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Conversations User Guide - Organisation
It’s not clear quite how Which? Conversations is organised at first glance, so here’s the lowdown:
Which? Conversations is a domain of Which.co.uk, which is run directly by Which? and has three purposes (we think):
1. The garnering of opinions, ideas and feedback on consumer-related matters and issues.
2. A method of gauging support for campaigns being considered by Which?.
3. As a recruitment instrument for increasing membership and broadening the subscriber base for Which?
Which? Conversations is outside of Which?’s main activities, but links to Which? Connects and the main site.
The management
The site is run by a dedicated team and overseen by Patrick Steen (this isn't supposed to be poetic...) and to see who's a moderator you look at their avatar and their posts.
Their avatars have a red surround and the red theme is continued down the RH side of their posts.
Compared with many sites the moderators here are highly intelligent, extremely well motivated and reluctant to change or remove posts. They're also a font of useful ideas and feedback and put up with our shenanigans far better than perhaps they should.
The main portal is here. The splash page features the most recent and prominent Conversation, and then the page - which is slightly overlong - features a variety of links to the main Which? site, followed by recent Conversations down the LH side and recent comments down the Right.
Fortunately, you can access the ever-useful Recent Activity from the splash page, as well as all the other headers from every page within Conversations.
The structure
Essentially, Which? Conversations is divided into three distinct and hierarchical sections:
Topics - which list the main areas of interest
Conversations (called Convos, to try to make them sound cuddly)
Threads - conversations within conversations.
How it works
Individual 'convos' are, in essence, blog posts; headers written by Which? team members, guest authors or outside specialists. The Conversations are the comments that take place beneath and after the headers.
In some cases the headers are updated as things change, so that can render subsequent comments redundant.
Searching
To produce a list of all the topic in which you might be interested, type this, and subsitute "Care" with whatever topic you're looking for: