An update: PMs, new Thorn Tree and a member survey

Hi everyone,

It's been a few months since we announced impending changes to Thorn Tree, so it's time we gave you an update.

There's been a team of developers and designers working away on a new version for a little while now. Here's the headlines:

Launch date
We hope to launch a beta version in February 2014. This is not an iron-clad guarantee, but it's where we're aiming for at the moment. We'll keep you updated if this changes.

PMs
The new Thorn Tree beta will include the return of private messages. As we've said over this past year, the mods have missed them too – party time.

What will the new Thorn Tree look like?
It will contain the same features and a similar page layout, tweaked to look a bit more 2014, not 2006. It will contain a few new or returning features, including the following: the ability to link to individual posts, add personal blogs to profile pages and a My Recent Threads panel that (fingers crossed) will actually work.

Will my old posts be migrated across?
Yes, we will be moving across all content currently on Thorn Tree, if not more – watch this space.

Will my post count change?
Yes, it may. Unfortunately this is unavoidable due to the way we have counted posts in the past. If you've posted on a thread that was removed by a mod, the post is currently still counted in the total. This will change in the new version of TT, so your post count may go down when we switch across. We're sorry about this but think that it should affect members fairly equally.

Why are you doing this? If it ain't broke...
You've probably noticed that Thorn Tree is quite broken at times! And it's not just that way for regular members – if you could see the back end of it, you'd understand why the mods seem grumpy sometimes. The new platform will mean that mods can spend more time being mods and participating in the community, and less time being an IT help desk. It should also increase our defences against spammers.

We'll be conducting user testing of the new Thorn Tree online with members (and non-members) and in person with those who can make it to our London office (we're still located at the BBCW offices). We'll announce how you can get involved when the time comes.

In the meantime, we'd like to hear about what you think of Thorn Tree now, and consult you on some ideas we've got for the future.

The survey below will be running for the next few weeks. We'd appreciate it if you could spare a few minutes to tell us what you think. The info you give us will be used to prioritise future work as well as get a sense of where we could do better.

Here's the survey: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1445316/Thorn-Tree-member-survey-November-2013

That's all for now. If you have any further questions or want to discuss this with us, pop along to the main discussion on Community FAQs - this thread is locked so we can host the discussion in one place.

Just a note to say that we've had a really good response, on which I'll report back on once we've gone through all the comments.

If you haven't yet taken the survey, now's your chance. We're closing it off at midday Thursday 5 December, GMT.