Hi, just some feedback. I do not live on my phone, social media or, indeed, here, but when I do come here, I expect to read about things here, NOT on other social media sites (which I do not participate in because I either do NOT have time to do so or do not want to!) So why, especially lately, do I see an interesting story or headline, on this site, which is locally related and grabs my attention, that I have to click on to be able to go outside of this site, to read?
Not good, in my opinion, as a time-limited local person.
I want to read stuff here, not click from here, to read stuff.
Anyway, my choice to either click-on or read (what there is, here) My choice is, obviously, to read here, NOT OTHER MULTI-MEDIA WEBSITES.
Please delete my account details AND remove all traces of my account.
Really not impressed with having to click elsewhere to read things
Hi @Scorpion, sorry to hear you feel this way. I know it’s inconvenient to land on a site only to have to click again to see what you came for.
We tend to link to other sites from here if the discussion is already happening over on those sites, or if those sites have originated some news content and we want to give them credit (and the traffic they deserve) for doing so.
We aren’t always able (for various reasons) to copy and paste content from those other sites, even if we wanted to.
This is particularly the case with certain Facebook groups, from whom we have received legal threats when reproducing their content here.
Personally I feel this forum would be poorer if we weren’t willing to occasionally link to interesting stories on other sites.
I’m sorry to hear that too @Scorpion.
I would be interested if you have the time to provide a couple of links to topics that you think are part of the problem, at least so we can learn if things could have been done differently and can be improved in the future.
Personally I feel this forum is poorer for linking stories on other sites.to here, that are only click bait.
Anyway, that aside, as I know from past experiences by others, on other websites, a loosing battle/non-existant support. I wish for my personal details to be removed and past participation ON THIS FORUM, ALSO. tHANK YOU
That escalated quickly.
Personally, I like seeing links to other sites and stories. I only click on those I’m interested in. Mostly they’ve been history related, or photos, but I wouldn’t have learnt about the Aldi generators or the fact that there’s a Sydenham Community Facebook Group with allegedly over 3000 members without links from here. Though that last one’s a “private” group, so it’s not an open community and I can’t see more than just the front page.
well good for you, I personally have lack of time, hence why I use a local (SE23 site). No worries, I now know its not really a local site for news. I do wish my personal details would be removed asap though. Thanks and regards
Maybe you would be kind enough to suggest a better source of news about Forest Hill for members that does not involve Farcebook of Twatter ?
@Scorpion Queen. I believe the content is curated by the local people of Forest Hill so other than sending them all on a MULTI-MEDIA refresher course I’m not sure what you expect to be done about it. It’s also common practice to add links for further information such as to news sites and social media since before the millennium bug. May I suggest a local newspaper?
Chill out.
Big fan
@chamonix, please note from the site FAQ:
Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.
And also @Estelle_Lauren:
If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.
Obviously it’s sad that a member has requested to leave the site, but may I request we all maintain a positive and respectful tone. Thank you.
I’m not sure what this really means, but perhaps you are referring to the fact that the site owner and operator @anon5422159 no longer lives locally - from his bio on this site (try clicking the name link to see it):
I lived in Honor Oak Park between 2013-2018 and met awesome people there, discovered great restaurants, and enjoyed the parks and surroundings.
One of the moderators is also a former resident having moved out to less hilly lands.
It would be sad though if the expectation is that one has to sever all connections with the community when moving away, especially when these guys donate their time and resources into helping provide the site and keeping it running for the benefit of the community.
We have already PMd you with the next steps, please respond to the PM.
From my viewpoint, I thought that both of these posts were fair comments and with due respect (or, at least, not overtly rude) to the op.
I thought it was a shame to lose someone who, over the years, has been a valuable contributor to this community forum but I have to say that I was disappointed that her point in this case wasn’t made discretely to the moderators via a pm, not least because, ironically, it was possibly (?) as irrelevant to most readers as what she was complaining about.
I also wish Scorpion well.
Each to their own and all that, but what I find odd is her rather extreme reaction to doing something that takes no time at all. Plus, it’s not as though every thread on here is now a link. Or have I missed her point?
I think this paragraph probably explains it (but I don’t understand it).
Confused. What does the lack of support have to do with clicking on threads? For me, the forum’s an invaluable source of local knowledge wherever it’s from, so really don’t care if I get taken elsewhere for a minute or two.
You can’t please everyone - delete them and we can carry on enjoying what is a very helpful group of forums.
The outcome may have been dramatic, but the underlying concern expressed by the OP is one that I share. Over the last year it feels that far too many topics originate from ‘sock-puppet’ like accounts.
