What's good about this Community and how can we improve it?

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   

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