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Continuous Denigration of our Forum


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  • Senior Member

I don't blame you for protecting your site, Melvin.  If after all these years of online interactions some people don't understand how to be mannered when they have objections to conversation going on at a site, then they will never learn.  They need to go.  Constant disruption is not healthy to a site that is promoting learning.

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If traffic on the site is down it could be mainly due to all of the hair transplant clinics being temporarily closed. There isn't going to be any new patients posting their experiences and questions if there isn't anyone getting hair transplants. The clinics also won't be posting many results either. Hopefully the world will start getting back to functioning more normally soon and we will get a lot more patient experiences and results being posted.

 

Al

Forum Moderator

(formerly BeHappy)

I am a forum moderator for hairrestorationnetwork.com. I am not a Dr. and I do not work for any particular Dr. My opinions are my own and may not reflect the opinions of other moderators or the owner of this site. I am also a hair transplant patient and repair patient. You can view some of my repair journey here.

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Hopefully things will start increasing as the ban on cosmetic procedures was lifted several weeks ago.

Gillenator

Independent Patient Advocate

I am not a physician and not employed by any doctor/clinic. My opinions are not medical advice, but are my own views which you read at your own risk.

Supporting Physicians: Dr. Robert Dorin: The Hairloss Doctors in New York, NY

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On 5/17/2020 at 8:52 PM, Melvin-Moderator said:

Well, the forum is still doing pretty well, the traffic hasn’t really changed. That said, what part of the website do you feel is buggy and clunky? What suggestions do you have to improve the site?

As for staying non-partisan. Being a moderator doesn’t mean not having an opinion. Part of what makes this site great is healthy discussion, and at times you may disagree with what I have to say, and that’s okay. I’m not a politician, I’m not here to please everyone, or to say what everyone wants to hear. I don’t want this place to be an echo-chamber like so many places on the internet.

My job is to keep things fair and balanced, not to a robot who agrees with everyone. As previously mentioned, there will be times when I upset members, because I may need to make a decision for the greater good of the community. If you try to please everyone, you please no one.

That said, I’m really interested to know how you think we could improve the site and make it more user friendly, I’m definitely guilty of being biased with this forum, but I like to hear feedback and constructive criticism, as that’s the only real way to improve.

Melvin, I appreciate your point and I certainly agree that you are entitled to your opinion. However, I would ask that you weigh this against your responsibility to maintain the forum as a neutral ground to encourage hair loss sufferers to visit, and (just as importantly) encourage sponsors to advertise here. If I were in the shoes of a physician considering promoting their practice and I saw the administrator of a site make posts that favored one procedure when I felt they were even, I might be discouraged to advertise there as it would be perceived as a hostile market. This is just my perspective, but I'm really trying to help you see what it might look like to an outsider. Some might perceive it as you using your admin status as a bully pulpit. Especially when many believe that the FUE vs FUT answer is not clear. 

Same thing with controversial topics like COVID response. Whether or not you're right, this is a highly politicized issue and really has nothing to do with the purpose of this site, which is hair restoration. As an admin, your goal should be to administer a site about hair loss. Of course you can express your opinion, but take off the admin hat. It has nothing do with hair and obscures the purpose of the site. I've run forums myself in the past, and regretted every time I got involved with something that took away from the site's true purpose. Users are free to say what they want but I would really suggest you keep your bottom line in perspective. If you have to chime in, do it with a duplicate account and don't comment on your own posts/threads. It's commonplace on reddit and sometimes necessary because status matters so much on forums. The internet is no longer a democracy.

Regarding the formatting of the site, the Reddit format should be followed closely if you can. Allowing downvotes, having a window on window format, and integrating live chat are a few basic points. The quote flexibility structure and image posting are really difficult to work with if you're trying to multi quote or add images.  These revisions could be stitched together in a matter of weeks by someone with decent back end experience in something like MEAN stack. If now is a time that sponsorship has dropped, you could experiment with new formats to bring back former advertisers when this goddamn pandemic has ended. It could be 2021 at this point.