You only need to have a look at the 2019 on SE23.life topic and see that four of the top ten (two of the top three) accounts starting topics are system accounts or bots. Together they account for 34% of the posts from within the top ten. If you throw away the account posting only about adult education classes then those four accounts are responsible for almost half the topics created by the top ten. That leaves only five of the top ten accounts originating topic actual people.
Heavy users will recognize there are other contributors, but surely to those like the OP who dip in and out they are more likely to be confronted with some system sock puppet or bot.
Well if the system’s own top ten list is to believed, content is not being curated by local people. And I agree… links can be helpful for FURTHER information. It can “add to the conversation” as we so often are advised by moderators. But increasingly OPs are themselves links, with no context provided other than the occasional quote from the article.
It didn’t take me long to chose at random some like these:
Similar (if not more so) on pretty much every local community Facebook group I’m a member of.
By system accounts and bots?
The bots are intelligently picking out stories that local human beings have chosen to share.
Trust me, I’m not clever enough to deploy a fancy algorithm that can actually “system generate” local news! 
Regardless of the intent, my point Chris is the predominance of bots and system accounts creating content can be off putting. It clearly was for the OP, it has begun to bug me and I know past members have also found it a bug bear.
That Facebook groups do this is rather moot, particularly as this site seeks to be “better” than those.
Anyways… feedback fed back. Your welcome.
I rarely click on a link unless there’s a covering post, preferably from someone whose name I recognise, explaining why I might find it interesting. Conversely, I rarely include a link in my own posts. I think people’s personal news and opinions are generally more interesting than dreary acres of second-hand stuff.
Personally I like the fact that we can see content and news from alternate sites, it means coming here you get a good overview of local news.
It does feel odd to respond to some of them, which is why I suspect sometimes there is less discussion after these posts, but that does not mean they are not useful.
I think as always finding the balance is key between overloading the site with threads generated from bots to not having those threads and people like myself not really on twitter and some other groups who can be informed of local news they might otherwise miss.
For me, as long as the news is local I’m happy to see it, and if I don’t want to see it \ read it it’s easy enough to scroll past it.
To be honest, I think you should check your definition of sock-puppet @starman.
It is true that there are a number of new topics created under system accounts, but these are backed by real people and are in fact the outcome of the curation system where me @ForestHull, and @anon5422159 review various news sources and then pick, format and summarise them before posting for the benefit of the forum. Similarly content is sometimes cross-posted from sibling forums where it maybe relevant e.g. Aldi Generators.
The curation system was announced some time ago, and I think works well to bring relevant and useful content into one place on the forum:
Perhaps we don’t always get it right, but as far as I’m aware, no one is paying to read this forum and we made no guarantees on quality or completeness of content. Constructive feedback is however welcome.
I see it like news reporters. If only local news reporters could report on local news, we would all be poorer, wouldn’t we? And besides, how do you know what proportion of those topics were curated by ‘outsiders’ and not me (I currently live in se23, not that I think that is really relevant).
Well, as the FAQ says, if you see a problem, do please flag it. That’s a really good feedback mechanism for letting moderators know what the community feels should be looked at.
It’s true to say that there is some manual intervention in what the system accounts do, though, isn’t it?
Really it is quite manual in fact.
Basically the system collects various new feeds and presents them in a very raw form in a list to be ‘approved’ or ‘rejected’. Depending on the source, these items are attributed to different system accounts.
Quite a lot of stuff that comes through is duplication - the same things being rehashed by various news outlets and such, and so we check and drop those. Other things are irrelevant and so are similarly rejected (did you know there is a Forest Hill in Victoria, Australia and also Forest Hills in Queens USA?)
Finally the things that are worthy of posting usually require a neat link, quotation and possibly an introduction paragraph to make it useful to the forum, as well as categorisation and tags.
Personally I always aim to try and quote in context and without bias, and to faithfully link back to the original source. I will not reproduce an article wholesale, as I believe the original news site and journalists deserve the recognition (and ad revenue).
Apologies if this lifts the lid on a mechanical Turk of sorts, but I think this benefits the forum and community as a whole, and is as the Internet and hyper-link was intended.
I so don’t care about the techie side of how the links get here. I’m just glad they do. I don’t use Twitter or Facebook and had never heard of the local community group with over 3000 members [Sydenham SE26 Community] that was linked to and kicked off the thread on the Aldi Bell Green generators. And I still can’t view that organization’s webpages as it’s a private Facebook group, whereas SE26 and SE23.Life are open to all.
So without the link on here I would never have known about the Aldi generators.
And unlike another forum that I shan’t name, the OP on this thread could choose to leave, which is a shame for the rest of us but her choice. The other place is the Hotel California of fora: you can check in but you can never leave.