What we’re learning from the Survivors’ Forum survey

[Site Moderator]

Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to fill in our survey so far, we’ve had some incredible responses and we’ll be analysing them in full after the survey closes next week but we thought it would be good to share a sneak peek:

“The forum is the only place where I can meet women who understand exactly where I am coming from and I understand them. For all the expertise of professionals, no-one has been able to support me like the women on the forum.  I learnt everything I know about abuse either from the forum or from sources recommended by the forum.  The women have been my wisdom and my strength.  In giving back to the forum by supporting other women, I feel that I can make a small difference in the fight against domestic abuse.”

Not only is it useful for us to understand what the forum means for you so we can communicate this to a wider audience like funders and policymakers, but your comments in this survey help us decide on the future direction of the forum. For example, we’re reviewing and updating the Frequently Asked Questions, Terms and Conditions and our internal moderation manuals so they better reflect your needs, we’re working on digital developments to make the forum more accessible for disabled women, and we’re looking at redesigning parts of the site to ensure the user experience is as easy as possible.

If you want to provide your feedback on what the forum means to you and what you’d like to see from this community in the future, please fill in the survey by Friday 27 May.

All answers are anonymous, and if you are worried about someone seeing what you have been doing online, use a different computer, either at a local library, internet café, at a friend’s house or at work. Please see our information on covering your tracks online.

[Anonymous]

Awww I like that 💗💞💗

[Twisted Sister]

…on feedback, can I please ask something here for consideration?

That instead of blanket replacements for numbers/words that may give identifying information, like if I were to say “I left my abuser 3 weeks ago”, and instead of doing this “I left my abuser [DETAILS REMOVED BY MODERATOR]”

That the message is a little more context sensitive, so as to allow for other readers of the message to get a little bit more of the gist of what help / situation the user is posting about?

All I mean is something like “I left my abuser [LENGTH OF TIME] ago”, just so that if the user was actually posting about something specific that got removed/moderated for reasons of identifying, at least the subject could be a little easier to follow for us to then give more sensible answers?

Is this making sense? Another example may help explain “I left my abuser who said I’ll hurt you!”
so…”I left my abuser who [THREAT OF HARM] – something alone those lines? Probs not the best example to explain it, but hopefully you get the gist, just so that more useful answers can be given?

Thanks for offering the survey and I hope you get lots more replies.

TS

[gettingtired]

I agree that this would be really helpful. It’s difficult to make sense of some posts when the details have been removed. I understand why they have to be but your suggestion is a great idea. In some cases I’ve not actually commented on posts because it was too tricky for me to figure out what was going on and I’d hate for anyone to miss out on getting support x

[Twisted Sister]

…also, not looking for an answer…just something to add into your feedback, thanks

[Lisa]

Good Afternoon, thanks both for taking the time to give us your feedback. We will certainly take these suggestions into consideration.

Best wishes

Lisa

[Author]

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