Forum Consultation

[Craig]

Forum Consultation - Give your views to help shape the future of this forum.

All users of this forum, including non registered members, are invited to take part in the survey linked below. This is a short 10-question survey to give us a flavour on what you think of the forum and what improvements could be made. The survey is completely anonymous and no personal information is asked from you. Once the survey is closed, all responses will be analysed and, depending on the feedback we get, we may at a future date offer a follow up survey aimed at any specific issues raised from this.

This should only take a few minutes of your time and we appreciate any and all feedback given. The survey is open now and will close after Wednesday 14th June.

Thank you for your time.

www.surveymonkey.com/r/YK639F5

[Craig]

Many thanks to the 92 people who gave your time to answer our survey and provide your useful feedback and opinions on the forum.

I will be posting shortly to share information on the results of the survey, which will help us see what we can focus on to try and improve the forum in future.

[Craig]

Results of the forum survey:
In total we received 92 responses. 79 of these respondents were registered forum users.

52 people said they visit daily, 35 at least once a week and 5 occasionally. However, far fewer people make contributions on the forum: 1 person posts every day, 14 post weekly, 26 post monthly, 29 only occasionally and 9 never post anything (22 if you include non members).

Overall opinion of the forum:
77 say it is great or mostly fine
13 say could see some improvement
2 say major improvement needed

Ease of use:
73 say Good/Excellent, 16 OK, 3 Poor

Design/Layout:
66 Good/Excellent, 21 OK, 4 Poor

Ability to get latest news/information:
63 Good/Excellent, 25 OK, 4 Poor

Ability to share opinion/info:
61 Good/Excellent, 26 OK, 5 Poor

How Welcoming/Friendly is the forum:
58 Good/Excellent, 19 OK, 15 Poor

Standard of Moderator team:
72 Good/Excellent, 14 OK, 4 Poor

Question 6 asked for "areas for improvement" of which 40 people responded. The key topics raised were:
Negativity/trolling/etc (12 comments)
Better fleet reporting including posting or linking to fleet lists (6 comments)
Software issues (outside of TWY control), improvement of colours/layout e.g. board/sub board setup (5 comments each)
No improvement needed/doing a good job (5 comments)
Suggestions to try and get more industry representation and introduce a latest news section
Suggestions to put buses front and centre as the main forum section

Question 7 asked what the forum is successful at, and 42 responded with:
The forum is informative/good for insider knowledge (32 comments)
Service changes and Fleet News (7 comments each)
Sharing history/memories/opinions (2 comments)
The forum is a platform to speak to likeminded people, the forum layout, covering E&N Yorkshire, ability to post freely, "everything" (1 comment each)

The most commonly used sections of the forum are:
Buses (83 use this regularly)
Individual operator boards (69)
Spotted (34)
UK Transport (22)
Trains (17)
History (6)
3 or less people say they use the Planes, Canteen and Gallery sections

Question 9 asked for any additional comments, 17 people responded:
Excellent resource/keep up good work/can’t fault it/similar (7 comments)
Need to address negativity issues (3 comments)
Improve spelling/grammar (2 comments)
Request to have more fleet info, software issues, use of geographic rather than operator boards, a comment from an ex-member stating that they are banned, request to get more industry members, statement that the forum is welcoming to all ages (1 comment each)

Finally, 79 people indicated that they would participate in similar surveys in future.

Initial assessment of responses
We had a good response rate, higher than I had anticipated, it is pleasing to see a good number of members wanting to actively share in the running of the forum. It was a high enough number that meaningful results can be obtained.

Most forum users visit regularly and this along with certain comments indicates that people rely on the site and have it as one of their more frequented websites. However, it is clear that a large number of people don't contribute to the forum or only do so occasionally.

Pleasingly, the 1-5 rating questions showed every aspect of the forum with a clear majority rating of 4 or 5 (good or excellent). The least positive response came from the question asking about the welcoming/friendly nature of the forum.

The responses to any survey tend to skew towards a focus on the areas for improvement and an overall theme here is clearly around the negative/unfriendly perception of the forum. This is disappointing, however I am certainly aware of instances in the past where this has been an issue. A positive conversation between forum members around how this can be transformed would certainly be welcomed and could potentially increase other members desire to contribute more.

Another key area for improvement was the reporting of fleet news. Some people did comment that this was already a strength but many felt that it could be better represented, with a common theme suggesting either maintaining forum fleet lists or linking to others (SOES immediately springs to mind). This would certainly be an aspiration and would require dedication of time but more importantly insider knowledge of members willing to contribute, I'd be keen to know members views on this.

A split issue seems to be around the current board layout, some obviously love it and some want to see changes. Over the years we've tried various permutations of the forum layout and there is always split opinion. The layout has over the last couple of years settled down into what I hope is generally user friendly for most people, but I am always open minded to making changes which a majority of people would find beneficial.

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised by the volume of positive comments on the survey. This indicates to me that overall the forum does not need major changes. Without the survey we wouldn't have known what the overall feeling on this was and we do value the time given by members to help guide us.

So, taking the survey results into consideration, what views or opinions do you have on how we should proceed in order to try and make TWY even better?

[admin]

In light of the recent survey results, the forum rules have been updated. All users of the forum will need to read the revised rules and your continued use of the forum will be deemed as acceptance of these revised rules. The rules generally are unchanged but have been updated to reference particular issues as a result of the recent survey. This step has been taken in order to move towards our aim of being a welcoming and friendly forum for all users. As per the updated rules, the forum moderators will look at and take appropriate action against any content on the forum which doesn't represent this. Hopefully this will provide some reassurance to all forum users that such content isn't tolerated, and all members are encouraged to participate in reporting to a moderator any content which you feel needs to be reviewed, to help us towards eliminating the behaviours demonstrated by a minority of forum users.

In addition, I have created a poll outlining some suggested layouts for the main buses section of the forum in response to comments given on the survey. It would be helpful if you could take a moment to vote on whether or not you like the suggestions.