Member & Website News
We had a copyright issue, now resolved but the way we handle old articles has changed. We had a plan for questions@pdpla and 'recommended suppliers' but that may not work. And we had a glowing appraisal of several members. Read on for a brief explanation.
The Detail
Apparently one of the images used in an article we published in 2016 was licensed to Alamy and we had not paid to use it (normally we use 'creative commons' / free to use images or we use with the owners permission – but this one slipped through the net and no one had noticed in the past decade).
Sadly, one of the 'licensing rights agencies' uses tools which search the internet for images in their clients libraries and alighted on the image in question. This resulted in a charge of over £400 (we have never paid more than £8 for an image on the odd occasion where we have had to buy them in the past). This amount clocked up quite rapidly as we did not respond immediately but after some negotiation, the agency finally settled on behalf of their client for £200, which considering we are all volunteers and this is a membership organisation and the image was only likely be seen by members and then not recently, we considered a lot but it was far better than some of the figures mentioned (which we presume were based on blatant misuse of someone else's image in national TV advertising campaign or similar).
To avoid this issue in future, we have removed all images from articles on our website pre-2020 and all those articles will be moved from 'public' to 'member only'. As there are now 2,012 articles, we will be looking to implement an AI interface to allow members to query that vast repository without having to stumble through the fairly primitive search function that we have today. If you have any thoughts or comments on this approach or suggestions for other improvements, do let us know.
When a member needs help, maybe a recommendation for a trader, we have a 'recommended traders' page which comprises whatever you as a member may have added, along with feedback and ratings from other members. It works well but often lacks the currency embodied in requests like 'my boiler just broke, who can I call who is really good and happens to be free today?'.
This is probably why the
The issue has always been, once you have seen a question, you respond directly to the questioner or do nothing and only the questioner gets to see the answers. We have tried in the past to ask questioners to collate and let us know the answers so we can share, but sadly that rarely happens. The alternative, of using a solution where everyone sees every answer via email is contrary to our policy and trying to minimise emails and would probably cause more members to 'turn off' such notifications to remove the volume of emails than the number of members it would help.
'Forum' solutions have been proposed over the years, but typically they fail because they email updates to everyone – what we wanted was a questions@ front end as today, a forum solution that captured all of the responses in a manner that allowed any member to review them by going to the forum, not burying all and sundry in update emails, an interface which allows it to be embedded in the PDPLA site – so no extra sign in and no non-member involvement and ideally, a mechanism that feeds recommendations into our 'Recommended Supplier' database. Many of you know that we thought we finally had a solution and this has been 'under test' for the past few months – sadly, it does not loo like it will solve the problem in the manner hoped, so may well not come to anything – we will keep searching for a better solution, but in the interim do please continue to use both questions@ and 'recommended suppliers' – remember we are a member organisation and our primary benefit is the help and assistance we give to everyone else, the more collectively we put in the more we will get out.
And that glowing recommendation? It is a good example of how we all help each other:
Regarding my queries through Questions@ in reference to the condition my tenants left my property and the damage they had caused, I received aid from a number of PDPLA Members who responded and tried to help.
I want to take this opportunity to commend, in particular, the replies I received from Debra Chappelow, Lucy Fryer and Sarah Goodwin.
The time and effort all 3 put in their responses, together with follow up emails, was exceptional; and the quality of advice they gave from their own professional experience was outstanding.
They also proof read and edited my intended correspondence to my tenants and provided me with supporting documents and links.
All 3 are very busy ladies and yet they spent all this time to help me out and I am overwhelmed.
I must also say that this is not the first time they have helped answer my questions.
It is my belief that this is the epitome of what the PDPLA is all about:
members supporting other members in this way.
I am just wondering if this quality support can be marked in any way, as it is very much deserved.
Cheers
Carl