VM Community Forum Move

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

I wouldn't share account details on a public forum or even with individuals I have only encountered via public fora.

Forums operated on trust and hope a lot, back in the day (we are talking about 20 years ago now!). Concerted efforts at data threat weren’t quite such a thing and more’s the point there was no GDPR legislation, which would make any attempt at organised, verified sharing difficult enough even on a VM owned forum, and an absolute nightmare somewhere like here. I don’t think there’s much chance of us trying to resurrect it. Any such assistance would have to be on trust, unofficial and very much below radar.

[jem]

Originally Posted by Chris

Forums operated on trust and hope a lot, back in the day (we are talking about 20 years ago now!). Concerted efforts at data threat weren’t quite such a thing and more’s the point there was no GDPR legislation, which would make any attempt at organised, verified sharing difficult enough even on a VM owned forum, and an absolute nightmare somewhere like here. I don’t think there’s much chance of us trying to resurrect it. Any such assistance would have to be on trust, unofficial and very much below radar.

Exactly, on the old VM forums, which were run by them, staff members could be easily identified. So if they sent a direct message to customer in response to a post, requesting information to verify their identity, you could be reasonably sure that this was legit. Fine!

On any third-party forum, that level of trust is gone, you have to rely on a forum mod to vouch that ‘generic_user128’ really does work for VM, honestly guv!

But, let’s assume that ‘generic _user128’ really is a VM employee, why would they engage wit someone on a third-party forum, take details and short-cut the official channels - probably a disciplinary offence? The VM forum was considered a legitimate method of raising a complaint or requiring help, and the team on there were empowered to take that on. No third-party forum, including this one, can possibly replicate that; nor should they.

No Chris is right, the old VM forums can't be replicated; at best, at very best, VM employees might be able to give some advice as to how to proceed and what they think your issue might be. But other than that, they are not able to actually take issues forward.

to all of the above, but let’s not forget, this site and its predecessors operated reasonably well in just that mode even before we developed semi-formal relationships with some helpful staff.

NTHellworld rose from the ashes once, maybe it will again.

We had a relationship with them at one time (to pass on issues) set up with/by Simon Duffy, who was NTLs CEO (I think) at the time.

[J_W]

Hi. Long time lurker. Literally.
I used to manage the VM Community. *Ducks and hides*
No really.
The lack of a site is so sad. We used to celebrate it's birthday each year August 11th I think. It would be 17 this year. Old enough to drive away onto Highway 404

The VM forums worked for a couple of reasons.

1. Yes, we were officially there. We would try and work out who you were from your email address and troubleshoot. More info on a direct message. It was a PII and data privacy nightmare and I'm glad I left as the new GDPR rules came in!
2. Peer to peer support. For every answer our team provided, the forum users provided 2 or 3. That was the great. My job was essentially to cheer lead your participation and sharing your cleverness, saying things that we weren't allowed to!
3. Seo. The biggest driver of traffic was always Google. We might have 5000 posts a week, but we'd have millions of page views each year. That is where forums help businesses, by giving people answers before they ever need to post or call.

I still work in communities, and traffic is on the decline - AI LLMs are trawling communities and serving up the answers without you having to click on the site. It's harder to prove the value of investment.

In VMs defence, the migration and merger will have been very difficult. I've successfully managed a number of migrations which have been significantly smaller, and they were troublesome enough

The VM issue is that you could use any old email address to register, so your forum account was not linked to your VM account. If that had been the case, and the same with O2, it would have been easier I'm sure. With the wild west approach to registration it becomes very hard to avoid duplication across two platforms etc.

Anyway, to those of of you I recognise here, hi, hope you are well, and the important thing you can do as consumers and fans of cable is to support each other. The behind the scenes support was the icing on the cake - the real value of community is what we built there, and you built here, together

2.