'Biology and Medicine' was no better and I have no actual name suggestions.

maninasia

So don't discuss treatment options, don't discuss the healthcare system, what do you care to discuss?

sam34

Sid_Justice wrote: »

maybe a new mod who is a bit nicer?

PhysiologyRocks wrote: »

I think our mod is perfectly nice.

dont worry physiology rocks, Sid is currently banned from HSEd, hence the above little dig :rolleyes:

sam34

maninasia wrote: »

So don't discuss treatment options, don't discuss the healthcare system, what do you care to discuss?

the charter makes it clear what falls under the remit of this forum

sam34

ok I'm going to close this now. thanks to everyone who contributed constructively. I'll have a chat with drg and we'll get back to ye about changes.