Your ideal hearing aid forum?

Yeah Rick, something sticks in my mind for 2007?Of course, that could be delusional, and it’s basically lost in the mists of time, it isn’t important, but I do recall something about previous data being lost, around the 2011 period or slightly later than this, most likely during a forum upgrade? My memory isn’t what it once was, it sometimes plays tricks on me Cheers Kev

I’d like to be able to search within a displayed thread. Usually I do this with the browser find-in-page function, but that doesn’t work reliably in Discourse because of how threads are displayed.

Thanks for your work and having the ambition to make improvements.

I would like the ability to easily filter posts. Is the post specific to a particular brand or is it a more generalized topic? Is the post pertinent to typical users or only the DIY people with fitting software? Does the post make descriptive comparisons between makes & models that would help me decide on my next purchase? Etc.

@hearingMac said:

12. Transparent expertise labels. Audiologists, hearing-aid specialists, engineers, experienced DIY programmers, and ordinary users should be identifiable, while still making clear that credentials do not automatically make every answer correct—and lack of credentials does not make lived experience worthless.

I think if you want to list your background on your user profile (which we already can) that serves the same purpose. As far as putting up a disclosure banner or pop-up instructing which users’ advice should be considered more than others, this seems to be at best tenuous, and at worst counter to the whole point of a forum. We all have different lived experiences, even clinicians, which is why the equal playing field of the forum is so great. Besides, even now without such a disclosure there is no shortage of instances where users disagree with (or occasionally straight up insult) Registered Providers.

As a newer, and likely younger than average by a fair margin, user here, the standout feature to me has been audiograms being easily visible, and other details available easily for posters that choose to share them. I’ve been using this forum as a primary source when exploring my recently discovered hearing loss, and many suggestions around allowing more complex categorization for both users and posts feel like they would make a great difference.

Seeing at a glance who has experience with the aids or symptoms I have would be greatly helpful. Better support for DIY topics, like I’ve seen suggested here, would be great as well. As a highly technically inclined user, this space embracing the power users would be great, and knowing an experienced audiologist had control over the development and direction would help bring confidence that the space is being responsible about it.

If you’ve got the will to do it, being a space that can responsibly host discussion for DIY users would be excellent, as I anticipate going that route myself eventually, especially if my hearing continues to decline.

I saw a suggestion for versioned hearing profile history and I strongly second it. Having robust access to that sort of history would be great.

I’ve seen many forums with a “chosen solution” feature that many threads here would’ve likely benefitted from. Seems like it would be technically easy to implement, and is standard on many forums.

If you choose to discuss it here, I’d be very keen to hear about the architecture behind the new forum. It’s an ambition project, I hope to get to see it develop!

Thanks for the pointer to the search option. A while ago I tried scrolling through threads to load them, but it seemed like it would unload posts I’d already scrolled past, so it never had the whole thread in memory at once.

Ooh! Goodie! Now if I disagree with someone I’ll just mark their post as off-topic.

Not really, but my past as a security engineer leads me to look for the bad parts of ideas.

Overall, I think it has been a good and useful forum.

Less arguments and less that some have to force their beliefs. Just the facts. Yes we are all individuals and need and have our own experiences. How about some understand that there are many possibilities and not just one. I have gotten tired of expressing my experiences just to be told I am crazy, mabe not in those words, but still the same meaning. I understand that my experiences are greatly different than many on here. Lets see more help and less demeaning others.

What’s the reason for the revamp? What are you guys trying to achieve with it? Or is it simply a migration to a new (more efficient? effective? feature-rich?) platform and you’re “checking the pulse”?

(With @wtolkien here that the forum is already very useful and seems like very much appreciated by the community - thanks for that! Being a fairly occasional visitor, my needs are dramatically different from those of “frequent flyers” and “superusers” like @hearingMac (quite a write-up with a lot technical details!) - so the first question that popped into my head was, why the change? In my line of work - no changes are executed unless the “why” is clearly articulated )

Thanks all for the positive feedback on the current forum guys. Worry not, we’ll ensure all the positives that you point to carry through to the new one. In fact, you pointing out what you do like is great because we can ensure we ship those things. Regarding the why @kindzmarauli, I mentioned if you scroll up a bit

@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.

May I add a SECOND to that suggestion?!?!? I already have phone apps and login accounts for my car, hearing aids, Brother P-Touch label maker, home automation: lighting, media, shades, pool lights, landscape lights, for my irrigation system, music system, navigation, hot water heater, security cameras, HVAC, email AND calendar, AND all the medical clinics I go to (for scheduling, patient profile and forms).

If one more person or device requires a phone app with login and snoopware to be hacked by nefarious AI programs, I will jump in the canal outside and take a deeeeEEEEEeeeeep breath of swill.

Don’t worry, no app download at all… maybe one day it will be an option.

The current forum appears on my (Android) home screen. It’s not an app but it looks like an app, quacks like an app… I can’t remember what I did to put it there, but if that can be replicated, that’s good enough for me.