I'm just curious how you folks handle PMs from newbies.

I get quite a few of them and usually do not mind helping out and answering. For fear of this becoming a rant or something that will get locked, I'll just generalize, but I get a lot of messages that are more along the lines of "justify this surgery to me" or "do my research for me" or "give me the magic answer for my weight loss pace/struggle/scale woes/etc." and similar things. I get plenty of folks that actually have a similar situation or stats and feel more comfortable sending a message off there. And of course I love comparing stories with other folks that have reached goal or are close to it and have seen a post of mine and want to talk more about it privately.

I feel like there's a line here, too, and I walk too close to burning my self out completely on VST sometimes. I have a life outside of WLS - a new baby on the way, five year old twins and I just moved 8,000 miles and am staying in my in-laws house until my husband can join me and we can start the final leg of our journey. And we still have to find a place to live!

Ninety percent of why I'm active on VST really is to help other people out, but I am not Google, you know?

What ways have you other vets found to deal with this kindly and politely? I do want to help but the vast majority of PMs are about things I've discussed on the forum already and that other folks have talked about a million times, too. But I'd also feel guilty just deleting messages or ignoring them, too.

~Cheri

Regardless of where the FAQ is, people won't find it and will need to be linked to it. I think most people use the app, and sticky threads in the app are on a different tab (I didn't even notice them at first). I like the idea that only vets can post, but I think the way that threads work is that someone has to go in and edit the first post to add things that people have put in the comments. Maybe you guys could talk to Alex about it. Maybe he could make a webpage on here that was not a forum post, and you guys could put things there. Or you could maintain it on a different website like someone's blog and just link to that.

(I feel a bit guilty posting here because I'm not a vet, but I have been involved in a lot of forums and websites)

I agree with all the points mentioned above and I'm in middle of rectifying the situation. We're going to have actual pages of just content that are outside the forum but still part of the web site. Some will be info about surgery and the others will be a help section on how to use all the features on the site as well as the app. I'd be very happy to add a FAQ area as well. We're also coding our own app from scratch and we've fixed the sticky issue you mentioned in the beta app being tested by some of our members. We'll have the ability to display any data from the site within the new app once it goes live. I think most members will be (pleasantly) surprised once we roll out the new community we've been working on the last few months.

That sounds so good, and I can't wait! How do we find out how to help with the site? I really appreciate all of the hard work you put in behind the scenes.

That sounds so good, and I can't wait! How do we find out how to help with the site? I really appreciate all of the hard work you put in behind the scenes.

Just take it easy and rest up until we launch the new community. We can get started once it's live. There will be tons to do at that point....

I'm looking forward to seeing a FAQ section that can be provided as a link for quick answers. Sometimes I spend a lot of time digging for something I saw two years ago that someone is asking about again.

New community, that sounds a bit scary but I'm open!

Lynda

Can't wait to see the new community . I hope it's not too much different than this one .. We always complain until we get used to a new format. It's hard at first..