There are some great FAQs (for members) and factsheets that already exist.  Megan, do you mean on top of these ones?  Perhaps pointers to them on the community section would help encourage people to read them as well.  My usual tactics is factsheet > FAQs > Internet research eg ACAS etc > Search forums > Ask question.

Rachael

What if the 'tags' on community posts were the same tags as on factsheets - so that factsheets (or other docs) could be listed in the right hand column next to a discussion (if relevant)?

Hi all,

I'm new to this community so perhaps can't speak for what has gone before but, for my two penneth I like the communities.  I moderate for a different, non-HR board so I'm very used to the type of system although I do have a couple of technical quarms.  I would really like to see a 'edit' function, so that you can edit or delete your own posts - particularly on the spelling front, or even if you find a helpful link and would like to post in into the existing post.

I do agree that it can be immensely frustrating having the same question posed 16 different ways, when one or two threads would suffice.  However, I suppose people think their situation differs from the thread in some way, hence the new thread.

But, overall, I like being able to read different ways of handling situations - I think it arms you with a good arsenal of potential solutions that you may not have thought of on your own.

Steph

Having just posted a fairly lengthy reply on the employment law board, and used the preview your contribution button only to find, yet again, I can only preview the first two paragraphs (!) I'd like to add my vote for an edit function. Either that or a sensible preview function please!

Anna

Re: Crediting professional photographers images, Steve I appreciate what you say however I do make it clear that I am referring to professionally taken images  from although the applicable law refers to all images

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 made moral rights explicit in UK law. The exact
rights are:

• the right to be identified as the author of the work

Whilst I appreciate the CIPD may have looked into the matter, under the CIPD Professional code of conduct [4.2.2] I and the CIPD

"must act within the law and must not encourage, assist or act in collusion with employers, employees or others who may be engaged in unlawful conduct."

 Hence the reason I and the CIPD cannot let the matter drop.

Hi Mark,

the CIPD introduced alt text for the person using the photo to attribute it appropriately, is that not satisfactory? It is more than any other professional forum offers that i am aware of?

What in your opinion should we be asking the CIPD to do differently?

My opinion is that I'm not referring to other forums and my Code of Conduct doesn't refer to the CIPD, not other forums. Comparisons aren't the issue here, the issue is the application of the law.

Hi Mark,

No I was referring to other sites to see if there was 'best practice' to learn from. So in what way is the current alt text not meeting the law? If you hover over my image you will see it is my copyright - I purchased the rights from the photographer - otherwise it would be their name there. Is this too hidden? One alternative would be for the site to watermark the image with the name of the copyright holder/ photographer?

Edit posts

The option to edit posts for a limited time is a good one - the LinkedIn discussions allow 15 minutes, I think a 1 day limit would be of value on a professional board?

Integration

As others have said improved (smart) integration with other parts of the site would be of significant value. The site already offerers "intelligent" tags as a suggestion - the same technology could put links to jobs, fact sheets or articles in the right-hand margin 

Tone and emotions

While this is a professional board it easy to misinterpret someones tone - it would be helpful if we had limited a range of emoticons which could be used to help convey the tone of the contribution - happy, angry, confused, serious, playful, hurt, embarrassed etc..

Regards, Mike

In response to Steve's original thread, which I haven't had time to get round to until now:

What do I like about "Communities"?

Exchanging ideas; gaining new information (especially from recent recruits to our profession: Free up-dates!); the ability to reach out and help members who, like me when I first involved myself in HR Management, feel like and sometimes are one voice in a company full of louder voices shouting them down; having people provide feedback on advice I've given (especially if it helped) and, as happened this year at conference a few times, having people actually recognise me and discuss things I've said on line or in PM. (o.k, I know it's an ego-trip; have I ever said I was perfect?), and making some good friends among my colleagues and fellow-contributors.

What do I dislike?

People who pursue personal agendas; seek to dominate discussions to prove how clever they are; "put down" less experienced colleagues or subjects which may not follow the "mainstream" of current thinking, or call me "Pete" or an expert (ex = has been; spurt = a drip under pressure). I also dislike requests to provide draft dissertations thinly disguised as professional questions, but have no objections to honest requests for information on which colleagues own research or hypotheses may be based or developed.

I can tolerate the bad spelling etc. (particularly from colleagues whose first language is not English) not least because one of my sons is dyslexic and I may also be so (slightly); I can also tolerate the typo's, since I too sometimes rush off answers between my tea-break and going out for lunch (it's a hard life) and the spell-checker on the site won't download to my work computer. What I don't like are pieces which cut and paste out-of-context extracts from earlier postings with the sole object of putting them under the microscope and demolishing what might have been, in the albeit poorly worded intention and setting of the original phrase, an entirely valid and valuable point or argument.  

What would I change?

Several things about the web-site, not least the unwieldy personal communication system which prevents attachments being sent and often "loses" replies which are mistakenly sent using "reply" instead of through the site.

I would not delete older responses, but I would improve the indexing so that it was not a cluster of confusing "tags" but a proper listing, with references dated and in date-order.

As I have said often before (but without response) I would also change the need for colleagues, particularly junior colleagues, to have people like me as their only source of professional support at all: This is a role that should be carried out far more responsively by our professional organisation itself, as do almost all the other Chartered Professional Bodies. As a Director of my own business (as well as an employee of another) I am inundated with wasted trees turned to junk-mail from CIPD offering courses, seminars and publications but NOT ONCE have I ever had anything, EVER in twenty-odd years telling me what the difference between a CIPD (once IPD) HR Professional and an unqualified/unregistered "Personnel Manager" really is, or why one is better than the other.

Regarding this thread: 

I am most impressed with not just the number of readers but the number of new/infrequent contributors to it not seen elsewhere in Communities. Well done Steve for opening the door to those who haven't sent offerings before (or not frequently). To the various comments of encouragement from colleagues above to timid contributors I can only add a very old, but very apposite truism: That there is no such thing as a stupid question, although a sensible question may get many stupid answers (not least from me).  

Peter   

Mike

If you hover over my image you will see it is my copyright

 Nope, I use Mozilla Firefox, it doesn't happen.

Hi Mark - we are both correct

The alt text is not working in FireFox.. but if you view the source code the alt text is there, so while it works in IE6/7 it does not in FF - but it is there.

What this does raise is the need for the css coding to be more uniform - have a look at the report on http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cipd.co.uk%2Fcommunity%2Fsubjects%2Fsubject%2Fdiscussion.aspx%3FPageIndex%3D3%26PostID%3D95456&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 

I agree there are some formatting challenges (FF and mobile devices) but the CIPD is compliant with image copyright - just not the browser you chose to use as there are style sheet errors.

For fun I checked the alt text on my site in FF and it works fine so there must be a code problem on this site.

Oh the joys of standardisation on the net!

I agree there are some formatting challenges (FF and mobile
devices) but the CIPD is compliant with image copyright - just not the
browser you chose to use as there are style sheet errors.

 I agree and will shut up now, although I can't help thinking we could have arrived at this point much more quickly.

Thanks for the brain fuel. If you've anything to add here, I encourage you to do so this week. Not because I'll be closing this thread, or my eyes to suggestions... it's just that I'll be pulling out the actionable nuggets next week.

Thanks v. much, folks.

S

 

 

I'd like to expand my philosphical point about the 'community'. The CIPD is an organisation to some extent an educational organisation. All memebrs of the CIPD ar emembers of that educational establishment.

The communities are only part of that, only some people pass by the communities noticeboard and post messages, the headmaster and many of the other members dont ever use the noticeboard. It isn't the whole school, its just a noticeboard, with a limited readership, and some of those are more frequent than others.

To call the mechanism of this noticeboard a community doesn't sit right with me. Its just a noticeboard, nothing more.

I'd have to disagree with you, Mark. 

It feels like a community to me, and many many people - members - have expressed the same to me over the past 4 years.

A "noticeboard" - like say your wall on Facebook, is very much "what's in it for ME".

Most people here think of the community as different - "what's in it for US".

Steve