I am really appreciative that you have tolerated my disagreements with you as we certainly don't always see eye to eye. That is a classy move and I respect you for that. I will do my best to curtail my comments as they often can come across in text differently than in my head. My apologies if you believe I am one of the people that has contributed to what you're describing as denigration. My intent is almost always to encourage active discussion and non-groupthink.

Edited by bismarck
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2 minutes ago, bismarck said:

Melvin, I appreciate your point and I certainly agree that you are entitled to your opinion. However, I would ask that you weigh this against your responsibility to maintain the forum as a neutral ground to encourage hair loss sufferers to visit, and (just as importantly) encourage sponsors to advertise here. If I were in the shoes of a physician considering promoting their practice and I saw the administrator of a site make posts that favored one procedure when I felt they were even, I might be discourage to advertise there as it would be perceived as a hostile market. This is just my perspective, but I'm really trying to help you see what it might look like to an outsider. Some might perceive it as you using your admin status as a bully pulpit. Especially when many believe that the FUE vs FUT answer is not clear. 

Same thing with controversial topics like COVID response. Whether or not you're right, this is a highly politicized issue and really has nothing to do with the purpose of this site, which is hair restoration. As an admin, your goal should be to administer a site about hair loss. Of course you can express your opinion, but take off the admin hat. It has nothing do with hair again obscures the purpose of the site. I've run forums myself in the past, and regretted every time I got involved with something that took away from the site's true purpose. Users are free to say what they want but I would really suggest you keep your bottom line in perspective.

Regarding the formatting of the site, the Reddit format should be followed closely if you can. Allowing downvotes, having a window on window format, and integrating live chat are a few basic points. The quote flexibility structure and image posting are really difficult to work with if you're trying to multi quote or add images.  These revisions could be stitched together in a matter of weeks by someone with decent back end experience in something like MEAN stack. If now is a time that sponsorship has dropped, you could experiment with new formats to bring back former advertisers when this goddamn pandemic has ended. It could be 2021 at this point.

I am really appreciative that you have tolerated my disagreements with you as we certainly don't always see eye to eye. That is a classy move and I respect you for that. I will do my best to curtail my comments as they often can come across in text differently than in my head. My apologies if you believe I am one of the people that has contributed to what you're describing as denigration. My intent is almost always to encourage active discussion and non-groupthink.

I really feel that you have my stance on FUE vs FUT mistaken. I do not favor one procedure over the other, and in fact I’ve often advised FUT over FUE. That said, I’m going to speak my own personal truth and state that FUE is in fact a viable treatment, and the growth is similar to that of FUT when performed by the right surgeon. Most of our surgeons perform both procedures with only one clinic being primarily FUT based. 

I really don’t see how I favor one procedure over another. I’m never married to any particular idea. I think it’s important to weigh the pros and cons yourself, but just because I don’t agree with one surgeon about a technique doesn’t mean I favor that one over the other. It’s important to understand that people can change in ideology.

My thoughts have changed a lot since I posted on a very popular thread 5 years ago. I have since become a moderator, and I’ve spoken to over a dozen world renowned surgeons on a personal level about both techniques, and I’ve conceded that FUT is a more efficient technique with on average 5-15% more growth. I just wanted to clear the air, because that is a misconception if you really believe I’m pro-FUE or anti-FUT

As for the format, those are interesting suggestions. Perhaps I’m too old, but I cannot stand the reddit format. Feels very anonymous, which I guess has it’s benefits, but I don’t get the sense of a community. That said, the downvoting is an interesting one. We do have live chat now,  but perhaps it’s not as good. Yes, the multi-quotes need to be improved. Thank you for the suggestions on how we can improve. If you ever think of any others please let me know. I will see if we can implement some of these changes, and if they would make sense for our community.


I’m a paid admin for Hair Transplant Network. I do not receive any compensation from any clinic. My comments are not medical advice.

