Health pages?

Question

What happened to the health pages?  I'm not seeing them anymore.  Am I just missing them...?

Corriel · Answer

Do they not have some obligation or at least courtesy to give us the files somehow or at least a head's up before removing the info entirely?

I am very disappointed that the CLs were not kept in the loop for such an important decision. You are doing your best to get us answers so thank you!

P.S. Pastor Dan it is great to see you back, I hope you can stick around for a bit. :-)

Thanks again JJ and immisceo for all that you are doing, it is much appreciated.

Corrie

supermum_ms · Answer

Hey you, so nice to see you!!

hmmm it makes no logical business sense to me but from what i understand, it's related to the new mobile remodelling fazes, space, incompatibility.....sorry if that doesn't make it any clearer, i'm really sorry but it's a slippery conversational slope for me to be engaged in any further.

Cheers.........JJ

PastorDan · Answer

Sorry for jumping into an issue after having been AWOL for so long (but hello, everybody!), but after reading this thread, I'm left with this silly question: Has Management offered any seemingly truthful explanation as to credible perceived negatives of keeping the HPs around?

supermum_ms · Answer

babe hang in there with us please, some of us are working on 'something' that I'd like you to be a part of.....hang in there!

Hugs........JJ

ps i'll be hitting 5000 by the end of the year but hey i know nothing about what this community needs lol jaded not

immisceo · Answer

General FYI

Cached pages are found by copy/pasting the entire URL, not just what the site default highlights in blue. It has to be the whole thing.

immisceo · Answer

You can get the titles of the first page's (I think there were four or five altogether). 

https://web.archive.org/web/20141010201941/http://www.medhelp.org/tags/show/7687/Multiple-Sclerosis?section=health_pages

Then you can do a google search of the article's title and choose the drop-down 'cached' option in the search results. Like so: 

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LN5gXmkc-0IJ:www.medhelp.org/tags/health_page/7687/Multiple-Sclerosis/Diagnosing-MS---The-McDonald-Criteria-Revised-2005-CHART%3Fhp_id%3D506+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

But this is the best I can do, and it doesn't not take into account anything other than the first page of the former 'Health Pages'.

Look, it's one thing for 'them' come to a decision I do not see the rationale of. It's another to make no announcement, give no time to C&P the pages, and to feed me nonsense for years. My link above is not the first time I was given the 'looking into it' response. 

This past week I hit my 1000th post. I can't imagine the site will be around for me to hit 1000 more. Absolutely gutted by this.

immisceo · Answer

This is extremely disturbing.

supermum_ms · Answer

Up until a few days ago, we could still gain access via googling 'medhelp MS health pages' but access seems to now be continually redirected, I have not been able to find them on the net any more but i am looking for loop holes! As to the comment given, unfortunately i can't comment with out getting in to trouble but given the benefit of the doubt, it's possible the responder is unaware though still not impressed regardless....

Artanis12 · Answer

Well, that's disturbing, knowing that the decision had apparently already been made, and yet seeing the chirpy BS answer given several days ago to immisceo.  If the decision had been made, they could at least be up front about it.

In the meantime.... 

Do any of you remember the actual titles of pages?  If so, you might be able to find some of them for a limited time via the Google cache. But my little experience with the cache says a very limited time.  I suggest it just in case there was some stuff there that someone could go fetch (if they don't have a copy) save off, and then use to cut and paste answers/sets of answers from in posts going forward.  It seems like a lot of work went into them, I hope all that typing and thinking, etc, is not now all for naught.

Karen

supermum_ms · Answer

Morning everyone,

Unfortunately!! The health pages war of 2015 was lost.....the years of battle was long, extremely frustrating and there are still ruffled CL feathers floating in the wind (especially mine!) but the end result was that the powers that be, despite our logic and pleas made the decision a few months ago, to scrap the HP's once and for all.  

Sorry folks, I tried I truly did but there was and is nothing we can do, to change what is.....

Frustrated.....JJ

Artanis12 · Answer

Well, button or no, it appears that they are well and truly gone from wherever they were situated on this site, which as fora go, is pretty kludgey as it is.  And yes, these kinds of issues are often caused by someone who has been tasked with but doesn't really know how to properly do site maintenance.  I hope they find them and that they didn't get thrown into the old bit bucket with the last maintenance.

Corriel · Answer

If we need a petition to show their value, I would totally sign it to get them back. :-)

They are incredibly helpful.

immisceo · Answer

If it is maintenance (as I suspect), they're in no rush to sort it out. I guess they don't have anyone on the payroll who directly deal with this. Perhaps they outsource this kind of stuff. Or don't, as the case may be. 

No, they're not controversial. In fact, traffic delivered to this site can be greatly influenced by clicks on health pages that showed up on search engine results. In other words, allowing them to go AWOL is akin to throwing away money, from a business perspective. 

From our perspective, it's gutted a pillar of our community. We can no longer direct users to high quality articles written by people who know what people come here looking for, Instead, we have to write similar answers from scratch each time, which can be exhausting after a while. 

I think Ess or JJ mentioned something about new ownership a while back. I don't know that much in detail. All I know is this is a five minute fix that isn't being done. Alas.

Artanis12 · Answer

Thanks for the heads up.  

Interesting. I had no idea this was an ongoing issue.  Are the health pages controversial in some way, or is this some sort of poor site design/maintenance issue do you think?

immisceo · Answer

I posted about this recently on their "Improve MedHelp page: http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Improve-MedHelp-Suggestions/MS-Community-Health-Pages/show/2698190#post_13052567

I hold about 15% hope that this will ever be rectified. Whoever owns the site seems to be quite content having it whither on the vine, which is beyond a pity.

Corriel · Answer

Apparently they've disappeared again. I think the community leaders are still trying to work it out with MedHelp. Hopefully they will have success. Those pages are very helpful.

C.