VM Community Forum Move

[Carth]

Ever get the feeling that all the big tech and communications companies are slowly reducing their complaints and issues departments until - god forbid - we end up with one large AI driven contact point, where the answers will simply consist of:

A) have you turned it off and back on?
B) delete cookies and re-install the app.
C) we are aware of the issue and working hard to resolve it.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Mr K

Call me a cynic, but I dont think VM ever intended the forum to come back. They want all customer feedback buried, a very long way....

Maybe the reason is because they have shot to the top of the complaints league table:

https://news.sky.com/story/o2-shoots...issue-13543565

[jem]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Maybe the reason is because they have shot to the top of the complaints league table:

https://news.sky.com/story/o2-shoots...issue-13543565

In VM’s case, it was hardly “shot to the top (or bottom) of the table”; they had a hat trick of coming bottom of the annual OFCOM customer satisfaction list!

Don’t know about O2.

[Dude111]

I wonder if they decided not to do it but havent officially said anything yet?

[newapollo]

I've exchanged emails with Kei (the VM community forum manager)

Merging both communities has proven to be far more complex than envisaged so they have gone back to the idea of having 2 communities. They are still being built and tested before being released. Estimated timescales are now around July for the VM community with the O2 Community shortly after.

[daveeb]

Originally Posted by newapollo

I've exchanged emails with Kei (the VM community forum manager)

Merging both communities has proven to be far more complex than envisaged so they have gone back to the idea of having 2 communities. They are still being built and tested before being released. Estimated timescales are now around July for the VM community with the O2 Community shortly after.

Thanks for the heads up the cynic in me still thinks I'll believe it when I see it, but it does look a bit more hopeful now.

[Carth]

Originally Posted by newapollo

I've exchanged emails with Kei (the VM community forum manager)

Merging both communities has proven to be far more complex than envisaged so they have gone back to the idea of having 2 communities. They are still being built and tested before being released. Estimated timescales are now around July for the VM community with the O2 Community shortly after.

The unofficial version:-
After ending the Community Forum, calls to VM call centers increased by over 5000%, causing more stress and hassle for already overworked operators, and increasing phone queue waiting times for other queries. We seem to have cocked up and will be bringing back the Community Forum.
Have a nice day.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by newapollo

I've exchanged emails with Kei (the VM community forum manager)

Merging both communities has proven to be far more complex than envisaged so they have gone back to the idea of having 2 communities. They are still being built and tested before being released. Estimated timescales are now around July for the VM community with the O2 Community shortly after.

So the new improved forum is just trying to resurrect the old one? And it's just an idea, rather than actually happening ? Suspect 'Kei' is a bot, to fend off VIPs and their piffling questions.....

[jem]

Originally Posted by newapollo

I've exchanged emails with Kei (the VM community forum manager)

Merging both communities has proven to be far more complex than envisaged so they have gone back to the idea of having 2 communities. They are still being built and tested before being released. Estimated timescales are now around July for the VM community with the O2 Community shortly after.

OK, so no preparatory work was done to ascertain the degree of complexity and the effort involved beforehand - yes? This would indicate the usual degree of VM incompetence. On the other hand Kei is simply lying to you, or he himself is just as ignorant as to the reality of the situation as everyone else.

Either would be the VM way.

Think about it logically, both VM and O2 want to combined their forums and move away from Khorus. So what would you do? Maybe decide which platform are you moving to, work out the process of doing it, work out how best to merge the VM and O2 communities, there isn’t great deal of overlap, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. Or as an interim measure just copy all of the forums from both together onto a new platform and then gradually merge similar sub forums together.

"so they have gone back to the idea of having 2 communities. They are still being built and tested before being released.”

No, no, I know how this works, what is that smell? Is it sheep, dog, no I know it’s bull, isn’t it?

"They are still being built and tested before being released.”

No sorry, that makes no sense does it, Cable Forum has a fully functional and usable forum with, I suspect a tiny fraction of the resources available to VMO2, it’s being built and tested? Absolute BS! Sorry but it is.

You have been lied to or (possibly) Kei has, who is, let’s be honest, a social media person with probably as much idea of the underlaying technology as my cat does*

I’m just not buying it!

* and I suspect that reference allows you to know exactly who I am - the difference being that VM can’t ban me and delete all of my posts, even the ones that were demonstratively helpful and were ‘upvoted’.

Originally Posted by jem

* and I suspect that reference allows you to know exactly who I am - the difference being that VM can’t ban me and delete all of my posts, even the ones that were demonstratively helpful and were ‘upvoted’.

Not a clue, I guess this is something only people who used the VM forums a lot would know.


Merging two forums is not a difficult task, I've done it at least twice.

Starting one from new is even easier, it can be done in a day.

[Carth]

I'm wondering if he's that Schrodinger chappy, he had a cat, kept it in a box apparently

[Richardr]

Originally Posted by jem

Think about it logically, both VM and O2 want to combined their forums and move away from Khorus. So what would you do? Maybe decide which platform are you moving to, work out the process of doing it, work out how best to merge the VM and O2 communities, there isn’t great deal of overlap, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. Or as an interim measure just copy all of the forums from both together onto a new platform and then gradually merge similar sub forums together.

The bigger issues probably relate around user names and how to merge them. There are plenty of ways of dealing with that though and again that could have been worked out without closing the fora.

When merging forums, the merging of accounts is normally based on email address.

[jem]

Originally Posted by Paul

When merging forums, the merging of accounts is normally based on email address.

Yes, exactly, because although usernames could potentially have been duplicated between the VM and O2 fora, email addresses are globally unique.

Surely they must have realised that potential for duplicate usernames and worked out some means of mitigating against that beforehand.

Like you said before, migrating and merging fora is not exactly a completely new science, yes there are always outliers and a few gotchas, but VM and O2 have apparently been preparing for this for months, so why it has now become ‘difficult’ is hard to comprehend.

Unless, and let’s use Occam’s razor for this, they didn’t actually do any preparatory work, because they never intended for the fora to come back. Or, let's be less cynical, senior management ignored advice from their respective technical people and simply didn't allocate enough resources to the job.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which is the more likely!

[Jaymoss]

surely dupe user names with different emails could simply be suffixed with a number like windows does with files ?