Check out my final hair transplant and topical dutasteride journey

View my thread

Topical dutasteride journey 

Melvin- Managing Publisher and Forum Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q&A Blog.

Follow our Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube.

 

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10 minutes ago, Melvin-Moderator said:

I really feel that you have my stance on FUE vs FUT mistaken. I do not favor one procedure over the other, and in fact I’ve often advised FUT over FUE. That said, I’m going to speak my own personal truth and state that FUE is in fact a viable treatment, and the growth is similar to that of FUT when performed by the right surgeon. Most of our surgeons perform both procedures with only one clinic being primarily FUT based. 

I really don’t see how I favor one procedure over another. I’m never married to any particular idea. I think it’s important to weigh the pros and cons yourself, but just because I don’t agree with one surgeon about a technique doesn’t mean I favor that one over the other. It’s important to understand that people can change in ideology.

My thoughts have changed a lot since I posted on a very popular thread 5 years ago. I have since become a moderator, and I’ve spoken to over a dozen world renowned surgeons on a personal level about both techniques, and I’ve conceded that FUT is a more efficient technique with on average 5-15% more growth. I just wanted to clear the air, because that is a misconception if you really believe I’m pro-FUE or anti-FUT

As for the format, those are interesting suggestions. Perhaps I’m too old, but I cannot stand the reddit format. Feels very anonymous, which I guess has it’s benefits, but I don’t get the sense of a community. That said, the downvoting is an interesting one. We do have live chat now,  but perhaps it’s not as good. Yes, the multi-quotes need to be improved. Thank you for the suggestions on how we can improve. If you ever think of any others please let me know. I will see if we can implement some of these changes, and if they would make sense for our community.

I'm not going to go through old posts, but it seems at times that you expressed things that I perceived differently. Perhaps I am mistaken.

There is community on Reddit within the smaller subreddits, but certainly you are right. It's the largest forum in the English speaking world so you have a constant flood of new ideas and it is difficult to establish accountability. But that doesn't mean you can't learn from their strategy. Another thought is to encourage the non-surgical side of the site to take market share from the more medical hair loss sites out there. Perhaps you could also collate databases of patient submitted cases, similar to how it is done with surgeon submitted cases.

Also maybe giving us 5 minutes to copyedit our posts after submission before we get the "Edited by <x>" tag. Though probably that would be just for me. 

Edited by bismarck
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1 hour ago, bismarck said:

I'm not going to go through old posts, but it seems at times that you expressed things that I perceived differently. Perhaps I am mistaken.

There is community on Reddit within the smaller subreddits, but certainly you are right. It's the largest forum in the English speaking world so you have a constant flood of new ideas and it is difficult to establish accountability. But that doesn't mean you can't learn from their strategy. Another thought is to encourage the non-surgical side of the site to take market share from the more medical hair loss sites out there. Perhaps you could also collate databases of patient submitted cases, similar to how it is done with surgeon submitted cases.

Also maybe giving us 5 minutes to copyedit our posts after submission before we get the "Edited by <x>" tag. Though probably that would be just for me. 

Interesting ideas, we do have a few of these non-surgical threads on here like @Shifty and @hairlossPA where they’ve posted incredible non-surgical transformations, but perhaps were not doing enough to promote these transformations and encourage others to share. 


I’m a paid admin for Hair Transplant Network. I do not receive any compensation from any clinic. My comments are not medical advice.

Check out my final hair transplant and topical dutasteride journey

View my thread

Topical dutasteride journey 

Melvin- Managing Publisher and Forum Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q&A Blog.

Follow our Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube.

 

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@Melvin-Moderator i made a thread about some forum suggestions more than 2 years ago (wow I’ve been here for that long lol). doesn’t look like it picked up much steam but i think the suggestions I made are solid/valid. take a look when you get the chance.

https://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/topic/50774-suggestionsfriendly-feedback-on-the-forum/?tab=comments#comment-468813

 

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