Your ideal hearing aid forum?

I liked a lot of your ideas so thanks for sharing! We have a lot of these ideas planned already, so good to see some alignment with your requests.

I was a bit confused by this one:

@hearingMac said:

13. Less advertising clutter and fewer disguised promotional posts. Manufacturer representatives and industry affiliates should be welcome, but their affiliations should be clearly disclosed.

We don’t have any ads at all when you’re signed in, and I’m not aware of any disguised promotional posts. I’m a little worried that you may have violated our AI disclosure rule with this post

Are there complaints that the current forum is lacking? I honestly think it’s very good already.

If you are doing a complete revamp, I worry that the end result might be worse - at least in some aspects.

It’s not our code, but the site seems snappy to me. I’m on fiber though and have a fast phone. The code is written by the folks who manage Discourse4. Our next forum will be our code.

Just a bone line in the audiogram for me please.

What’s driving the change? I like it as is. I also worry a change would not necessarily be better. Does that mean I’ve become old?

Edit: oh, and please, for the love of God, don’t try to force me into downloading an app. I don’t want an app.

How ‘bout… commenter can mark a check box to indicate that a post is off-topic. Replies to that post are automatically off-topic. Maybe limit the number of off-topic replies in a chain to some number. Users can set a filter to exclude off-topic comments. Just a way of permitting some social back and fortht without impacting those who want to focus on the topic.

I’d like to see Enforced equipment descriptions… no fair to say “Costco aids” for example….so the only way to enforce it is to require it as part of user registration and then provide a clickable retrieval of the information from any user’s name in a post for an expansion of the data. E.g. I could not get away with saying “my Jabra aids” or my KS-10’s. It would have to be spelled out: Jabra Enhance Pro 30, RIE.

@Neville said:

Tricky, because one of the things I like about the forum is that it’s a bit more guys at the pub and a bit less workplace meeting agenda.

I agree, but it makes it difficult to find the useful information without reading a whole lot of posts that I am not interested in just in the off chance that there is some information I need hidden in there. I do agree that the pub atmosphere (usually) makes the forum a lot more fun.

Abram, you asked what people would improve, and I answered in good faith with thirteen specific suggestions. Your reaction to the point about advertising and promotional content was remarkably defensive.

To be clear, I was not claiming that you personally are planting secret paid advertisements in discussions, nor am I suggesting that every audiologist or industry professional who participates here is advertising. Many contribute useful information.

The concern is the broader and very common problem of blurred lines between independent discussion, professional self-promotion, vendor advocacy, commercial relationships, and paid promotion. A simple policy requiring clear and continuing disclosure of relevant commercial interests would protect both the forum and its members. If no undisclosed promotion exists, excellent—then such a transparency policy should be especially easy to support.

In fact, the responses that followed illustrate the larger point rather well. Several members value the informal “guys at the pub” atmosphere, while also acknowledging that useful information routinely becomes buried in threads with unrelated titles and is extremely difficult to find later. That isn’t an argument against improvement; it is an admission that improvement is needed.

A forum can preserve spontaneous conversation while also providing better search, tagging, summaries, equipment profiles, solution markers, and ways to filter digressions. Structure around a conversation does not require turning it into a workplace meeting.

You invited suggestions. If the only welcome answers were compliments and minor cosmetic changes, it would have saved everyone time to say so. Asking for ideas and then swatting at the ones you dislike isn’t really crowdsourcing—it’s fishing for applause.

AI disclosure: AI assisted with organizing and polishing the wording of this response. The ideas, experiences, opinions, and any resulting feather-ruffling are entirely my own.

@hearingMac said:

Your reaction to the point about advertising and promotional content was remarkably defensive.

I didn’t read it as defensive, but rather a bit confused. I never see add content when I am here. Were you referring to something specific, or were you just making a general statement of desires because of things you’ve seen elsewhere, like I was about not being forced onto an app?

A built in tool for censoring confidential information for images being uploaded that prevents disclosure of personal or professional information. The names of hearing care professionals, client names and other personal data should not be published on a public forum like this. It can leave you open to lawsuits. Providing users and admins with the tools to prevent this would help enforce rules like this.

@Neville said:

Edit: oh, and please, for the love of God, don’t try to force me into downloading an app. I don’t want an app.

Absolutely second. If the only way to participate in the forum was on a phone, I would sadly give it up.

Please make requests for software/programming files a separate topic. It is annoying to have to scroll through hundreds of “Can someone please give me the latest…” when all I want it to find information in the DIY topic.